Stillness to Listen

"May we find a little stillness- a place for rest & daydreaming, a time for letting our deepest longing guide us back to our soul desires in those places where we may have wandered a little from who we are in the busyness of life. Of course there are risks in living close to those desires- risk of faillure, risk of fulfillment, risk of living with the fullness & messiness & heart-opening beauty of being human every day. May we find the courage to live a soul-directed life."

Intimacy

"If, having met myself in the empty moments, I am willing and able to bring all of who I am to another; receiving all of who they are, then we are truly together."  Oriah

Intimacy

"When two who have intimacy with themselves are fully with each other - whether for a lifetime or for a moment - the world is held tenderly and fed by the image they create simply by being together.   They can be friends, lovers or life partners, or simply two strangers who's lives intersect for a moment."  Oriah

Sacred Marriage

This is the sacred marriage; the coming together of two who have each met themselves on the road."   Oriah

Receiving

"I have come to accept that no matter how much I am able to be with myself, no matter how much I like my own company, I still long to sit close to and at times merge with another in deep intimacy.   The completeness of self is found when we can be alone and when we can bring all of who we are to another, receiving and being received fully."  Oriah

Let Love In

"At the end of the day, the failure I find the hardest to live with is the one that I made because I lacked the courage to let love take me where it will.   It requires that I surrender to that which is larger than myself, that I be willing to move ahead where I am afraid of making mistakes.   In this place I sit and wait for love to find me, to come and take me home to the place where I - mistakes included- will be welcomed."

Tell me a Story

"Tell me a story of failure in your life, a time when you made a mistake.   Tell me with compassion for the child or man or woman you were.   Tell it with ruthless honesty and gentle acceptance.   We do not avoid shame be hiding mistakes.   The shame just becomes buried within us."   Oriah

Failure

When we cannot live with failure, we limit the intimacy in our lives.   People do not tell stories of failure to those who have no room in their hearts only for perfection."  Oriah

Love and Beauty

"I want to learn how to be here fully, in this body in this world.  And I want to live in a world infused with the power of the erotic.   When we live erotically, the meaning enfolded in our very cells is unfolded as we touch and are touched.   This is beauty."  Oriah

Agreements/Commitments

"We must weigh the cost to our soul if we keep our agreement- the cost to that which is essential to who we are - against the cost to others if the agreement is broken."  Oriah

Trustworthy

"Being trustworthy, not betraying ourselves, is, in part, about recognizing moments or situations when we are likely to be untrustworthy and seek the counsel of people who love us and are willing and able to be honest with us.   The hard part, the place we hope wisdom will find us, in in deciding where and when we must break a promise to be true to ourselves."  Oriah

Betrayal

"We have all been the betrayer and the betrayed.   If we cannot acknowledge this, we find ourselves harsh and unforgiving, unable to grieve for the time we have betrayed ourselves."   Oriah

Change and Betrayal

"We  betray ourselves when we deny the change that terrifies us, when we maintain the external illusion that all remains the same."  Oriah

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

Play

"I play because it helps me lighten up without numbing out, stops me from taking myself too seriously, and reminds me that there is joy in what I do well AND in what I do poorly.   Those I choose to be with intimately are those who can appreciate the joy of both."  Oriah

Ecstatic Living

"I want it all.   I want the small daily joys.   I want to celebrate the birthdays, the graduations, and the days lived well, AND I want to experience the ecstasy, the vision of wholeness that dissolves my boundaries and lets me taste the God that lives within and around me.  I am a blessed woman, for I have lived both.   And I have learned that the ecstasy of mango juice on my tongue and union with Spirit are not as different as I once thought."  Oriah

Gratitude

"The world offers itself to me in a thousand ways, and I ache with an awareness of how infrequently I am able to receive more than a small fraction of what is offered, of how often I reject what is because I feel it is not good enough."   Oriah

Spirit and Matter

"The split between Spirit and matter is in our thinking, our way of speaking of it.   I touch God when I caress the face of a lover, hold the hand of the Beloved when my son's hand is in mine, breathe in Spirit when I catch the scent of the sun on the breeze."  Oriah

Courage

"The courage to go deeper is found by letting our desire grow larger than your fear; that strength is found in your longing to live fully, your willingness to settle for nothing less."   Oriah