Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Reflection’

Aug 17

The Great Silence, Soft Voice

“Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans—I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment,”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired. When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom. If you are weary, may you be aroused by passion and purpose. If you are blameful and bitter, may you be sweetened by hope and humor. If you are frightened, may you be emboldened by a big consciousness far wiser than your fear. If you are lonely, may you find love, may you find friendship. If you are lost, may you understand that we are all lost, and still we are guided—by Strange Angels and Sleeping Giants, by our better and kinder natures, by the vibrant voice within the beat. May you follow that voice, for This is the way—the hero’s journey, the life worth living, the reason we are here.  ”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

Senses awakening
Slow over urgency
Soft over hard
Reflection over judgment
Yield over assumption
Praise over complaint
Pause over pass by
Sauntering over speed
Presence over past
Thriving over striving
Peace, praise, delight
Receive and cast light.

“Everything gets sorted out in the Great Silence.”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

Aug 15

Sweet Honey of Grace

“…when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.”― Henry Miller

“Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.

When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness, moments of Satori as the Zen sages term it, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education.

Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God”― Mark Nepo, Unlearning Back to God: Essays on Inwardness, 1985-2005

Unlearning
Unencumbered
Becoming
Sweet honey of grace
Of awe, wonder, reverence
Presence and knowing
In the unknowing.

“I was operating on the unspoken assumption that my inner world would be filled with life, peace, and joy once my external world was perfect.”― John Ortberg, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You

Aug 5

Today Such a Day

“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.”― Rumi

“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

Curiosity, inquiry, observation.
Reverence, reverie, reflection.
Open hands, heart, eyes.
Breeze, sky, beauty.
Notice and partake.

“On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a day.”― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

Jun 24

Radiating Peace

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.”― Jelaluddin Rumi , The Essential Rumi

“A balanced inner calmness radiates from a peaceful centre. It neither craves others’ approval nor rejects others’ presence. It neither pulls towards nor pushes away. It has a reverent attitude towards life and all its inhabitants.”― Donna Goddard, The Love of Devotion

Water
Stillness
Flow
Buoyancy
Waves
Rhythm
Tides
Contracting and expanding
Deep breath in
Full breath out
Deep presence
Fullness of attention
Radiating peace.

“This is the messiness of life – that we all carry multitudes, so must sit with the shifts. We are complicated creatures, and ultimately, the balance comes from this understanding. Be water. Flowing, flexible and soft. Subtly powerful and open. Wild and serene. Able to accept all changes, yet still led by the pull of steady tides. It is enough.”― Victoria Erickson

Jun 11

In Stillness, Sanctuary

“A walk in nature walks the soul back home.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace

“In a silent morning moment, with a silent voice I pray, to lift a silent sunrise offering on silent wings of grace.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace

Tending rather than mere attendance
Showing up
Leaning in
To what matters
Leaning back
Foregoing worry
Picking up joy, curiosity, delight
Traveling light, casting light.

“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary.” – Hermann Hesse

Jun 7

In Stillness, Revelation and Delight

“Stillness reveals what hurry hides.” – Pico Iyer

“Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.”― Emily Dickinson

In stillness, revelation
In hovering, awe
In abiding, emergence
Soft whisper
Deep stirring
Exquisite beauty
Peace that passes understanding
On the altars of this day
Kneel
Become new, again and again.

“We turn not older with years but newer every day.”― Emily Dickinson

May 14

Bubble of Grace Rising

“Make friends with the shifting sands deep within you; you are opening, changing. Let the air that needs to be released release when and how it comes. Love these bubbles of grace. Curl the corners of your mouth into a small smile as they leave.”― Sarah Blondin, Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love

“I know how scary or intimidating it can be to disconnect, to walk in the opposite direction of all that bright, shiny, noisy distraction. I have faced that fear again and again as I have answered my own call to stillness. But no matter the size of aversion or fear, you must trust me when I say that all that will matter, all that will ever amount to anything, is the relationship you have with the world you carry around inside of you.”― Sarah Blondin, Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love

Call to stillness
Embrace of pause
Grace rising
Quieting, abiding, tending
Peace, flow, exhale.

“You are in charge of how much space a thought takes up in your life. Take the time to carefully consider what you let be a part of your being and your spirit.”― Cleo Wade, Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life

Apr 24

To Listen, Bearing Witness

“the holy things we need for healing and sustenance are almost always the same as the ordinary things right in front of us.”― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

“Sometimes our most holy calling is to listen, to bear witness.”― Sarah Bessey, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith

The holy things
Front and center
Noticing and attention required
Quiet. Reflection. Beauty.
Rhythm of waves
Home in wilderness
Peace woven in now
Not in doing, trying, striving
Rather in bearing witness
With reverence, curiosity, kindness.

“The wilderness is home to God, even the wilderness inside you. Your life is already a place where God is quite at home.”― Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

Apr 19

Grand Show

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”― John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

“Everybody needs beauty…places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike.”― John Muir

Drink in blue sky
Hold brilliant sun
Pull over
Wander off road
The work of not working
Of abiding, tending, praising, pause
To notice, to be awestruck, to delight
Ocean of exultation
Grand show
Beauty
Deep breath, releasing sigh
Suddenly, you are alive
May you meet beauty today
And sit with her.

“Close your eyes and turn your face into the wind.
Feel it sweep along your skin in an invisible ocean of exultation.
Suddenly, you know you are alive.”― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Apr 18

Frame of Vision

“The way we experience the world around us is a direct reflection of the world within us.” – Gabrielle Bernstein

“There is a beautiful complexity of growth within the human soul.
In order to glimpse this, it is helpful to visualize the mind as a tower of windows.
Sadly, many people remain trapped at the one window, looking out every day at the same scene in the same way.
Real growth is experienced when you draw back from that one window, turn, and walk around the inner tower of the soul and see all the different windows that await your gaze.
Through these different windows, you can see new vistas of possibility, presence, and creativity.
Complacency, habit, and blindness often prevent you from feeling your life.
So much depends on the frame of vision — the window through which you look.” – John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

May your gaze wander.
Daily trance interrupted.
Auto-pilot disengaged.
New windows, fresh eyes.
Possibility. Presence. Creativity.
Where you stand, right now.
Look again.

« Older Entries