I am me In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me Everything that comes out of me is authentically me Because I alone chose it – I own everything about me My body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, Whether they be to others or to myself – I own my fantasies, My dreams, my hopes, my fears – I own all my triumphs and Successes, all my failures and mistakes Because I own all of Me, I can become intimately acquainted with me – by so doing I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts – I know There are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other Aspects that I do not know – but as long as I am Friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously And hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles And for ways to find out more about me – However I Look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically Me – If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought And felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is Unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that Which I discarded – I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be Productive to make sense and order out of the world of People and things outside of me – I own me, and therefore I can engineer me – I am me and I AM OKAY Virginia Satir
“You are never alone. You are eternally onnected with everyone.” ― Amit Ray
"What I want is to open up. I want to know what’s inside me. I want everybody to open up. I’m like an imbecile with a can-opener in his hand, wondering where to begin – to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I’m sure of it. I know it because I feel so marvelous myself most of the time. And when I feel that way everybody seems marvelous… everybody and everything… even pebbles and pieces of cardboard, a match stick lying in the gutter… anything… a goat’s beard, if you like. That’s what I want to write about… and then we’re all going to see clearly, see what a staggering, wonderful, beautiful world it is." -Henry Miller
“All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems... But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me... You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” ― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living
“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun--which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes.” ― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
The Invitation Oriah Mountain Dreamer It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon Yes, It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. ........................................
Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves — slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. ~Thich Nat Hahn
Crazy Horse “Treat the earth well, it was not given to you by your parents; it was loaned to you by your children.”
act together and come in commonality and understanding with the organisms that sustain us today, not only will we destroy those organisms, but we will destroy ourselves. Paul Stammets
“The person who desires to leave things better than he found them, who does more than his share, who is not attached to rewards, who is always seeking to benefit others, who knows he is cared for and rewarded by the Universe for his every effort, is able to act selflessly, without expectation of a reward or a return, without thought of advantage, and of him it is said, “He is better than the best,” and, of course, he is greatly rewarded.” ― Wu Wei, I Ching Wisdom:
“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.” ― Alan W. Watts
“Man is a little world--a microcosm inside the great universe. Like a fetus, he is suspended, by all his three spirits, in the matrix of the macrocosmos; and while his terrestrial body is in constant sympathy with its parent earth, his astral soul lives in unison with the sidereal anima mundi. He is in it, as it is in him, for the world-pervading element fills all space, and is space itself, only shoreless and infinite. As to his third spirit, the divine, what is it but an infinitesimal ray, one of the countless radiations proceeding directly from the Highest Cause--the Spiritual Light of the World? This is the trinity of organic and inorganic nature--the spiritual and the physical, which are three in one, and of which Proclus says that 'The first monad is the Eternal God; the second, eternity; the third, the paradigm, or pattern of the universe;' the three constituting the Intelligible Triad.” ― Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled
We need to have a paradigm shift in our consciousness. If we don't get our
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky is by no means a waste of time. -J. Lubbuck . Paul Stamets
Come, come, whoever you are. Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times Come, yet again, come, come.
Hold on to what is good, Even if it's a handful of earth. Hold on to what you believe, Even if it's a tree that stands by itself. Hold on to what you must do, Even if it's a long way from here. Hold on to your life, Even if it's easier to let go. Hold on to my hand, Even if someday I'll be gone away from you. Pueblo Prayer
“The freer I get, the higher I go. The higher I go, the more I see. The more I see, the less I know. The less I know, the more I’m free.” ― Ram Dass, Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita
I died from minerality and became vegetable; And From vegetativeness I died and became animal. I died from animality and became man. Then why fear disappearance through death? Next time I shall die Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels; After that, soaring higher than angels - What you cannot imagine, I shall be that.
