If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. Sometimes the great famine of blessings in and around us derives from the fact that we are not living the life we love; rather, we are living the life that is expected of us. We have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature.
John O Donohue
Everything that slows us down
and forces patience,
everything that sets us back
into the slow circles of nature,
is a help.
May Sarton
In order to have peace and joy, you must succeed in having peace within each of your steps. Your steps are the most important thing. They decide everything. But often in our daily life, our steps are burdened with anxieties and fears. Life itself seems to be a continuous chain of insecure feelings, and so our steps lose their natural easiness. Our earth is truly beautiful. There is so much graceful, natural scenery along paths and roads around the earth! They are all available to us, yet we cannot enjoy them because our hearts are not trouble-free, and our steps are not at ease.
Thich Nhat Hahn
There are years that ask questions and years that answer
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God
Joy is exactly what’s happening minus our opinion of it.
Charlotte Joko Beck.
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Robert Frost, A Prayer in Spring
Just as there are seasons in the world around us, so there are in our interior life. Teresa of Avila We can learn a lot around the change of the seasons, as in these days when Winter gives way to Spring. Not just the ongoing lesson about change and impermanence but from the fact that there is a parallel between our interior rhythm and the movement of the seasons. Winter is a time for conserving energy and reducing activity, whereas, in some Eastern Wisdom traditions, Spring is seen as having an energy which is expansive and outward moving. It is a time of new beginnings and potentially a renewal of spirit. And all around us we begin to see this, as there is a delicate but still fragile sense of renewal and new life. We see seeds beginning to sprout, flowers bloom, and the sun gently warming the earth. And we begin to see that despite the darkness and cold much has been going on unseen and underground for months. However, we also see the harm which the severe cold has done to some of the plants, who need cutting back or digging up. We too start again, making room for change, moving towards a sense of lightness, letting go of unhelpful habits of mind which hold us back or no longer give life.
There are seasons in your life in the same way as there are seasons in nature. There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they fade. And finally, of course, there are times of cold and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream.
These rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are. If you realize that each phase of your life is a natural occurrence, then you need not be swayed, pushed up and down by the changes in circumstance and mood that life brings.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, How to Rule
