Commenncement

We are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on Earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, we are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades. 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 this Earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.

Connections

"When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other."
Margaret Wheatley

Little saves big

In order for things iin this world to change, people might have to listen to little things, learn to hear again the language of nature and learn to trust the little voice that speaks from within. Listen this way and there’s no need to believe in some great salvation if the divine can be found in nearby aspects of the incarnate world. The notion that little saves big; that a small change can have a huge effect keeps being lost and rediscovered as the waves of time ebb and flow.
(Michael Meade)

Viewing freedoom

"Viewing freedom as intrinsic to our being, we discover that our lives are what we make of them. All options are open, our choices unlimited. When we have knowledge space grants us unbounded opportunity,
and time presents us with infinite possibilities for change."
- Tarthang Tulku

The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and her has nothing left to hold on to: no illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn't think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day's work.
:ao Tse (transs. Stephen Miitchell)

Nervous system

"We don't understand the operations of our minds and hence don't operate them very well. We need to make the nervous system our ally,
instead of our enemy."
Charles Tart

Provide a Context

"It is all a question of story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not yet learned the new story. Our traditional story of the Universe sustained us for a long period of time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purpose and energized action. It consecrated suffering and integrated knowledge. We awoke in the morning and knew where we were. We could answer the questions of our children. We could identify crime, punish transgressors. Everything was taken care of because the story was there. It did not necessarily make people good, nor did it take away the pains and stupidities of life or make for unfailing warmth in human associations. It did provide a context in which life could function in a meaningful manner."
-Thomas Berry

.... then shall you enter ...

"When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and female into a single one, then shall you enter the Kingdom."
Jesus in the Gospel of St. Thomas

A Man of Knowledge

"A man of knowledge chooses a path with a heart and follows it and then he looks and rejoices and laughs and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon. He knows that he as well as everybody else is not going anywhere. He knows because he "sees"...a man of knowledge endeavors and sweats and puffs and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control." --Don Juan

Shine

"However young, the seeker who sets out upon the way shines bright over the world. But day and night the person who is awake shines in the radiance of the spirit. Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work, with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine."
The Buddha

Transcendence

We humans' are unique in relationship to all other life forms on the planet with our ability control fire, for better or worse. This ability is transcendent. To transcend ourselves distinguishes us from the animal kingdom. Each time we ignite a fire; that is an act of transcendence. Fire (heat and light) is and always will be the familiar mystery.

Love is a temporary madness ...

Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides we have to make a decision. We have to work out whether our roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that we should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being 'in love,' which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Love is the roots that grow towards each other underground, slowly and determined. And when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, we find we are no longer two, but one. One root, One tree, One Love.
> - By Louis de Bernieres, from Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Mining the Human

"The spiritual impact that religious, administrative and corporate colonization has upon indigenous people is like a technological form of mining the energy of the planet. We are forms of that energy. That's the 'being' part of us. The human form is made up of metals, minerals and liquids of earth. All things of the earth have 'being.' We know they can take the bone, flesh and blood out of the earth that is uranium and put it through a mining-refining process and convert its being into a form of energy, and we know they can do it with fossil fuel. And we know that when they do these things it leaves behind poisons and toxins. When the industrial ruling class mine the 'being' part of human through programming the human to believe their obedience. Human beings enter this reality with all this distortion, based upon there being something wrong with them, and fear comes real quickly. Mine the being part of humans, fear is the toxin left behind from that mining. We've been picked apart, we end up as human beings having this tendency to feel powerless. It's everywhere .…this powerlessness feeling is prevalent on this planet. "
John Trudell, Santee Sioux