Leadership

"A leader is a person who has an unusual degree of power to project on other people his or her shadow or his or her light. A leader is a person who has an unusual degree of power to create the conditions under which other people must live and move and have their being-conditions that can either be as illuminating as heaven or as shadowy as hell. A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside him or her self, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good."
--Parker Palmer

The MIrror of Simple Souls

“God has nowhere to put his goodness, if not in me�no place to put himself entire, if not in me. And by this means I am the exemplar of salvation, and what is more, I am the salvation itself of every creature, and the glory of God�”
Marguerite de Porete -- "The Mirror of Simple Souls

Grass grows, water flows

"Sitting quietly
doing nothing
spring comes
and the grass grows
by itself."
-- Zen poem

Man

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered: "Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money in order to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

Collision of immoral power

"Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites - polar opposites - so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. We've got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.
Martin Luther King

KINDNESS

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder"
- Aldous Huxley

Avoiding danger

"Security is mostly a superstition, it does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men (and women) as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all!"
Helen Keller

Purpose of life

"The whole idea of compassion is based on the keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings which are all part of one another and all involved in one another...The whole purpose of life is to live by love."
Thomas Merton

Pascal's Wager

I have a choice: either first I believe God exists or second I do not believe God exists. First, if I believe God exists, and God in fact does exist, then I will gain infinite happiness. However, if I believe God exists, and God in fact does not exist, then I will have no payoff. Second, if I do not believe God exists, and God in fact does exist, then I will gain infinite pain. However, if I believe God does not exist, and God in fact does not exist, then I will have no payoff. Thus, I have everything to gain and nothing to lose by believing in God, and I have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not believing in God. On these grounds, one would be foolish not to believe.
Blaise Pascal

Action has quality

“Action has quality when action and contemplation are interrelated and integrated. The hunter for example is not just participating in a purely mechanical subsistence activity, but is engaged in a complex set of meditative acts, all of which -- preparatory prayer and purification, stalking the quarry, the sacramental manner by which the animal is slain and subsequently treated -- are infused with the sacred. Black Elk says the “act of hunting is being (not representing) life’s quest for ultimate truth.” (Joseph Epes Brown)

...with what is

"Humans are tuned for relationships..... for the largest part of our species’ existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of the sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every ... form. All could speak, articulating in gesture and whistle and sigh a shifting web of meanings that we felt on our skin or inhaled through our nostrils or focused with our listening ears, and to which we replied -- whether through sounds or through movements of minute shifts of mood ... and every sound was a voice, every scrape a meeting -- with Thunder, with Oak, with Dragonfly. And from these relationships our collective sensibilities were nourished. We have an ages-old reciprocity with the many voiced landscape."
Dave Abrams’ simple premise is that we are human beings “only when we are in contact and in conviviality with what is not human.”

Most important aspects

All the most important aspects of thoughts come from that which is thinking through us. And this process is the myth, one of the most profound things of life; it is creation itself, which becomes accessible and, in part, energizes and gives, of its own accord, a sense of direction to the human creature. It is something with which -- if we use our brains and imaginations -- we are in partnership. (Sir Laurens van der Post)

Waunsila is the cure

“During the fourth year, I finally understood why I danced and then I decided I will dance as long as I live. I understood that I have to live what I teach. The true medicine men, Holy Ones, have no reservations about teaching. They are so secure, peaceful, they are not afraid to share and they welcome whoever comes. Spirituality involves waunsila -- compassion; having compassion for people. Give freely; you get back four times. If you practice this compassion, helping others -- those values, those qualities, generosity -- that is your religious life, your spirituality, your Wowacintanka, moral strength. It’s hard work, but you wake up happy. And in waunsila, you don’t have to lie anymore to exist. I have to be compassionate, I have to forgive, and sometimes it’s so hard I am brought to my knees or to tears, or both. However, grudges, anger, revenge, frustration cause cancer. Waunsila is the cure. (Albert White Hat)

Working assumption

"My working assumption is that we are here as local-Universe information gatherers. We are given access to the divine design principles so that from them we can invent objectively the instruments and tools that qualify us as local Universe problem solvers in support of the integrity of an eternally regenerative Universe."
Buckminster Fuller

Our Hands

"it's our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits to our abilities do not exist. We are collaborators in Creation -
the Future of the earth is in our hands."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"In the presence of presence the accumulated suffering from the past begins to dissolve, and that's the true teaching. That's why presence is so beautiful and why people want to be close to a teacher. It's not the form of the teacher; the attraction is to be in the presence of the presence. It's a very powerful thing to sit with someone who looks like somebody but is not somebody. When there's somebody there who is transparent enough so that the stillness comes through unhindered, there's a reciprocal movement in you because the presence of stillness suddenly recognizes itself. There's an almost magnetic pull of being. It gets pulled out of you, forward, and it meets all of the other being's being. Words are not really necessary for that to happen. They can be floating on the surface. Being recognizes itself. People come together, being in response to being.
That's the beauty of it."
Ekhart Tolle in an interview "Stillness & Presence" in Inquiring Mind 18:1, Fall 2001 free subscriptions PO Box 9999 Berkeley, CA 94709)

