Your identity is not equivalent to your biography.
There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you.
And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.
John O’Donohue, The Inner Landscape of Beauty
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
The Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. The swallows in full flight across the fields having made their long journey to nest here.
When you set off on a path, the first thing you do is surrender yourself to a greater power, for you will encounter things you will not understand. You will understand things only with your heart, and that can be a little frightening. For a long time, the journey will seem like a Dark Night, but then any search is an act of faith. But God, who is far harder to understand than a Dark Night, appreciates our act of faith and takes our hand and guides us through the Mystery.
Paolo Coelho, Brida
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.
Our whole world falls apart, and we’ve been given this great opportunity. However, we don’t trust our basic wisdom mind enough to let it stay like that. Our habitual reaction is to want to get ourselves back – even our anger, resentment, fear, or bewilderment. So we re-create our solid, immovable personality as if we were Michelangelo chiseling ourselves out of marble.
By becoming aware of how we do this silly thing again and again because we don’t want to dwell in the uncertainty and awkwardness and pain of not knowing, we begin to develop true compassion for ourselves and everyone else, because we see what happens and how we react when things fall apart. That awareness is what turns the sword into a flower. It is how what is seemingly problematic and unwanted actually becomes our teacher.
Pema Chodron, When Things fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
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
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