I wouldn’t coax the plant if I were you
Such watchful nurturing may do it harm.
Let the soil rest from so much digging
And wait until it’s dry before you water it.
The leaf’s inclined to find its own direction;
Give it a chance to seek the sunlight for itself.

Much growth is stunted by too much prodding,
Too eager tenderness.

The things we love we have to learn to leave alone.

Naomi long Madgett

There is a magazine called “What Is Enlightenment?” published quarterly. (It has since been renamed “EnlightenNext”). Like most, I spent many hours meditating on that question. Here’s the best response I have heard yet:

“Give up trying to figure out what “enlightenment” is.

It is enough simply to pay attention to Reality as it shows up, here and now.”

Love empties itself

Paradox

Question of the day:
How does one learn to hold the contradictions?

Jesus is giving us a win-win scenario, but what we always do with the gospel is make it into a win-lose. That’s the only way the dualistic mind can think. You’re either in or you’re out.

That’s why the world does not love us, because we don’t know how to include, how to forgive, how to pour mercy and compassion and patience upon events as God—thank God—does with us.

God’s grace plays the middle, expands the middle, redeems the middle, and if that’s not true, what hope is there? What hope is there if we don’t learn how to hold the contradictions?

from Holding the Tension: The Power of Paradox

From: Center for Action and Contemplation

Paradox

Question of the day:
What is it to fall into the mystery of God?

The human and the divine co-existing at the same time is real religion. This creates honest people. People who don’t waste time proving they’re right, superior, or saved.

They spend time on a journey falling deeper into the mystery of God where they feel safe enough, secure enough, and loved enough to admit such things.

That is how one gets into the mystery of freedom, and why this notion of freedom is so scary.

from Great Themes of Paul

Current mantra:
Lose my life, find my life

Richard Rohr

no within
no without

sun, moon, stars notwithstanding

only is

ron

“…focus on the journey,

not the destination.

Joy is found not in finishing an activity

but in doing it.”

– Greg Anderson

May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened,
so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations,
where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!

Einstein

“Time is a created thing.
To say ‘I don’t have time,’
is like saying,
‘I don’t want to.’”

– Lao-Tzu

If people are good only because they fear punishment,
and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Einstein

War can only be understood and put an end to if you and all those who are concerned very deeply with the survival of man, feel that you are utterly responsible for killing others.

What will make you change?

J. Krishnamurti..

Meditate on this one for a while….

“I gave way to delight, as mystics have for centuries when they peeked through the curtains and discovered that this world, so manifestly real, was actually a tiny stage set constructed by the mind. We discover abruptly that everything we accept as reality is just social fabrications”

Timothy Leary, 1966…

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

– Lao Tzu

“It matters not Who you love, Where you love, Why you love, When you love, Or how you love, It matters only that you love.”

– John Lennon

To comprehend and to understand God
above all similitudes,
as He is in Himself,
is to be God with God,
without intermediary,
and without any otherness
that can become a hindrance
or an intermediary.

Whosoever wishes to understand this must have died to himself, and must live in God, and must turn his gaze to the eternal light in the ground of his spirit, where the Hidden Truth reveals Itself without means.

Ruysbroek.

Do you recognize the timeless
One who is aware of all this?
If so please tell me

Who and what you are

When you are deeper than
within.

Clouds pass by.
Feelings pass by.
Thoughts pass by.

What in you does not pass by?
Do you see that One?

Can you say its Name?