Tag: Joy

Honest prayers

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There is Thomas Merton’s famous prayer, the beginning of which reads, ‘My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.’ You can look up the rest.

There is a beautiful prayer a friend’s Jewish mother wrote and taught me, which I swear by: Help for the sick and hungry, home for the homeless folk, peace in the world forever. This is my prayer, O lord. Amen.

I wrote one that will do in a pinch:

Hi, God. I am just a mess.

It is all hopeless. What else is new?

I would be sick of me, if I were You,

but miraculously You are not.

I know I have no control over other people’s

lives, and I hate this. Yet I believe that if I

accept this and surrender, You will meet me

wherever I am. Wow. Can this be true? If so, how is this

afternoon – say, two-ish?

Thank You in advance for Your company and blessings.

You have never once let me down.

Amen.

Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

The same place

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We understand that the nature of the mind is to wander. In this wandering everything that is encountered is a teaching., a pointing to a life that can be vividly lived. And every path that we wander leads to the same place “Here”.

The realization of the continual return to this moment, this time, this place is liberating. A sense of wonder arises, of not-knowing, and deeply trusting this feeling of simple presence.

Melissa Myozen Blacker in Living Mindfully: 52 weekly quotes and Mindfulness practices

Healing

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As the Summer Solstice approaches….

Shamanic healing is not about fixing what has gone wrong.

It’s about growing a new body that heals, ages, and dies consciously.

Alberto Villoldo, 1949 -, Cuban psychologist and medical anthropologist, writer on the healing practices of the Amazon and the Andean shamans.

Sunday Quote: the best option

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You never really know what the next moment is going to bring,

so living fully in this moment is the only constantly reappearing option for happiness.

Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness is an inside job

A place of surrender

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If we pay attention, we will realize that every moment around us, there is a world that we did not create that’s been there for 13.8 billion years, and there’s trillions of cells in your body that are doing what they’re supposed to do, and all of nature, everything.

You wake up and you realize, “I’m not doing any of this. I didn’t make my body. I didn’t make my mind think. I don’t make my heart beat. I don’t make my breath breathe, etc, etc, yet I have this notion that I have to make things happen. Yet, all throughout the universe, things are happening everywhere and I’m not doing them, so why exactly am I the one that’s in charge of what’s unfolding in front of me?”

What you realize at some point is that you’re not; that the moment in front of you that’s unfolding is no different than all the zillions of other moments that aren’t in front of you that are unfolding in accordance to the laws of nature, the laws of creation. You start to practice saying, “I want to pay attention to what the universe is creating in front of me just like it’s creating everywhere where I’m not, and let me see how I can participate in that – be part of that – instead of interfering with it with my desires and my fears.”

That’s living from a place of surrender.

Michael Singer, Living From A Place Of Surrender, Sounds True Blog

A motto for life

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More from the always inspiring Dogen. Very little can be added to this as we start another week…

In performing your duties maintain

joyful mind,

kind mind

and great mind

Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Buddhist monk, founder of the Soto school of Zen.