We think we need to hold everything close….to know where everything is going.
But probably, in life, the most important skill to learn is….
There are poets who learn from you
to say, what you, in your aloneness, are;
and they learn through you to live distantness,
as the evenings through the great stars
become accustomed to eternity.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Girls
The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea
Ann Morrow Lindberg, Gift from the Sea
When your eyes are closed, you can listen to the inner voices that “speak” in the mind. They say “I am this…”I should not be like that”. You can use those voices for bringing you to the space between thoughts. Rather than making a big problem about the obsession and fears that go on in your mind, you can open your attention and see those obsessions and fears as mental conditions that come and go in space.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way
Don’t waste time calculating your chances of success or failure.
Just fix your aim and begin
Chinese Master Guan Yin Tzu quoted in Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your life
If the day and the night are such, that you greet them with joy,
and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs,
is more elastic, more starry, more immortal…
that is your success.
Henry David Thoreau
It’s a holiday Monday here…easier to start the week with gentle routines
The search is the meaning, the search for beauty, love, kindness and restoration in this difficult, wired and often alien modern world. The miracle is that we are here, that no matter how undone we’ve been the night before, we wake up every morning and are still here. It is phenomenal just to be. This idea overwhelms some people. I have found that the wonder of life is often most easily recognizable through habits and routines – If you don’t do ritual things in order, the paper doesn’t read as well, and you’ll be thrown off the whole day. But when you can sit for a while at your table, reach for your coffee, look out the window at the sky or some branches, then back down at the paper or a book, everything feels right for the moment, which is maybe all we have.
Anne Lamott
Mindfulbalance 