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ― Albert Einstein “All the "not readies," all the "I need time," are understandable, but only for a short while. The truth is that there is never a "completely ready," there is never a really "right time." As with any descent to the unconscious, there comes a time when one simply hopes for the best, pinches one's nose, and jumps into the abyss. If this were not so, we would not have needed to create the words heroine, hero, or courage.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Song Lyrics to the song "Warrior", Xavier Rud He was a warrior in every way And he was always listening A dedication to peoples displaced And he was always listening If a little birdy flew into his space He was always listening And with the spirit of the ancient ways He was always receiving
He said come with me people Stand up with me people As one and as equals Let's honour all people Come with me people Stand up with me people As one and as equals Let's honour all people All people Honour all people Honour all people Honour all people
She was a goddess in every way And she was always listening Dedication to people displaced And she was always listening And if a lion moved through her space She was always listening And with the spirit of the ancient ways She was always receiving
She said come with me people Stand up with me people As one and as equals Let's honour all people Come with me people Stand up with me people As one and as equals Let's honour all people Come with me people Stand up with me people As one and as equals Let's honour all people Come with me people Stand up with me people As one and as equals Let's honour all people All people Said honour all people Said honour all people Said honour all people
And she could take him by the hand And together they could change the world And abolish greed from every man And spread their medicine throughout the world And every sun would rise and fall And restore complete balance on the earth A brand new change for one and all Do you feel what I'm sayin? Do you feel what I'm sayin?
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” ― Mary Oliver
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. - Chief Seattle, Duwamish (1780-1866)
“When flowing water...meets with obstacles on its path, a blockage in its journey, it pauses. It increases in volume and strength, filling up in front of the obstacle and eventually spilling past it... Do not turn and run, for there is nowhere worthwhile for you to go. Do not attempt to push ahead into the danger... emulate the example of the water: Pause and build up your strength until the obstacle no longer represents a blockage.” ― Thomas Cleary, I Ching
“make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.” ― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
“Om is not just a sound or vibration. It is not just a symbol. It is the entire cosmos, whatever we can see, touch, hear and feel. Moreover, it is all that is within our perception and all that is beyond our perception. It is the core of our very existence. If you think of Om only as a sound, a technique or a symbol of the Divine, you will miss it altogether. Om is the mysterious cosmic energy that is the substratum of all the things and all the beings of the entire universe. It is an eternal song of the Divine. It is continuously resounding in silence on the background of everything that exists.” ― Amit Ray, Om Chanting and Meditation
“There are two kinds of beggars: poor beggars and rich beggars, but they are all beggars. Even your kings and your queens are beggars. Only those people, very few people who have stood alone in their being, in their clarity, in their light, who have found their own light, who have found their own flowering, who have found their own space they can call their home, their eternal home—those few people are the emperors. This whole universe is their empire. They don’t need to conquer it; it is already conquered. By knowing yourself you have conquered it.” ― Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships
“As animals, we walk the earth. As bearers of divine essence, we are among the stars. As human beings, we are caught in the middle, seeking to reconcile the paradox of how to make our way upon earth while striving for something more permanent and more profound.”
“Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.” ― Walt Whitman “We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.” ― Terence McKenna
ON VEDANTA from Aziza's Notes taken with Amaji 2014 in Barcelona. www.puravidya.org Relax and let go. Nothing is blocking you from your higher self. Its as near as the next thought. Be compassionate and kind to yourself. Forgive yourself. Only one thing keeps the ego alive. Fear, Fear is the food for ego. Fear of the unknown, because it doesnt know anything that will happen, its quite dumb. Life is full of unknowns, trust that you will be fine... whatever. You can choose fear or trust. Choose. If you cant treat yourself with respect and kindness, how an you give that to others, The Bhagavad Gita says, youre your own best friend and worst enemy. You do to the world what you do to your soul Do not compromise what is right for security and pleasure. This violates dharma. Dharma is as natural as breathing. Dharma is intuitive sense, Vedanta teaches how to think properly and move with the rhythm of nature. For a post conventional spiritual society, recognise truth where there is no dharma, no right no wrong, life decides the journey, move with the cosmic rhythm. Dont live from the ego, the little "I" who chooses always between "right" and "wrong"... Its not a process of becoming, its about un/becoming. a spiritual process of dropping who I am NOT, so i can be who I am. Life is about learning lessons, every day ask "what did I learn?" Let life teach you, Happiness is not situation or experienced based. If happiness is the nature of the soul, If you awaken to the nature of the soul you can know only happiness. Its a natural state of beingness. Doingness is the function of the body/mind. The souls function is to be. The paradigm shift is moving from doingness to beingness. If i can choose, to be at peace, to be loving, to be a giver, but guilt, anger depression, sadness are not choices, they are judgement based. Which is based on the process of mind and not the nature of the soul. What you want to be is what you really are.. its so self evident. You cant miss the fact that each of us in a reflection of one infinite being. Mind creates illusion, In makng a changeover from mind to soul... how far is it? Its one thought away. How many lifetimes of anger, hurt and guilt do i carry? it may go back many births, Or love goes back many births. Habits are formed over multiple lives ... All thats come to us now is because each of us is ready to go home. TO my godhood. I m ready and ill do all it will take, or if its just a passing fancy , and vedanta is a mental interest, becuase its mentally challenging... its up the the transformer, if one is ready to transition. Am I ready for a melt down? Am I ready to flow with the river, to give up all attactchments and move on? Whats happening outside us is reflecting whats happening inside us. Its in the light that the world shines. Its in my light that the world is reflected. What is the present moment? One minute, one second, one millisecond? Collapsed that millisecond into fractions? So where is the present? There is no present. There is only presence. My presence creates past and future and present is just a game of time and space. Empower the infinite being in me. Disempower the conditional ego. Karma and anger eat up happiness, they are greedy. Says the bhagavad GIta. Enjoy the process, love the people, share life, no expectation - be a loving sharing being, when you start to share you see what you can give, and you manifest your own truth. Al that is expected is.... trust in yourself.
