Inside not outside

What are these false beliefs that block you from happiness? Here are some examples: Happiness will come if you manage to change the situation you are in and the people around you. Not true. You stupidly squander so much energy trying to rearrange the world. If changing the world is your vocation in life, go right ahead and change it, but do not harbor the illusion that this is going to make you happy. What makes you happy or unhappy is not the world and the people around you, but the thinking in your head. As well search for an eagle’s nest on the bed of an ocean, as search for happiness in the world outside of you. So if it is happiness that you seek you can stop wasting your energy trying to cure your bald­ness or build up an attractive body or change your residence or job or community or lifestyle or even your personality. Do you realize that you could change every one of these things, you could have the finest looks and the most charming personality and the most pleasant of surroundings and still be unhappy? And deep down you know this is true but still you waste your effort and energy trying to get what you know cannot make you happy.

Anthony de Mello

Separateness

The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are! Let form be just form, let sound be just sound, let thought be just thought….If we think and feel in this way, then there is detachment and separateness. Our thoughts and feelings will be on one side and our heart will be on the other. Just like oil and water – they are in the same bottle but they are separate.

Ajahn Chah, Food for the Heart

Sunday quote: light

C’est la Nuit qu’il est beau de croire à la lumière

It is at night that it is beautiful to believe in the light

Edmond Rostand, 1868 – 1918, French poet and dramatist

Flow

You cannot do yoga.

Yoga is your natural state.

What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state.

Sharon Gannon, 1951 – , yoga teacher, animal rights advocate, musician and author

Take the step

He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.

Jean-Luc Godard, 1930 – , French Film Director

Sunday quote: our deep sense

We should not give up on our dreams or any deep sense that persists over time, or let it be blocked by our fears.

Since the powers of nature in this dreamer, in that dreamer, and in the macrocosm of nature itself, are the same, only differently inflected,

the powers personified in a dream are those that move the world.

All the gods are within you,

Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God