Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama, you know, expecting victory after victory, and you understand deeply that this is not paradise – we somehow embrace the notion that this vale of tears, that it’s perfectable – you’re not gonna get it all straight.
I found that things got a lot easier when I no longer expected to win….
You understand that, you abandon your masterpiece, and you sink into the real masterpiece…
Leonard Cohen
Suffering does not belong to awareness; it belongs only to the illusory separate self.
When a thought or feeling appears and we say, ‘This is my sadness,’ we have already misidentified awareness as a person who owns an experience.
But awareness itself is free of suffering – it is like the sky that remains untouched by the storm clouds passing through it.
To abide as awareness is to be free of suffering, not because suffering is denied, but because it is no longer claimed as ‘mine‘
Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware
I’m a big proponent of “busy is a decision.”
You decide what you want to do and the things that are important to you.
And you don’t find the time to do things – you make the time to do things. And if you aren’t doing them because you’re “too busy,” it’s likely not as much of a priority as what you’re actually doing.
Debbie Milman, radio show host and author
When you stop trying to achieve,
you discover what has always been there.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
When you are in darkness, feeling pitiful or alone,
remember you are blessed with a soul
that is more receptive to the Spirit
and closer to love, joy and peace
than you were when life seemed grand.
This is what “blessed are the poor in Spirit”
means.
Meister Eckhart
Was walking in the woods over the long weekend with an awareness of the Japanese term komorebi – the flickering of sunlight filtering through the leaves, ever changing. We can learn life lessons here:
When I am among the trees….
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees
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