“But the beauty is in the walking -- we are betrayed by destinations.”

― Gwyn Thomas

Freedom

From this hour, Freeedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating

Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.

-Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

Soulmate

Rather than being about excitement and lust, a soul mate relationship is characterized by such things as a shared life path, a sense of comfort and ease, and a genuine liking of each other.
~Katherine Woodward Thomas

Truth

Arthur James, first Earl of Balfour:

Our highest truths are but half-truths;
Think not to settle down forever in any truth.
Make use of it as a tent in which to pass a summer's night,
But build no house of it, or it will be your tomb.
When you first have an inkling of its insufficiency
And begin to descry a dim counter-truth looming up beyond,
Then weep not, but give thanks:
It is the Lord's voice whispering,
"Take up thy bed and walk."

New Beginnings

"With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts." - Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

by Naomi Shihab Nye from “Words Under the Words”

Don't Be Satisfied

"Don't be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone for others.
Unfold your own myth,
Without complicated explanation...
Stark walking...
Your legs will get heavy and tired.
Then comes the moment
Of feeling the wings you've grown,
Lifting."

Rumi

Greatness

"When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe. there can be no doubt.  But that is not what great ships are built for."  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The Warrior's Way

"A self-sacrificing way,
but also a warrior's way, and not
for brittle people, easily broken, glass bottle people.
The soul's tested here by sheer terror,
as a sieve sifts and separates
genuine from fake.
And this road is full of footprints!
Companions have come before.
They are your ladder
Use them!
Without them you won't have the spirit-quickness
you need.  Even a dumb donkey
crossing a desert
becomes nimble-footed
with others of its kind.
Stay with the caravan.  By yourself,
you'll get a hundred times more tired,
and fall behind."  

Rumi

"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

Waking Up

"The coming to consciousness is not a discovery of something new; it is a long and painful process to that which has always been."  Helen Luke

Love

"Love is the fruit of spiritual labor; it is not a technique you try or a dogma you adopt.  Love is the secret you unmask yourself to find; the destination where all roads of the journey lead.  But it does no one any good to rush the process, nor enforce loving behavior.  You cannot legislate forgiveness; you cannot make hate illegal.  Just as you cannot pull a shoot out of the ground and demand that it flower then and there, love cannot be forced.  Spiritual work prepares the ground.  Love will blossom when our egos and our wounds and our fears have been worked with, tilled into the soil of our understanding."  Elizabeth Lesser

Leadership

"I learned that leadership was not about the warrior journey only, but about showing vulnerability as well.  Only when I stepped forward and showed my vulnerability, I cannot tell you how many women came and told me their own story and broke their silence.  It's ok to show vulnerability because we are not perfect and actually our imperfection is the beautiful thing about us; our struggle; it's not necessarily an easy dance.  It's a wobbly dance sometimes

It's like a black stone (she points to her chest) that dissolved from me and became a crystal.  That's the physical feeling that I literally feel.  I can tell you all of this and not cry.  It is out of my system.  My demon is out of me, but it took me years.  It was quite a painful journey and it took quite another kind of courage.  The courage to speak our inner truth, the courage to break our inner silence, the courage to show our vulnerability, the courage to say something as simple as 'I'm not happy' .  Courage is not planned.  Sometimes you have to jump off the cliff and just do it."  Zalnab Salbi

Breaking the Silence

"I couldn't have the courage to say that I had been raped.  I'm the feminist, right?  I'm the strong woman, talking about other rapes but I was too scare and ashamed and embarrassed to say that I had been one too.  And that inner journey was so painful.  It is about another aspect of breaking the silence.  It is about breaking our own silence and I'm convinced each woman has her story.   I know you have grown up in the privileges of America but I am convinced that each woman has to do it." Zalnab Salbi

Path of the Heart

"It takes an odd combination of backbone and abandon to walk the path of the heart."  Elizabeth Lesser

Happiness

"We can find stable happiness; we can learn to have long and pleasurable relationships; we can be at peace.  If we are willing to become warriors - not against others, but against our own dishonesty and defensiveness - then we can indeed grow and change and journey into freedom.   It's not enough to aim for pain relief.  We can aim for something much more dependable and luminous than that.   If we aspire to discover the true self, the know what we love and what we want, to be honest, and to take full responsibility for our strengths and our weaknesses, then we will be on our way."   Elizabeth Lesser

Shadow Work

"Deep psychological work brings us into the shadowy world of the unconscious, where quick fixes and straight paths do not exist, but we have to go into the hidden places in the psyche before coming into the light by making the darkness conscious."  Elizabeth Lesser

Spiritual Adventure

"I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality.   I didn't want to become anything other than my most vibrant, peaceful and grateful self.   I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world - a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me to overcome resistance, falseness and mistrust."  Elizabeth Lesser

Women's Search for Self

"For many women, the shift from being the bountiful mother to being a person in search of her essence is a difficult period of change.   Naturally, people admire the selflessness of the caring mother, but what's to admire in the search from a self?   This effort will look narcissistic and far from virtuous.  When you make the important move to find yourself, you will probably have to go it alone.   You may have to accept that you will be misread and underappreciated.   Certainly your family will have to adjust."  Thomas Moore