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

and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Warsan Shire

Imagine A Woman

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past's influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.
- Patricia Lynn Reilly

On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.

 

 

Do you believe there is someplace
That will make the soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.
Be strong then, and enter into your own body.
There you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else.
Kabir says this: Just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things
And stand firm in that which you are.

- Kabir

This body is not me
I am not limited by this body.
I am life without boundaries
I have never been born,
And I have never died.


Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
Manifestations from my wondrous mind.
Since before time, I have been free.


Birth and death are only doors through which we pass
Sacred thresholds on our journey
Birth and death are a game of hide and seek.


So laugh with me,
Hold my hand,
Let us say goodbye
Say goodbye to meet again soon.
We meet today
We will meet again tomorrow
We meet at the source every moment.
We meet each other in all forms of life.

Art of Living

"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both."     Zen Buddhist text

The Clay Bowl

THE CLAY BOWL'S DESTINY

The

Ship you are riding on,

Look where it is

Heading:

Your body's port is the graveyard.

Realizing the destiny of each clay bowl

Tossed into the sky

With no one to

Catch it

I finally 

Accepted the Beloved's kind offer

To enroll

In 

His sublime,

Ball-busting course

of

Spirit

Love.

Hafiz

Waking Up

"The rewards of "birthing" are "birthing" itself -knowing that through divine grace you are becoming more and more of an instrument of divine love and justice, feeling the divine working more and more intimately within you, seeing and knowing the Divine inspiring more and more of your wants, growing wilder and calmer, more and more heartbroken and blissful, watching the Divine manifest more and more richly and playfully in your mind and heart and body and soul and relationships and surroundings.  No external glory or fame or success could ever approximate the ecstacy that such awareness will bring you or awaken in you such depths of gratitude; no external failure can ever take its joy from you."  Andrew Harvey

I am Not My Body

This body is not me.

I am not limited by this body.

I am life without boundaries.

I have never been born,

and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars, manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.

Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey.

Birth and death are a game of hide- and seek.

So laugh with me,

hold my hand,

let us say good-bye,

say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today.

We will meet again tomorrow.

We will meet at the source every moment.

We meet each other in all forms of life.

~By Thich Nhat Hanh

"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

Somatic Perception

"Somatic perception is the capacity each one of us has for knowing what is best for our own body.  When we awaken somatic perception we take the ownership of healing away from an expert and give it back to our own body.  We let our own wisdom tell us what and how much to eat, how to exercise, when to rest, how to heal.  Healing begins when we realize and rediscover our instinctual somatic perception.   this can happen only when we stop trying to control or fix or transcend the body and instead let the animal of the body lead us into healing."  Marion Woodman

Human Body

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

Consciousness

"Initially, matter does not want to become conscious, nor does spirit want to be embodied.  Only gradually do body and psyche push toward consciousness, and only when they are sufficiently grounded in love, can conscious matter be penetrated be the light of the spirit.  The Divine Child, the new consciousness, is born of that union."  Marion Woodman

Feminine Body

"Until the feminine is firmly connected to the musculature of the body, it lacks the visceral affirmation that says,"This is of value to me.  This is who I am." Marion Woodman

Change

"What would it be like to regard change-whether it be a change of body or a change of heart - as merely proof of being alive?"   Elizabeth Lesser

Acceptance

"Learn the Alchemy
true human beings know
The moment you accept
what troubles you've been given,
the door will open.

Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade.
Joke with torment brought by the Friend.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off. That undressing,
and the beautiful naked body underneath,
is the sweetness that comes after grief."


Rumi

Holiness

"See no one as a body.   Greet him as the Son of God he is, acknowledge that he is one with you in holiness."  CIM