Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence,
and I learn, whatever state I may be in,
therein to be content
Helen Keller.
photo berit
Tag: heart
More about tasting
There is a fundamental paradox here. The less we are attached to life, the more alive we can become. The less we have preferences about life, the more deeply we can experience and participate in life. This is not to say that I don’t prefer raisin toast to blueberry muffins. It is to say that I don’t prefer raisin toast so much that I am unwilling to get out of bed unless I can have raisin toast, or that the absence of raisin toast ruins the whole day. Embracing life may be more about tasting than it is about either raisin toast or blueberry muffins. More about trusting one’s ability to take joy in the newness of the day and what it may bring. More about adventure than having your own way.
Rachel Naomi Remen, Embracing Life
photo SKopp
There is nothing ahead
Some of the sentiments expressed around New Year – or the current fad of people posting pictures online – can lead us to think that looking to the future, or looking for happiness somewhere other than where we are, is good for our mental health. These beautiful few lines from Rumi – an extract from a longer inspiring poem – reminds us that it is in this moment, in what is right here, and not in our concepts, is where we need to keep our awareness.
Forget the future.
I’d worship someone who could do that.
On the way you may want to look back, or not.
But if you can say, There’s nothing ahead,
there will be nothing there.
Rumi,
from Coleman Barks, Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing
photo kevin law
Expectations
Our life in the world comes to us in the shape of time.
Consequently, our expectation is both a creative and constructive force.
If you expect to find nothing within yourself but the repressed, abandoned, and shameful elements of your past or a haunted hunger, all you will find is emptiness and desperation.
The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.
In a vital sense, perception is reality.
John O’Donohue, AnamChara
photo of girl standing on the Calanque of Sormiou, near Marseille by benh lieu song
How to open up infinite possibilities
When you become comfortable with uncertainty,
infinite possibilities open up in your life…fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do,
and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change
Eckhart Tolle
photo neil ward
Nowhere to go, Nothing to achieve
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one with oneself.
(La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi)
Michel de Montaigne, Essais Book I, ch. 39
Mindfulbalance 