Sex

"Sex, like money or meditation, is best used to realize and express your natural openness, rather than to build a false home of childish security."  David Deida

Broken Heart

“God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.”
— Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Kahn

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.

Warriorship

“Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle.

You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin.

You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone, and marrow to the world.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

Family

"Sometimes when i think of my parents, who have hurt me, I am lulled by a wintering sky to feel for them, to try on their view, but in my empathy an old pattern kicks in and I start to lose the truth of my hurt, as if there is only room for one set of feelings -theirs.

The struggle is a common one.  So often we feel for others and lose ourselves, or cut others off to preserve ourselves.  Like a radio that can only tune to one station at a time, it seems like only one side of things can be received, though all sides are broadcast.

But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides.  Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality.  Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us.  Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inablility to live up to their truth has hurt us.

This does not remove the emotional facts of our lives, nor does it ask us to remain in a hurtful situation.  Rather compassion asks that we open like mountains to the sky, like mountains that can withstand every kind of weather."  Mark Nepo

Opposition

"Withstanding the tension between opposites until we know it is "enough" releases us from the swing between one extreme and the other."   Helen Luke

Aspirations for Living

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony."   William Henry Channing, 1810 - 1884

Peaceful Warriors

"Peaceful warriors have the patience to wait until the mud settles and the water clears. They remain unmoving until the right time, so the right action arises by itself. They do not seek fulfillment, but wait with open arms to welcome all things."
-   Dan Millman

Life Questions

"Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions."  Earl Gray Stevens

"The work you have done has prepared you for the next part of your spiritual journey.  Through meditation, heartfulness work and care of the body, your mind is calmer, your heart is more open, and your body is less blocked.  You are simultaneously more grounded and more sensitive; more sure of who you are, yet less attached to being 'somebody'.   You are learning to die."  Inayat Khan

Grief

"Let your grief be as full of joy as it is of sorrow.  Let it be proof of how much you've loved, how deeply you've allowed life to live in you, how wide the river of your heart has become.  Instead of turning away from love so as not to invite loss, love fully, and learn to grieve."  Inayat Khan

Open Heart

To Open Toward the Heart

Today, like every day,
we are ruined and lonely.

...Don't retreat,
fleeing your emptiness
through the doorway of thinking.

Try making some music instead.

There are hundreds of ways
to kneel in prayer —hundreds of ways to open
toward the heart of the Friend's beauty.

~Maulana Rumi

Translated by David and Sabrineh Fideler

Change

"We cannot change the world by a new plan, project or idea.  We cannot even change other people by our convictions, stories, advice or proposals but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, lay aside their occupations and preoccupations and listen with attention to the voices speaking in their own center."  Henri Nouwen

Wholeness

"Whether conscious of it or not, we are all engaged in the search for the unknown other who might complete us and join us to the Whole. And similar to pollination, we complete the world when, opening ourselves against great odds, some strange unknown partner inadvertently seeds our essence elsewhere." Mark Nepo

Contentment

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

... ~Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grasspr

Loving Completely

UNFED

We feed
one another in rations,
Serve affection measured to
...
The minimum daily requirement,

The very acceptable least--
While
love bursts the walls

Of our larder,

Wondering, amazed,
Why we are afraid
To feast.

Carol Lynn Pearson

Open Heart

"A happy heart is one that is larger at all times than any one emotion.  An open heart feels everything and absorbs it into a bigger and wiser experience of reality."   Elizabeth Lesser

Sadness

"Sadness is not the opposite of happiness.  The opposite of happiness is a closed heart.  Happiness is a heart so open and so soft and expansive that it can hold all the emotions in a cradle of openness."  Elizabeth Lesser

Hunger and the Heart's Message

"If we risk the imaginary dangers of being hungry for a passionate life - if we allow ourselves to feel the emptiness long enough and deep enough to hear the heart's  messages - we end up loving the longing itself.  We become less apt to want to rush to fill our every desire.  We allow ourselves to feel tender and open and even lonely without having to do anything about it.   Hunger becomes a sign of being alive."  Elizabeth Lesser

Heartfulness

"Like waves on the shore, our hearts normally rush toward joy, then pull back, afraid of pain and loss.  Heartfulness is the willingness and ability not to pull back."  Elizabeth Lesser