Tag: Present moment

Letting life flow

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How can you follow the course
of your life
if you do not let it flow?

Lao Tzu

How to be serene

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All the world religions and wisdom traditions come to the same conclusion: True contentment comes about through  working out, through the twists and turns of one’s own life, a personal understanding of these deeply different realities.

For whoever has learned to love,

for whoever has learned to suffer,

life is imbued with serene beauty

Br Roger

All directions have a meaning

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No matter what stories our mind may tell us in times of difficulty, all things are ordered and return to their home. We are calm deep down when we realize that our days have meaning in an overall rhythm  and we are not isolated but have a place in the overall “family of things”

The wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

A fruitful loneliness

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It is a recurrent theme in human history,  and in the different wisdom traditions on days like Good Friday, that the places where we are hurt are often the places where we grow the most. Thus the places of darkness are difficult and fruitful at the same time:

Life may be brimming over with experiences,

but somewhere, deep inside,

all of us carry a vast and fruitful loneliness wherever we go.

Etty Hillesum


What happiness is not…

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Many people today assume that happiness implies the absence of suffering and struggle, as if a life of meaning, service to others or tormented but creative accomplishment is not also a happy life. Another misconception is that happiness must be sought and acquired, as if it were something special that is apart from ordinary, everyday life. It must be attained by fulfilling some  requirement – perhaps by making more money or finding a new relationship – or by following some prescribed method or program of self-improvement. But happiness is right before our eyes, immediately available to us if we surrender to what this very moment offers, to what fate has put on our table right now. The happiness complex consists of the hope that happiness will come, if only….

Michael Gellert, The Way of the Small

Another day dawns

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The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that Love is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, Love is under the porch as well as on the top of the mountain, and JOY is both in the front row and in the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening