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Quotes

“You reading this, be ready” – William Stafford

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Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

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Quotes

“THE ONE THING YOU MUST DO”

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“THE ONE THING YOU MUST DO”

There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.

It’s as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do. So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don’t do it, it’s as though a priceless Indian sword were used to slice rotten meat. It’s a golden bowl being used to cook turnips, when one filing from the bowl could buy a hundred suitable pots. It’s like a knife of the finest tempering nailed into a wall to hang things on.

You say, “But look, I’m using the dagger. It’s not lying idle.” Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds? For a penny an iron nail could be bought to serve for that. You say, “But I spend my energies on lofty enterprises. I study jurisprudence and philosophy and logic and astronomy and medicine and the rest.” But consider why you do those things. They are all branches of yourself.

Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give yourself to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don’t, you will be like the man who takes a precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. You’ll be wasting valuable keenness and forgetting your dignity and purpose.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems

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There are times when it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie and other times when you might as well kick the big dog. For what truly troubles us will not leave us alone; it dogs our steps and shades our door. In the black dog times everyone is in trouble and it’s better to go looking for the right trouble before the wrong trouble finds you unawares.

In the black dog times there’s more than enough trouble to go around. No matter where you turn in nature or in culture there’s necessary work to do. It isn’t simply that the garments of culture have worn thin, exposing everyone to the raw greed of materialists and the fanaticism of fundamentalists. It’s as if humanity has broken a secret bond with the world of Nature and become estranged from “inner nature” as well.

Michael Meade – the World Behind the World

 

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May we each find some trouble

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When in the right trouble we awaken to inner resources and draw upon what is second nature to us. When the common solutions fail to help, we learn that we are carried by patterns beyond our usual awareness, by portions of eternity buried within from the very beginning. Trouble turns our lives upside down, but also inside out; so that the inclinations of the soul can be seen and known.

Michael Meade – the World Behind the World

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Son, you are small but you contain worlds

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SON

You are small, but you contain worlds.

You are helpless, yet you shine with the power of life itself. You cannot contain your own power.

When we are together, there is nothing else. You are present, rooted.

You remind me of the miracle of being here.

You reach out. You are testing, exploring, carrying out brilliant experiments. You play in a world of desire and thwarted desire, pleasure and pain, sleep and wakefulness. You find your place in between. You take everything in.

You will know sorrow soon enough, perhaps even despair. Great suffering may befall you, yet also great potential for awakening. You may question everything you once believed to be true. Your path may become unclear. You may stumble in the darkness.

I may not be around to help, or give answers. That’s okay. You will find your own way, learn to trust your own stumbling. Or maybe your questions will fall into silence, and you will remember the wonder of these days, the ones we spent together before time mattered at all.

You are the illumination, little one, the hope and the possibility. All the darkness in this world seems so insignificant compared to the light and wonder in your big eyes.

I cannot tell if you are old or young. Perhaps the world has it all backwards. Perhaps you have lived a thousand years or more. Perhaps this is your final incarnation. Perhaps you have fathered me, so that I may find myself here, next to you, broken but whole, humbled, brought to my knees in gratitude. I do not know.

It does not matter. I will assume you are ancient, and worthy of the greatest love.

And you will remind me of the days when there was strength in being vulnerable, and joy was always near.

– Jeff Foster

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