My Sacred Life - Day 13

Happiness finds you if you let it.


Words that move me...

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.
-Thich Nhat Hanh

With humility comes the willingness to stop trying to control or change other people or life situations or events ostensibly 'for their own good'. To be a committed spiritual seeker, it is necessary to relinquish the desire to be 'right' or of imaginary value to society. In fact, nobody's ego or belief systems are of any value to society at all. The world is neither good nor bad nor defective, nor is it in need of help or modification because its appearance is only a projection of one's own mind. No such world exists.
David R. Hawkins

See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
-Eckhart Tolle

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.
-Carlos Castaneda

Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.
-James Allen

Heaven on Earth is a choice you must make, not a place you must find.
-Wayne Dyer

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust

To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.
-Stephen Covey

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
-Dalai Lama

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts.
-Marianne Williamson

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.
-Stephen Vincent Benet

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
-Stephen Covey

Hold up your hands before your eyes.
You are looking at the hands of God.
-Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

Right now, and in every now-moment, you are either closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting for something - more money, security, affection - or you are living from your deep heart, opening as the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give, without waiting.
-David Deida

When we leave this world, how much we have loved will be our true legacy. It is the only thing we will leave behind and carry with us.
-Anne Siloy

When we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us.
-Scott Peck

Past and future are in the mind only - I am now.
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There comes a time when the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping. At that moment, a threshold is crossed. What seemed unthinkable becomes thinkable. Slowly, the realization emerges that the choice to continue what you have been doing is the choice to live in discomfort, and the choice to stop what you have been doing is the choice to breathe deeply and freely again. Once that realization has emerged, you can either honor it or ignore it, but you cannot forget it. What has become known can not become unknown again.
-Gary Zukav

The lust for comfort murders the passions of the soul.
-Kahlil Gibran

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
-Mother Teresa

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
-Thomas Merton

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
-Dalai Lama

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.
-Paulo Coelho

Everyday, God gives us the sun - and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything...
-Paulo Coelho

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
-Dalai Lama

In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.
-Deepak Chopra

It's also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that's sitting right here right now... with its aches and it pleasures... is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.
-Pema Chodron

Awake. Be the witness of your thoughts. You are what observes, not what you observe.
-Buddha

You must understand the whole of life, not just
one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

To undertake a genuine spiritual path is not to avoid difficulties but to learn the art of making mistakes wakefully, to bring them to the transformative power of our heart.
-Jack Kornfield

The mistake people make is to wait for something to happen to them before they begin searching. They want the voice of God, or something, to tell them to get started. Or maybe they know they should be doing something but they procrastinate, hoping that tomorrow they'll have more conviction and be more determined. What they forget is there may be no tomorrow for them.
-Richard Rose

Most people tell you they want to get out of kindergarten, but don't believe them. Don't believe them! All they want you to do is to mend their broken toys. "Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success." This is what they want; they want their toys replaced. That's all. Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don't really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful.
-Anthony De Mello

Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others.
-David R. Hawkins

The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody.
-Ram Dass

Know that you can not help but judge. What you then do with your judgment is the choice.
-Story Waters

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live in every experience, painful or joyous, to live in gratitude for every moment, to live abundantly.
-Dorothy Thompson

"Why is everyone here so happy except me?"
"Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere," said the Master.
"Why don't I see goodness and beauty everywhere?"
"Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside."
-Anthony De Mello

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors.
Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits.
Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
-Gandhi

All attack is a call for help.
-Neale Donald Walsch


Non-Duality

The bell tolls at four in the morning.
I stand by the window,
barefoot on the cool floor.
The garden is still dark.
I wait for the mountains and rivers to reclaim their shapes.
There is no light in the deepest hours of the night.
Yet, I know you are there
in the depth of the night,
the immeasurable world of the mind.
You, the known, have been there
ever since the knower has been.

The dawn will come soon,
and you will see
that you and the rosy horizon
are within my two eyes.
It is for me that the horizon is rosy
and the sky blue.
Looking at your image in the clear stream,
you answer the question by your very presence.
Life is humming the song of the non-dual marvel.
I suddenly find myself smiling
in the presence of this immaculate night.
I know because I am here that you are there,
and your being has returned to show itself
in the wonder of tonight's smile.
In the quiet stream,
I swim gently.
The murmur of the water lulls my heart.
A wave serves as a pillow
I look up and see
a white cloud against the blue sky,
the sound of Autumn leaves,
the fragrance of hay-
each one a sign of eternity.
A bright star helps me find my way back to myself.

I know because you are there that I am here.
The stretching arm of cognition
in a lightning flash,
joining together a million eons of distance,
joining together birth and death,
joining together the known and the knower.

In the depth of the night,
as in the immeasurable realm of consciousness,
the garden of life and I
remain each other's objects.
The flower of being is singing the song of emptiness.

The night is still immaculate,
but sounds and images from you
have returned and fill the pure night.
I feel their presence.
By the window, with my bare feet on the cool floor,
I know I am here
for you to be.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

And the song for the day... *drum roll* hehehe

I Shall Be Free
Kid Beyond

One day I went walkin down Lonesome Road
And I came upon a stranger is some funky clothes
He said he was a soldier
I said, where’s your gun
He said, I don't got no weapon and I don't need one
I don't need no weapon cause I don't fight no war
I said, Well than Mr Soldier - what you fighting for
Well he didn't say nothinr> He just smiled at me
And then I heard him whisper
You shall be free

Well excuse me mister
Are you sayin I ain't free
Well I don't see no shackles or no chains on me
He said, we're chained to our hatred
and shackled by greed
Too blind to see the wonder and they mystery
We got to love one another
Give our love so strong.
Love your brother man even when he treats you wrong
And when you love without limits
Unconditionally
When you love without fear
then you shall be free

So I pried my heart open
as wide as the sea
And the strangest sensations came over me
I could see the clouds dance
Felt a raindrop sting
I could hear the tiny feet and all the butterfly wings
As I sat in the middle
I felt this love unfold
Love too big for this body to hold
That day I became a warrior
with no enemy
Now I am that funky soldier and I shall be free

Now I ain't afraid of living
and I ain't scared to die
Cause I feel this vibration that I can't deny
I can feel it singing through me
Like a symphony
And it tastes so sweet like destiny
It's in everything I touch
everything I see
It's in every single fiber in my body
Every star
Every creature
Every leaf on every tree
is a lesson and a blessing and we shall be free
I shall
I shall be free