Tag: Life

A choice for today

Karl Duffy6 Comments

In Auschwitz, we never knew from one moment to another what was going to happen….I couldn’t fight or flee, but I learned how to stay in a situation and make the best of what is. I still had choices. So, when we were stripped and shorn of our hair, Magda asked me, ‘How do I look?’ She looked like a mangy dog, but I told her: ‘Your eyes are so beautiful. I never noticed when you had all that hair.’ Every day, we could choose to pay attention to what we’d lost or what we still had.

Edith Eger , 1927 –  Holocaust Survivor, The Choice: Embrace the Possible

Not turning away

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This isn’t a journey about becoming something. This is about unbecoming who we are not, about undeceiving ourselves. We don’t end up anywhere other than where we have always been, except that we perceive where we have always been completely differently. We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been.  We are already as much as we will ever be. But the question is – do we know it? …….And so one of the most important steps is to come into agreement with your life so that you’re not turning away from yourself in any way. And the amazing thing is that when we are no longer turning away from ourselves, we find a great amount of energy, a great capacity for clarity and wisdom, and we start to see everything we need to see.

Adyashanti, The End of Your World

…..and Hope

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We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake,

not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Henry David Thoreau

Sunday Quote: Give in to joy

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If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. ….

Whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.

Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

All around

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All has been consecrated.
The creatures in the forest know this,

the earth does, the seas do, the clouds know
as does the heart full of love.

Strange a priest would rob us of this
knowledge 
and then empower himself
with the ability

to make holy what
already was.

St Catherine of Siena (1347–1380),

in Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems from God:Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West 

Look within

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Now,  more than ever,  we need to develop our own inner resources:

Every man has his own courage,

and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Emerson