Addiction

Adyashanti

"We can not see things in their true nature
until we stop seeing them in their untrue nature."
Adyashanti

More Rilke

"I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, But I give myself to it....I have been circling for thousands of years,And I still don't know: Am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song."
Rilke

Quantum mind

"The new physics presents prima facie evidence that our human thoughts are linked to nature by nonlocal connections: what a person chooses to do in one region seems immediately to effect what is true elsewhere in the universe. This nonlocal aspect can be understood by conceiving the universe to be not a collection of tiny bits of matter, but rather a growing compendium of 'bits of information. . . .' I believe that most quantum physicists will also agree that our conscious thoughts ought eventually to be understood within science and that when properly understood, our thoughts will be seen to DO something: they will be efficacious."
Henry P. Stapp, a leading theorist in quantum physics at University of California, Berkeley

Mother Theresa

"When I am hungry, give me someone that I can feed.
And when I am thirsty, give me someone who needs a drink.
When I'm cold, give me someone to keep warm.
And when I grieve, give me someone to console."

Can you remember..

Can you remember those precious moments in your life when you felt so ecstatically whole and in balance that it brought tears to your eyes? The great poet Kabir says, "Between the conscious and unconscious, the mind has put up a swing; all earth creatures, even supernovas, sway between these two trees, and it never winds down. Angels, animals, humans, insects by the million, also the wheeling sun and moon; ages go by, and it goes on. Everything is swinging: heaven, earth, water, fire, and the secret one is slowly growing a body.
Kabir saw this for fifteen seconds, and it made him a servant for life."

a person's needs...

"The first act of love is to see this person or this object, this reality as it truly is. And this involves the enormous discipline of dropping your desires, your prejudices, your memories, your projections, your selective way of looking ...a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge headlong into good actions and service than submit to the burning fire of this asceticism. When you set out to serve someone whom you have not taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person's need or your own?"
Father Anthony de Mello

Evolutionary Activism

It is time to shift our attention, our activism, our philanthropy, our citizenship, and our transformational agentry from fixing up symptoms -- however painful and upsetting they may be -- to transforming the causes. That shift can bring about the world we all long for."
Tom Atlee -- his book -- Evolutionary Activism

Inner Chapters

"In earlier times, people lived simply and serenely. Sensitive to the fluctuations that constantly occur, they were able to adjust comfortably to the energy of the day. Today, people lead hysterical, impulsive lives. Ignoring the subtle alterations of yin and yang which influence all things, they become confused, exhausted, and frustrated. However, even today one can restore wholeness and clarity to one's mind. The way to do this is through study of the I Ching. Like the cycle of day and night, everything is a tai chi incorporating movements between yin and yang. If you do not see the patterns in these movements, you are lost. But if you consult the I Ching with an open mind, you will begin to see the patterns underlying all things. Knowing that daybreak will come, you can rest peacefully at night. When you accurately perceive the fluidity of things, you also begin to perceive the constancy behind them: the creative, transformative, boundless, immutable Tao. To see this is the ultimate education, and the ultimate solace.
Hua Hung Chang, Inner Chapters

...this suffering world

"What shall I do in this suffering world? Suffer. But is that enough to satisfy the big moral feeling that I have? Why should I have a moral feeling on that scale? I am not God. If I were offered the power of a miracle, could I yet alleviate the vast organic suffering, without disrupting some inner working of God's purpose in it all?
Jack Kerouac -- Journal, 1947

"Wisdom is a living stream, not an icon preserved in a museum. Only when we find the spring of wisdom in our own life can it flow to future generations."
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Integrity

"Integrity implies an integration of soul, heart, mind and body....It is humanity becoming all that we are...A luminous thread in a seamless garment...Integrity implies a new way of being--with others and in the universe. It implies caring; a quality of attention which involves a total commitment to looking, listening, feeling, sensing, intuiting, being..."
- Anne Hillman

Native Wisdom in a Quantum World

When Bohm speaks of the undivided wholeness of the cosmos and the superimplicate order that is behind and within all things, he invokes religious ideas of an ineffable and unknowable ground of being-Brahman,Tao,and so forth. The meeting ground for science and religion is indeed upon us. We live in very exciting times. Now is the time for dialogue across what is known as science and religion or spirituality, and between and among disciplines, in a search for what Buckminster Fuller called "comprehensivist" thinking-the largest patterned integrity that is trans-disciplinary and "wholistic"without borders, a nonhabitual, nondetermined,nonlocal thought that is connected with Spirit. It is what IONS (Institute for Noetic Sciences) would call noetic consciousness, what Emerson called the Oversoul, and Jung the collective unconscious. It could be the outcome of what cultural linguist Matthew Bronson has called "Big Tent Science." The real illusion that has permeated Western consciousness is our imagined separation from the natural world. Now that the quantum revolution has exposed the impossibility of separating the observer from the observed,reuniting our current science with the ancient sciences among indigenous peoples, the concept of nonlocal thought and radical interconnection with the natural world is being re-understood. It is my desire that education,and all of society,be re-envisioned with this connection in mind.

