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

Religion

"Religion is merely a community of people who gather together on a regular basis to reassure each other that it's ok to continue subscribing to absurdities. As for me it is far better to see the world the way it really exists, rather than persist in delusion, no matter how comforting or reassuring that may seem." Carl Sagan

Soulmate

A soulmate is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communicating and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace.
~Thomas Moore

Communication

...the deepest level of communication is not communication but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words and it is beyond speech and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

-Thomas Merton

How Many?

How many people who believe they never dream are sleepwalking in their marriage, in their job, in their church, blindly adhering to ideas they never question, with no heart in what they are doing?"  Marion Woodman

Perhaps

"Perhaps we wouldn't eat so much or smoke, or drink so much, if we were paying attention to ourselves.   Perhaps we wouldn't talk so much if we were paying attention to each other.   All of these oral activities are trying to meet a need, and perhaps the greatest need is to be seen and heard."  Christina Baldwin

Oneness

"Those who control the ear of the heart understand that if people truly discover each other, we will have a million circles and sit down and laugh and cry at our commonalities.   And then we will not be so easily led to fight wars.   We will not so unconsciously exploit each others lives in order to make our own more comfortable.   We will not be confused by the manipulation of half-truths and lies."  Christina Baldwin

Love

"When we live in a family, a community, a country where we know each other's true stories, we remember our capacity to lean in and love each other into wholeness."  Christina Baldwin

Yep......

"Caring for the soul in our relationships, we can let unplanned developments happen, allow people to change, tolerate our own idiosyncratic needs and cravings, and enjoy and appreciate a community of individuals who may think differently than we do, live oddly, and express themselves none too rationally.   For this is what relationship is about; the discovery of the multitude of ways soul is incarnated in this world." 
Thomas Moore

Soulful Relationships

"The soulful relationship asks to be honored for what it is, not for what we wish it could be.   It has little to do with our intentions, expectations and moral requirements.   It has the potential to lead us into the mysteries that expand our hearts and transform our thoughts, but it can't do that when our primary interest is in pursuing our cherished ideologies of love, family, marriage and community."   Thomas Moore

Parental Responsibility

"Parents at times avoid responsibility for their own lives by hiding behind their children, taking responsibility for them rather than for themselves.  Living our own lives is not only a good example, it creates community within the family, for community can only exist where people are free to be individuals."   Thomas Moore

Soul Work

"The aim of soul work is not adjustment to accepted norms or to any image of the statistically healthy individual.  Rather, the goal is a richly elaborate life, connected to society and nature, woven into the culture of family, nation and the globe.  The idea is not to be superficially adjusted, but to be profoundly connected in the heart to the ancestors and to the living brothers and sisters in all the many communities that claim our hearts."   Thomas Moore