Water is the mother of tea, a teapot its father, and fire the teacher. ~Chinese Proverb
The time will soon be here when my grandchild will long for the cry of a loon, the flash of a salmon, the whisper of spruce needles, or the screech of an eagle. But he will not make friends with any of these creatures and when his heart aches with longing, he will curse me. Have I done all to keep the air fresh? Have I cared enough about the water? Have I left the eagle to soar in freedom? Have I done everything I could to earn my grandchild's fondness? - Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh (1899 - 1981
Compare these 2 contradictory quotes from "Into the wild" “ below... to travel or to e a homemaker? Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” vs I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?" ... ― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. Neitzche
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ― Albert Einstein
“If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God. But if you shut up your soul in your body, and abase yourself, and say “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?” ― Hermes Trismegistus,
“The Cosmic Director has written His own plays, and assembled the tremendous casts for the pageant of the centuries. From the dark booth of eternity, He pours His creative beam through the films of successive ages, and the pictures are thrown on the screen of space. Just as the motion-picture images appear to be real, but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusive seeming. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture, temporarily true to five sense perceptions as the scenes are cast on the screen of man’s consciousness by the infinite creative beam.” ― Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Einstein —"Old Man's Advice to Youth: ' LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64
“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype “He who has let go of hatred who treats all beings with kindness and compassion, who is always serene, unmoved by pain or pleasure,
free of the "I" and "mine," self-controlled, firm and patient, his whole mind focused on me --- that is the man I love best.” ― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ― Albert Einstein
“But how can we be free to look and learn when our minds from the moment we are born to the moment we die are shaped by a particular culture in the narrow pattern of the ‘me’? For centuries we have been conditioned by nationality, caste, class, tradition, religion, language, education, literature, art, custom, convention, propaganda of all kinds, economic pressure, the food we eat, the climate we live in, our family, our friends, our experiences – every influence you can think of – and therefore our responses to every problem are conditioned.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. Einstein
Love vs Hate
Hate is as injurous to the hater, as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer it eats away at its vital unity. Hate is too great a burden to bear. With every ounce of our energy we must continue to rid our nation of the incubus of racial injustice. But we need not in the process relinquish our priveledge and obligation to LOVE. Martin Luther King
I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy. Black Elk, Oglala Lakota (Sioux) (1863-1950)
Book Recommendations
Clarissa Pinkett Estes Women who run with wolves I am That, Sri Nisargadatta Mahara - The most engaging and complete book on The Cosmic Serpent, Jeremy Narby Shelter No Boundary, Ken Wilbur The Autbiography of a Yogi, Paramakansa Yogananda All writings by Thich Nhat Hanh Spiritual Nutrition, Gabriel Cousens All books of OSHO Eckhart Tolle J Krishnamurti The Holographic Universe, Michel Talbot Ram Dass Be Here Now Ashtanga Yoga Practice and Philosophy, Gregor Maehle Zen Mind Beginners Mind, Shunryu Suzuki Awakening to the Dream, Leo Hartong Yoni Shakti, A womans guide to power and freedom through yoga and Tanta / Uma by Dinsmore Tuli The Algebra of Infinite Justice Arundhati Roy Starhawk, The Spiral Dance The Age of Kali, William Dalrymple Mycelium Running, Paul Stammets Google for a bit of info about each book... One day I'll find time to write my own reviews.