What am I looking for?

The symbol of the heart has often been used to express love…… Some have questioned whether this symbol is still meaningful today. Yet living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart

Instead of running after superficial satisfactions and playing a role for the benefit of others, we would do better to think about the really important questions in life. Who am I, really? What am I looking for? What direction do I want to give to my life, my decisions and my actions? Why and for what purpose am I in this world? How do I want to look back on my life once it ends? What meaning do I want to give to all my experiences? …All these questions lead us back to the heart.

Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos

An unshakeable sense

The great paradox … is that the more we let go of our grasping and clinging, the more we find ourselves filled with an unshakable sense of wholeness.

The practice of yoga is not about achieving some distant perfection but about uncovering the perfection that is already here, hidden beneath the layers of our conditioning

Stephen Cope, The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker’s Guide to Extraordinary Living

Sunday Quote: Trust the process

Often, we focus only on the final goal and feel overwhelmed by its scale. The journey itself is the true architect of achievement.

Step by step, a path;

stone by stone, a cathedral,’

my great-grandfather used to say.

Phil Cousineau Stoking the Creative Fires: 9 Ways to Rekindle Passion and Imagination

What treasures today?

Religion for the dervishes is searching….
for it is the custom of kings to
bury treasures in deserted places
.

Qadi Husayn Maybudi, 1449 – 1504, Iranian scholar

Don’t be concerned

Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life.

And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem.

Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence.

You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.

Eckhart Tolle,  A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

Let it go

A very windy day yesterday.

As the leaves fall, my favourite Autumn chant, the final lines of the Heart Sutra – finding an inner rest, beyond all coming or going.

Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

[“Gone, Gone, Gone beyond, Gone completely beyond. Awakening, So be it”]

Gone. I release my grip on the small self. I let it go.
Gone. I let thoughts, opinions, and ideas drift away like clouds.
Gone beyond. I cross to the other shore, beyond division.
Gone completely beyond. Nothing is left to cling to, I rest in vast openness.
Awakening. Clear seeing dawns, the truth shines quietly.
So be it. May this awakening be sealed in my heart.