Tag: heart

Sunday Quote: Trust in moments of darkness

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No seed ever sees the flower

Zen Saying

Turning toward and looking

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Awareness is born of intimacy. We can only fear what we do not understand and what we perceive from a distance. We can only find compassion and freedom in intimacy. We can be afraid of intimacy because we are afraid of helplessness; we fear that we don’t have the inner balance to embrace it without being overwhelmed. Yet each time we find the willingness to meet fear, we discover we are not powerless. Awareness rescues us from helplessness, teaching us to be helpful through our kindness, patience, resilience, and courage. Awareness is the forerunner of understanding, and understanding is the prerequisite to bringing suffering to an end.

Christine Feldman

Compassion towards ourself today

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raking the soilIt takes a great person to creatively inhabit her own mind and not turn her mind into a destructive force that can ransack her life. [Even some] lovely people feel that their real identity is working on themselves, and some work on themselves with such harshness. Like a demented gardener who won’t let the soil settle for anything to grow, they keep raking, tearing away the nurturing clay from their own heart, then they’re surprised that they feel so empty and vacant. Self-compassion is paramount. When you are compassionate with yourself, you trust in your soul, which you let guide your life. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny better than you do.

John O’Donohue

Go home

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You should go home to your hermitage; it is inside you. Close the doors, light the fire, and make it cozy again. That is what I call ‘taking refuge in the island of self.’ If you don’t go home to yourself, you continue to lose yourself. You destroy yourself and you destroy people around you, even if you have goodwill and want to do something to help. That is why the practice of going home to the island of self is so important. No one can take your true home away.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Peace Begins Here

Pause, relax

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When your mind is reeling in confusion,

breathe deeply into the centre of your chest.

Connecting to the core of your being this way extends loving kindness to yourself ,

even when there is none in sight.

Ezra Bayda

A gentle word to ourselves

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Breathing is a means of awakening and maintaining full attention in order to look carefully and deeply to see the nature of things. But sometimes we try very hard to practice to remember to breathe. “Breathe, my dear” is like a gentle voice …reminding us to come back to ourselves with awareness of our breathing. It can give us comfort to practice to take it easy, gently, slowly.

Thich Nhat Hahn