Religion

"Then, it appears to me, one gradually formulates one's religion, be it what it may. A person has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification."

-D.H. Lawrence

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include thefreedom to make mistakes.

-Mahatma Gandhi

Books

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”

~Charles William Eliot from "The Happy Life"

Fear and Faith

"If you never ask any questions, you never learn anything.  If you never learn anything, you never grow.   If you never grow.  That is not faith; it's fear."  Sagan

Taught So Much

I

Learned

So much from God

That I can no longer

Call

Myself

A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim

A Buddhist, a Jew.

The truth has shared so much of Itself 

With me.

That I can no longer call myself

A man, a woman, an angel

Ore even pure

Soul

Love has

Befriended Hafiz so completely

It has turned to ash

And freed

Me

Of every concept and image

My mind has ever known.

Learning

"Any profound learning requires long stretches of dedicated practice with no seeming progress."  George Leonard and Michael Murphy

Spiritual Adventure

"The spiritual path is the process of fearlessly peering into the mysterious nature of life and relaxing our mental and emotional grip on our own place within it.   Learning how to do this opens the way to a kind of wisdom that answers our own questions and touches the deepest strands of our longing."   Elizabeth Lesser

Perspective

"It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all." - Emmet Fox

Kindness to Self

‎"Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it's important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe." Pema Chodron

Inspiration

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Rilke
Book of Hours, I 59

The Woods

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach me, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."  HDT

Surrender

"If we must surrender a close bond,
we need to learn
to sacrifice the relationship
without sacrificing the love."

Christina Baldwin

Tell me a Story

"Tell me a story of failure in your life, a time when you made a mistake.   Tell me with compassion for the child or man or woman you were.   Tell it with ruthless honesty and gentle acceptance.   We do not avoid shame be hiding mistakes.   The shame just becomes buried within us."   Oriah

Love and Beauty

"I want to learn how to be here fully, in this body in this world.  And I want to live in a world infused with the power of the erotic.   When we live erotically, the meaning enfolded in our very cells is unfolded as we touch and are touched.   This is beauty."  Oriah

Teachers

"When you've met your match you've found your teacher."  Pema Chondron

Growth

"This place of feeling squeezed is a very important point in our lives where we can really learn something.  The point where we are not able to take it or leave it, when we are caught between a rock and a hard place, caught with both the upliftedness of our ideas and the rawness of what's happening in front of our eyes - that is indeed a very fruitful place.
   When we feel squeezed, there's there's a tendency for the mind to become small.   We feel like a victim, like a pathetic, hopeless case.   At that moment of hassle or bewilderment or embarrassment, our minds could become bigger.
    Instead of taking what's occurred as a statement of personal weakness or someone else's power, instead of feeling stupid or that someone else is unkind, we could drop all the complaints.   We could  be there feeling off guard not knowing what to do, just hanging out there with the raw and tender energy of the moment.   This is the place where we begin to learn. 
    We're so used to running from discomfort, and we're so predictable.   If we don't like it, we strike out at someone or beat up on ourselves.   We want to have security and certainty of some kind when we are actually have no ground to stand on at all. 
    The next time there's no ground to stand on, don't consider it an obstacle.  Consider it a remarkable stroke of luck.   We have no ground to stand on and at the same time it could soften us and inspire us.   Finally, after all these years, we could finally grow up."   Pema  Chondron

Learning

"One always learns one's mystery, at the price of one's innocence."  Robertson Davies

Learning

"I hear and I forget.  I see and I remember.   I do and I understand."  Confucius