WOPILA

For the Lakota people, giving thanks is translated into "Wopila." Wopila means giving thanks to Creator and all aspects of life. The Lakota people have Wopila ceremony every new moon. At this time they pray and thank Creator for all their life. The families or an individual can feed people in the ceremony and offer spirit food to the ancestors. Sometimes people have a "give away" after the ceremony. They say that Wopila makes a person truly a human being and it brings you closer to Wakan Tanka. When you are pure in your heart, it is possible to pray on the new moon time and give thanks, no matter where you are. Thank you, Richard Moves Camp

Jung x10

Reverence for life

"The ethics of reverence for life makes no distinction between high and low, more precious and less precious lives.  It has good reason for this omission... How can we know what importance other living organisms have in themselves and in terms of the universe?... To the truly ethical man, all life is sacred."

--Albert Schweitzer

Man's Capacity

"Man has the capacity to love, not just his own species, but life in all its shapes and forms.  This empathy with the interknit web 

 of life is the highest spiritual expression I know of."

-- Loren Eiseley

Talk to the animals

"One thing to remember is to talk to the animals.  If you do, they will talk back to you.  But if you don't talk to the animals, 

 they won't talk back to you, then you won't understand, and when you don't understand you will fear and when you fear and you will destroy the animals and if you destroy the animals, you will destroy yourself."

-- Chief Dan George

Talmud

"From the man comes the white sperm... bones, tendons, whites of eyes...  From the woman comes the red sperm... blood, flesh, iris of the eye...  And from God comes the shine of the face, the under-standing, insight, the seeing of the eyes, the going of the feet...."
~ Talmud

Age

"If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore the this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse." - Paul Hawken in his book "You are Brilliant and the Earth is Hiring."  

The Great Blending

For intervals, then, throughout our lives we savor a concurrence, the great blending of our chance selves with what sustains all chance. We ride the wave and are the wave. And with renewed belief inner and outer we find our talk turned to prayer, our prayer into truth: for an interval, early, we become at home in the world. - William Stafford

Who Am I?

"I am not I. 

I am this one 

walking beside me whom I do not see, 

whom at times I manage to visit, 

and whom at other times I forget; 

who remains calm and silent while I talk, 

and forgives, gently, when I hate, 

who walks where I am not, 

and who will remain standing when I die."

- Juan Ramon Jimenez 

translated by Robert Bly

A Real Hero

"The Bodhisattva is like the mightiest of warriors; but her enemies are not common foes of flesh and bone, but is with the inner delusions, the afflictions of self-cherishing and ego grasping, those most terrible of demons that catch living beings in the snares of confusion and cause them forever to wander in pain, frustration and sorrow. Her mission is to harm ignorance and delusion, never living beings. These he looks upon with kindness, patience, and empathy, cherishing them like a mother cherishes her only child. She is the real hero, calmly facing any hardship in order 

to bring peace, happiness and liberation to the world."

"The sober men of science are saying the universe sprang from nothing for no reason. This is the limit test for credulity! Science is saying 'give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest'. I'll take mine at the end, thank you. They have the big bang, I have the big surprise."

- Terrance McKenna

Never just me

1. "..So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me.  I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone else's opinion, credos and theories.  I vowed to apply my own inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet Earth.

2. ~ Buckminster Fuller

Contemplate this

"Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen."
Teilhard de Chardin

Maintaining peace

"The most important factor, in maintaining peace within oneself, in the face of any difficulty, is one's mental attitude. If it is distorted by such feelings an anger, attachment, or jealousy, then even the most comfortable environment will bring one no peace. On the other hand,

if one's attitude is generally calm and gentle, then even a hostile environment will have little effect on one's own inner peace. Since the basic source of peace and happiness Is one's own mental attitude, it is worthwhile adopting means to develop it in a positive way."

H.H. the XIVth Dalai Lama

Start where you are

"On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up,

as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, companions in awakening from fear."

the absence of God?

Hawking’s writes almost as much about God as about time and the universe, …or perhaps about the absence of God. The word God fills these pages. Hawking embarks on a quest to answer Einstein’s famous question about whether God had any choice in creating the universe. Hawking is attempting, as he explicitly states, to understand the mind of God. And this makes all the more unexpected the conclusion of the effort, at least so far: a universe with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, and nothing for a Creator to do.”

the self one invents

It has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within. And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents — the self one takes oneself as being, which is, however, and by definition, a provisional self — and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to blow the provisional self to bits. James Baldwin

Gundula Schatz

"Politics and spirituality are the two sides of the same coin.  Politics is the driving force visible to the outside; spirituality is the internal force driving the consciousness to open up to the world and conjoin it.  Politics bared of spiritual awareness always leads to violence and the abuse of power. Spirituality without political engagement resembles an escape from the world."

-- Gundula Schatz

The Great Blessing

The Great Blending

For intervals, then, throughout our lives
we savor a concurrence, the great blending
of our chance selves with what sustains
all chance. We ride the wave and are
the wave. And with renewed belief
inner and outer we find our talk
turned to prayer, our prayer into truth:
for an interval, early, we become at home in the world.

- William Stafford