Tag: Be fully present

…and when we are lost

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Just before turning back, his mission unfulfilled, we read in the Torah, “a certain man found Joseph and behold he was wandering in a field.” That man asked Joseph a two-word question, ma t’vakesh, “What are you seeking?

….this great short question, ma t’vakesh, was not a question about the location of his brothers, but a question about the location of his life. And what happened to Joseph in the fields happens to us in our lives. We meet angels and they change everything. The man who met Joseph in the fields was of course not a man, he was an angel, or to say it more precisely, he was not only a man he was also an angel. Judaism has always taught that it is quite possible to be both at the same time.

In Hebrew, the word for angel is malach, which means “messenger,” and so for Judaism any person with a message from God is a malach, an angel. When we are about to lose our way it seems to me absolutely obvious and unarguably true that God will send someone into the fields of our lives to ask us, ma t’vakesh, “What are you looking for?”

Marc Gellman, What are You Looking For?

There is goodness all round

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And this, our life…..finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Shakespeare, As You Like It.

Unfinished

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The things that matter are unfinished paintings that everyone creates and no one owns. Rather we are created each time we touch the breath of being, and we are connected to everyone who ever lived each time we add a stroke. And sometimes we are briefly aware that we are living parts of the most elemental community of all, the community of life force that moves through everything.

Mark Nepo, The Unfinished Painting

Do your best

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Do the best you can, until you know better.

Then when you know better, do better.

Maya Angelou

Inside and all around

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The Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. What we need is already here, inside or all around us

If your spiritual guides say to you,
‘Look, the divine Realm is
in the sky’……. well then the birds
will get there ahead of you.
If they say, ‘It is in the sea’….. then the fish will precede you.

No, divine Reality exists inside and all around you.
When you come to know your true Self, you will be fully known —
realizing at last that you are a child of the Living One.
If, however, you never come to know
who you truly are,
you are a poverty-stricken being,
and it is your ‘self’ which will be impoverished.

The Gospel of Thomas, c 120 AD.

A portable home

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Your true home is something you have to create for yourself.  When we know how to make peace with our body, take care of and release tension in our body, then our body becomes a comfortable peaceful home for us to come back to in the present moment.  When we know how to take care of our feelings, how to generate joy and happiness and handle a painful feeling, we can cultivate and restore a happy home in the present moment.  And when we know how to generate energies of understanding and compassion our home will become very cosy and a pleasant place to come back to.  Home is not something to hope for but something to cultivate.

Thich Nhat Hahn