They come and they go

When energies inside start to move, you do not have to go there. For instance, when your thoughts start, you do not have to go with them.

Let’s say you’re outside taking a walk and a car drives by. Your thoughts say, ‘Boy, I wish I had that car.’ You could just keep on walking, but instead you start getting upset. You want a car like that, but your salary isn’t high enough. So you begin thinking about how you can get a raise or a different job. You didn’t have to do all that. It could have just been – here comes the car and there it goes, and here comes the thought and there it goes.

They’re both gone together because you didn’t go with them.

Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul

Sunday Quote: Flow with whatever

Do not force things…. Can you afford to be careless?

So then, flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free; stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. 

David H. Rosen, The Tao of Jung: The Way of Integrity

Pouring into you

Let your mind and heart release all that disturbs you.
Let your body be still, and all the frettings of your body, and all that surrounds it.

Let the earth and sea and air be still, and heaven itself;
and then think of spirit as streaming, pouring, rushing, and shining
into you, through you, and out from you in all directions while you sit quiet.

 

Eric Buttermore’s paraphrase of Plotinus, In the Flow of Life

a poppy blooms

Our daily efforts and failings. And all the while, there is beauty around us

I write, erase, rewrite,
Erase again, and then
A poppy blooms

Hokushi, 1603-1868, Japanese haiku poet.

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again
.

Billy Collins, PIcnic, Lightning [excerpt]

Just live out your life

Suzuki Roshi once said about questioning our life, our purpose, “It’s like putting a horse on top of a horse and then climbing on and trying to ride. Riding a horse by itself is hard enough. Why add another horse? Then it’s impossible”

We add that extra horse when we constantly question ourselves rather than just live out our lives, and be who we are at every moment.

Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway.

The finest medicine

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. The book-learning gradually dribbles away; problems melt and dissolve; ties are gently severed; the body becomes a new and wonderful instrument; you look at plants or stones or fish with different eyes.

Henry Millar, 1981 – 1980, The Colossus of Maroussi