At any moment, whatever we are experiencing, only one of two things is ever happening: either we are being with what is, or else we are resisting what is.
Being with what is means letting ourselves have and feel our experience, just as it is right now. …
This is where genuine creativity, health, and communication, as well as spiritual power, arise from.
John Welwood
Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows ‘what he wants,’ while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.
In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
The fool, with all his other faults, has this one also,
he is always getting ready to live.
Seneca
There is Thomas Merton’s famous prayer, the beginning of which reads, ‘My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.’ You can look up the rest.
There is a beautiful prayer a friend’s Jewish mother wrote and taught me, which I swear by: Help for the sick and hungry, home for the homeless folk, peace in the world forever. This is my prayer, O lord. Amen.
I wrote one that will do in a pinch:
Hi, God. I am just a mess.
It is all hopeless. What else is new?
I would be sick of me, if I were You,
but miraculously You are not.
I know I have no control over other people’s
lives, and I hate this. Yet I believe that if I
accept this and surrender, You will meet me
wherever I am. Wow. Can this be true? If so, how is this
afternoon – say, two-ish?
Thank You in advance for Your company and blessings.
You have never once let me down.
Amen.
Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
Instead of seeing time as a straight line,
if we see life as a series of cycles of growth, maturation, and death followed by rebirth,
we can better understand why endings are necessary for new beginnings.
Jeremy Hunter, mindfulness teacher, founder Executive Mind Leadership Institute
Every day we’re given a choice: We can relax and float in the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it.
If we go with the river, the energy of a thousand mountain streams will be with us . . . if we resist the river, we will feel rankled and tired as we tread water, stuck in the same place.
Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open