- GLENN APARICIO PARRY - Native Wisdom in a Quantum World
from http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/1633

The Living Universe

Our highest potential as a species is our ability to achieve full self-reflective consciousness or "knowing that we know." Through humanity's awakening, the Universe acquires the ability to look back and reflect back on itself-in wonder, awe, and appreciation... In the spacious mirror of reflective consciousness we begin to catch glimpses of the unity of the interwoven fabric of the cosmos and our intimate participation within the living web of existence. No longer is reality broken into relativistic islands of pieces. If only for a brief moment at a time, existence is glimpsed and known as a seamless totality. To explore our gradual awakening to the aliveness and unity of the universe ... awakens the intuition that a living presence permeates the universe.

Duane Elgin - The Living Universe

Power in Love

"Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites - polar opposites - so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. We've got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Space

"Space is, from the human viewpoint, nothing - negative; it exists only as related to something positive and nonspatial. Space is, however, real. It contains and conditions motion. It even moves."

Happiness

"Happiness and enjoyment of life are the highest expressions of individual intelligence, liberty and fulfillment of life. Happiness is likely to be the most important single objective of tomorrow's civilization, when mankind at long last will ask itself again these long-neglected questions: Why are we on earth? What do we expect from life? How can we maximize these precious years with which we are blessed? These are the basic questions. And the answers are: to live optimum physical, mental, moral, and spiritual lives, to open ourselves to others, to aggrandize ourselves through others, to listen to the great voices of nature and the universe, to perceive the unknown, to live in unison and love with all that is on the earth and in the heavens, to pray, to meditate, to know one's inner world, to extend one's heart and mind into the infinite heart and humankind, to live fully and passionately our life, to let the world and the people enter in great wondrous streams, to be thrilled at life, to be part of life, deeply, intensely, consciously, as we are indeed in flesh, in brain and in feeling.

Aramaic Jesus

"From a hidden place, unite with your enemies from the inside, fill the inner void. That makes them swell outwardly and fall out of rhythm; instead of progressing, step by step, they stop and start harshly, out of time with you. Bring yourself back into rhythm within. Find the moment that mates with theirs--like two lovers creating life from the dust. Do this work in secret, so they don't know. This kind of love creates, it doesn't emote."
--Neil Douglas-Klotz (translation from the Aramaic of Jesus' words "Love your Enemies")

... revelation occurs

When the Inner and the outer are wedded. revelation occurs.
(Hildegard of Bingen)

Hurt people hurt people.
Anonymous

One mind will still exist

"At present, people create barriers between each other by their fragmentary thought. Each one operates separately. When these barriers have dissolved, then there arises one mind, where they are all one unit, but each person also retains his or her own individual awareness. That one mind will still exist even when they separate, and when they come together, it will be as if they hadn't separated. It's actually a single intelligence that works with people who are moving in relationship with one another. . . . If you had a number of people who really pulled together and worked together in this way, it would be remarkable. They would stand out so much that everyone would know they were different."
~David Bohm (physicist, philosopher, & mystic)

Thanksgiving Meditation on Gratitude

"Both ancient teachings and modern medical research agree that one of the quickest, most direct routes to restoring harmony and balance in our lives is to foster gratitude and appreciation. The moment you shift from a mindstate of negativity or judgment to one of appreciation, there are immediate effects at many levels of your being: brain function becomes more balanced, harmonized, and supple; your heart begins to pump in a much more coherent and harmoniously balanced rhythm; and biochemical changes trigger a host of healthful balancing reactions throughout your body.

In the healing ways of indigenous people, the restorative power of gratitude was well understood. Giving thanks was the first step for many indigenous communities to any meeting, celebration, or gathering. A heart filled with gratitude generates actions and prayers that complete the circle between the gift offered to us, the receiver of the gift, and the sacred source of the gift. To offer prayers of thanksgiving is a gesture of rejoicing in discovering the many gifts that life brings us.

First in the mind

It is said "First in the mind, then in the body." The abdomen relaxes, then the Qi sinks into the bones. The spirit is relaxed, and the body calm. It is always in the mind. Being able to breath properly leads to agility. The softest will then become the strongest.
-Wu Yu-hsiang, ca. 1850

True Nature

"Our true nature is far more ancient and encompassing than the separate self defined by habit and society. We are as intrinsic to our living world as the rivers and trees, woven of the same intricate flows of matter/energy and mind. Having evolved us into self-reflexive consciousness, the world can now know itself through us, behold its own majesty, tell its own stories-and also respond to its own suffering."
--Joanna Macy - see her wonderful books including World as Love, World as Self - and - Widening Circles