Manipulating the world

Your mind has very little control over this world. It is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. It cannot control the weather and other natural forces. Nor can it control all people, places, and things around you. You have given your mind an impossible task by asking it to manipulate the world in order to fix your personal inner problems.

If you want to achieve a healthy state of being, stop asking your mind to do this. Just relieve your mind of the job of making sure that everyone and everything will be the way you need them to be so that you can feel better inside. 

Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul

Sunday Quote: the holy tree

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there

W.B. Yeats, Irish Poet, The Two Trees

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

The present moment

If you view everything as practice,

your suffering will disappear.

Shido Bunan, 1603-1676, Zen Master

Ready

I do not write every day, I read every day, think every day, work in the garden every day, and recognize in nature the same slow complicity. The same inevitability.

The moment will arrive, always it does, it can be predicted but it cannot be demanded. I do not think of this as inspiration. I think of it as readiness.

Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects

Sunday Quote: The inner voice

You will never be able to escape from your heart.

So it is better to listen to what it has to say

Paolo Coehlo, The Alchemist

Threatened

The peace that we are looking for is not peace that crumbles as soon as there is difficulty or chaos. Whether we’re seeking inner peace or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises.

Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap, Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears