Love and Fear

"The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is."

"Our eyes are not just viewers.  They're also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time.  Fear is writing that script.  Fear is going to be a player in your life.  You get to decide how much.  So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.  What we really want seems impossibly  out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dare to ask the universe for it.  I'm saying that you can ask the universe for it.  Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you.  As far as I can tell it's just about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it comes to pass.  Why not take a chance on faith.   Not religion but faith.  Not hope but faith.   I don't believe in hope.  Hope is a beggar.  Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.  You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world.  You'll only ever have two choices.  Love and fear.  Choose love and don't ever let fear turn you against your playful heart."  Jim Carey 

Trans-formation

Living long enough we all find ourselves surrounded by an old way of thinking, being or loving that is going up in flames.    In that unexpected moment, we usually find ourselves full of fear, feeling trapped by an old way of life coming in on us.  But this is the passage of rebirth that we must move through if our lives are to unfold.  It is the momentary and painful crossing from what is old into what is new.  We must trust that the greater sea we are jumping into will douse whatever catches fire as we move through.   This is what faith is all about.   Mark Nepo

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

Flowing

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
...stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.

—Danna Faulds,
"Poems from the Heart of Yoga: Go In and In"

Essence

‎"You are the sky. Everything else - it's just the weather." Pema Chondron

Individual Sprituality

"I grew up and healed through a crisis of faith.   Rather than developing more certainty about God, my renewed faith has made me more comfortable with less certainty and more mystery.   God is ineffable and knowable only through the love we share on the journey."  Joan Boryshenko

Buddhist Mind

The Tibetan Buddhists speak of 3 kinds of mind:
1.  Dull Mind: no spiritual interest
2.  Average Mind: Content with Dogma and blind faith
3.  Inquiring Mind: curious and filled with doubt

Ego

"Periodically coming to grips with our faithlessness, and the strength of our ego, is part of the journey."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Celtic Spirituality

"Celtic Spirituality and the ancient Irish faith never forced anyone.  Never drove people through the tracks of programs with the intention of reaching the cold destination of perfection.   It never tried to unriddle the mind of it's gracious contradictions.   And it never tried to make the world safe or certain for people.   It constantly called people back to the source of their own originality."     John O' Donahue

Promises and Commitments

"It is uncomfortable when someone perceives us as breaking faith with past promises.   Yet, if we live fully, it is inevitable that this will sometimes happen, because change in inevitable, and commitments, if they are to remain vital, must be remade and renewed.   Often we protect ourselves from the knowledge of broken promises by pretending nothing has changed."  Oriah

Trust

"The people in my life who are the most trustworthy - those who tell the truth, even when the truth is painful - are not always those who keep their agreements with me.   Those who can be faithless - who can bear the responsibility of breaking an agreement with someone when the alternative is to betray themselves - are trustworthy.'   Oriah

Risk

"Why not go out on a limb?  That's where all the fruit is."  Carl Rogers

Faith

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of
the improbable." H. L. Mencken

Death and Rebirth

"Everything is dying and being reborn as something else, over and over, everyday, everywhere, in all kingdoms, species, elements and forms.  Nothing is wasted, everything has its purpose, all things are connected and are therefore eternal.   When we understand this, we can let go of our crippling compulsion to hang on tight to who we think we are and to what we think we need in order to survive.   We can enjoy what is given with gusto, grieve what is lost with passion, and dwell with humor and faith in the vast, infinite mystery."  Elizabeth Lesser

Fear and Death and Faith

"When you're secure in the soul, what's to fear?  Faith and love are stronger than any changes, stronger than aging, and, I am very sure, stronger than death."  Ram Dass

Falling Awake

"I pray that each one of us stays awake as we fall.  I pray that we choose to go into the abyss willingly and that our fall is cushioned by faith; faith that at the bottom we will be caught and taught and turned toward the light.   I pray that we don't waste precious energy feeling ashamed of our mistakes, or embarrassed by our flaws.   After years of teaching, I know only a few things for sure.   One is this;  We are chunks of dense matter that need to be cracked open.   Our errors and failings are chinks in the heart's armor through which our true colors can shine."   Elizabeth Lesser

Relgion and Compassion

"There is, I think, a great deal of religious illiteracy around.  People seem to equate religious faith with believing things.  We call religious people "believers" as though that were the main thing that they do.  And very often secondary goals get pushed into the first place in place of compassion, the Golden Rule, because the Golden Rule is difficult.  A lot of religious people prefer to be right rather than compassionate."  Karen Armstrong

Geese

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.  Wendell Berry