Courage

"Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made."  David Whyte

Master of my Fate

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
~ Invictus, by William Ernest Henley.

"Every society honors it's live conformists and it's dead troublemakers." Mignon McLaughlin

Stillness to Listen

"May we find a little stillness- a place for rest & daydreaming, a time for letting our deepest longing guide us back to our soul desires in those places where we may have wandered a little from who we are in the busyness of life. Of course there are risks in living close to those desires- risk of faillure, risk of fulfillment, risk of living with the fullness & messiness & heart-opening beauty of being human every day. May we find the courage to live a soul-directed life."

Choice

"Countless times in our days, we find ourselves faced with the almost imperceptible choice to enable trust or distrust, to affirm directness or indirectness, to empower anonymous judgment or the courage to stand in one's truth without judging others."  Mark Nepo

Transformation

As a frightened man in a burning boat
has only one way to the rest of his life,
we must move with courage
through the wall of flame
into the greater sea. 

Mark Nepo

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
Here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
You would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

- Rumi

Life

"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit."

Dawna Markova

We have not come here to take prisoners,

But to surrender even more deeply

To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world

To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear

From anything

that may not strengthen

Your precious budding wings

Run like hell my dear,

From anything likely

To put a sharp knife

Into the sacred, tender vision

Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend

Those aspects of obedience

That stand outside of our house

And shout to our reason

"O please, O please,

Come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners

Or to confine our wondrous spirits

But to experience ever and ever more deeply

Our divine courage, freedom and Light! 

Hafiz

"Who can tell what miracles
Love has in store for us
If only we have the courage to become one with it?
Everything we think we know now
Is only the beginning
Of another knowing that itself has no end.
And everything we now can accomplish.

Will seem so derisory to us
When the powers of our divine nature
Flower in glory and act through us."

Iqbal (Sufi Mystic)

Hanneli's Wish

"May the integrity of Peace and Truth be celebrated.  May love and courage shine in your heart stronger than ever, and may you find within you the light of a thousand suns to blaze through whatever challenges you face in times ahead.

May you meet the suffering of the world with compassion, both for yourself and for others.

May you shatter your self-imposed limitations with fierce honesty and persistent love.

May you invite the demons to show their faces with the confidence of your inner strength, knowing there is no darkness you cannot face with love in your heart.   May you find yourself in many unexpected fields of wild flowers and circles of compassionate friends.  May you share laughter and tears with openness and freedom. 

May we recognize the heart of ourselves in the eyes of each we meet. 

May you follow your aspirations, your heart and your dreams more fully than ever before.   When you feel awkward, know you are walking your own edge and growth and healing are also present.  Deep breath....

A Stong Heart

"A strong heart is not a heart that has a strong armor and a sword.  A strong heart is a happy heart.  A strong heart is a joyous heart.  It is heart that can dance when you are completely free.  Only when you have that openness can you see that darkness and not be absorbed by it, but you can absorb it.  Only when you have that joy and happiness can you go to the heart of darkness.  Sometimes the heart of darkness is Congo and sometimes the heart of darkness is inside you and you can accept it and it's with joy and happiness that you can actually dance with it and absorb it into you.

Get off the warrior's horse, take the armor off.  That's not how we're gonna win the fight.  We're gonna win the fight with our own joy and our own happiness and our own beauty.  To do that you need to walk the warrior's path of breaking your own silence and you'll have to have the courage and the resilience to do it. 

It's not about saving the world.  It's about saving us." Zalnab Salbi

Leadership

"I learned that leadership was not about the warrior journey only, but about showing vulnerability as well.  Only when I stepped forward and showed my vulnerability, I cannot tell you how many women came and told me their own story and broke their silence.  It's ok to show vulnerability because we are not perfect and actually our imperfection is the beautiful thing about us; our struggle; it's not necessarily an easy dance.  It's a wobbly dance sometimes

It's like a black stone (she points to her chest) that dissolved from me and became a crystal.  That's the physical feeling that I literally feel.  I can tell you all of this and not cry.  It is out of my system.  My demon is out of me, but it took me years.  It was quite a painful journey and it took quite another kind of courage.  The courage to speak our inner truth, the courage to break our inner silence, the courage to show our vulnerability, the courage to say something as simple as 'I'm not happy' .  Courage is not planned.  Sometimes you have to jump off the cliff and just do it."  Zalnab Salbi

Breaking the Silence

"I couldn't have the courage to say that I had been raped.  I'm the feminist, right?  I'm the strong woman, talking about other rapes but I was too scare and ashamed and embarrassed to say that I had been one too.  And that inner journey was so painful.  It is about another aspect of breaking the silence.  It is about breaking our own silence and I'm convinced each woman has her story.   I know you have grown up in the privileges of America but I am convinced that each woman has to do it." Zalnab Salbi

Speaking Truth

"It is not fun to speak the truth.  A lot of people tell me ,'you're so lucky.  You're speaking your truth, you're living your dreams'.   I want to tell you, it's not easy and it's not fun.  And if you really want to walk the leader's route you have to have the courage to speak out.   I lost friends who were sick and tired of me talking about the rape camps in Bosnia.  'Go get a job for God's sake, what is this thing.'  Zalnab Salbi

Path of the Heart

"It takes an odd combination of backbone and abandon to walk the path of the heart."  Elizabeth Lesser

Authenticity

"Take your life in your own hands and what happens.  A terrible thing; no one to blame."  Erica Jong

Individuality

"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying 'amen' to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive."  Robert Louis Stevenson

Living Life to the Full

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” ~ Paulo Coelho

Risk

‎"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far
they can go." (T.S. Elliot)