Through a Glass Darkly

"Now we see through a glass darkly, but then, face to face; now we know in part, but then shall we know, even as also we ourselves are known..." --Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 12 - (painting by el Graco)

Doors of Perception

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."
-William Blake, from "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

Yesterday

Yesterday is so far away. Like the furthest star in the universe. Billions of light years in the past. Gone forever. And she doesn't give a crap about me anymore. Never will. Doesn't care who I am , what I did, where I went. And yet I spend so much time thinking about her. Talking about her and carrying her around on my back to show everyone how great she is. Ruthless and cold she will never ever give me a second chance. Bye baby.. .. (Thomas Hilton)

Global Revolution

"Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed - be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization - will be unavoidable. . . The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility."
Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic in his historic address to the U.S. Congress

Extraordinary patience

"Extraordinary patience is necessary to work toward world peace, and the source of that patience is inner peace. Such peace enables us to see clearly that war and suffering are outer reflections of the mind's poisons. The essential difference between peacemakers and those who wage war is that peacemakers have discipline and control over egotistical anger, grasping, jealousy, and pride, whereas warmakers, out of ignorance, cause these poisons to manifest in the world. If you truly understand this, you will never allow yourself to be defeated from within or without."
Chagdud Rinpoche

I am

"That oneness is the true feeling of who I am. I am not the personality, or any particular aspect of essence. I am the whole thing, including emptiness and space, and I experience everything in complete harmony. When this happens, there is a sense of intimacy, an exquisite, personal intimacy, the feeling ...that I am me, with nothing excluded, nothing rejected. I am both a person and a universal existence, that what is personal and what is universal are completely harmonious and can coexist. When my whole organism is in harmony on all its levels, there is no conflict. The expression and radiance of that harmony is love. I feel complete and not separate from anything. This is the action of love. The action of love is to unite, to reveal the connectedness. A loving person doesn't love me - a loving person is love. Love isn't given. As Plato said, "Love is the pursuit of the Whole."
A.H. Almaas

Hope and Optimim

"The difference between hope and optimism: Optimism is based on the facts - it looks pretty good out there and it's going to get better. Whereas hope - it doesn't look good at all, but we're going to take the leap of faith to create new visions based on possibilities that become contagious to encourage people to engage in rogue actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever, that's hope."
Cornel West

Golden Mountain

"Spending your time with true spiritual friends will fill you with love for all beings and help you to see how negative attachments and hatred are. Being with such friends and following their example will naturally imbue you with their good qualities just as all the birds flying around a golden mountain are bathed in its golden radiance."
- Khyentse Rinpoche

"Then the venerable Ananda approached the Buddha, prostrated himself and sat down to one side. Sitting there the venerable Ananda said to the Buddha: 'Half of the this holy life, Lord, is good and noble friends, companionship with the good, association with the good.' 'Do not say that, Ananda, do not say that, Ananda. It is the whole of this holy life, this friendship, companionship, and association with the good.'"

Increasing Mindfulness

"In more than 30 years of research, we've found that increasing mindfulness increases charisma and productivity, decreases burnout and accidents, and increases creativity, memory, attention, positive affect, health, and even longevity. When mindful we can take advantage of opportunities and avert the dangers that don't yet exist. This is true for the leader and the led."
Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

Fight for freedom

"An artist is responsible to fight for freedom. An artist is responsible to change society. That's how Paul put it... Not only do you have to be good at your craft, but you have to make a contribution to society..."
"Paul Robeson"

"Most relationships are formed unconsciously through the interplay of our habits, mindless behaviors, unacknowledged and unspoken expectations and assumptions. Is it any wonder that so many of our relationships seem so problematic and so far out of balance? When you invite yourself and others to be more conscious in your relationships, you create the opportunity to let your relationship become more choiceful and creative. Understanding this, the artist Vicent Van Gogh once said, "To live, to work, to play are really one. If you ask me, the most creative thing we can do is to love people." To turn our relationships into works of art takes a high level of honesty, objectivity, patience, and commitment. Mindful moment to mindful moment, the choice is always yours: succumb to the momentum of unconscious habits, or intensify mindful awareness to understand what is really going on and creatively, compassionately enhance it."
Michelle and Joel Levey, excerpted from Living in Balance

Prajnaparamita Sutra

"Bodhisattvas do not become liberated from life, nor do they pursue any form of separate realization. They direct an ecstatic flow of love and friendliness toward all, connecting their mind streams as intimately with all beings as with their most cherished family members and beloved friends. This astonishing feat frees bodhisattvas from every impure intention of harming , denigrating, or abandoning or even merely ignoring others."
Lex Hixon in Mother of the Buddhas: Meditations on the Prajnaparamita Sutra

Intrinsic

"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

Rgpa

"Rigpa is a Tibetan word, which in general means 'intelligence' or 'awareness'. In Dzogchen, however, the highest teachings in the Buddhist tradition of Tibet, rigpa has a deeper connotation, 'the innermost nature of the mind'. The whole of the teaching of Buddha is directed towards realizing this, our ultimate nature, the state of omniscience or enlightenment - a truth so universal, so primordial that it goes beyond all limits, and beyond even religion itself."
Sogyal Rinpoche

Qualities of Indigenous Leadership

1. Spiritually centered - actively in a relationship with the Creator.
2. Morally strong - lives a good moral life, suitable to stand as a role model with particular attention to the issues of addictions, relationships with the opposite sex and honesty regarding money.
3. Believes in the people's capacity to heal and develop, and shows this belief in the way they work with the people.
4. Is engaged in his or her own healing journey and is a relatively healthy person.
5. Has a good mind, and clearly understands the process of healing and development, and the issues the people are facing.
6. Has demonstrated devotion to the people's healing and development by hard work and a good attitude over time.
7. Shows true respect for the Creator, the Earth, and all human beings. Does not show disrespect for anyone including women, men, youth, the poor, other races, and any other form or shape of prejudice.
8. Can work well with others in a circle.
9. Strives to work from a position of forgiveness, unity and harmony with everyone!

Sacred Activism

It has become increasingly clear that only Sacred Activism-the fusion of the deepest mystical knowledge, peace, strength, and stamina with calm, focused, and radical action in every arena of society, culture, economics, and politics--can be of help in our growing world crisis. Neither a purely "spiritual" nor simply "activist" approach can solve our enormous problems. The core teachings of all the major mystical paths make it clear that there is, within human beings, an enormous unused reservoir of pure divine power, the pure power of sacred wisdom consciousness, passion, and compassion--the power of what Jesus called the kingdom of heaven, and of what in Hinduism is known as bliss-consciousness. These core teachings also reveal that if we can learn how to use this power-or rather how to let it use us as its luminous instruments--we will harness the "energies of love" and discover for ourselves how a clear, focused, purified, divine passion devoted to transformative action on all levels can birth a new world.
Andrew Harvey

Life is the only art...

"Now life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for the training of a mere beginner. In life, we must begin to give a public performance before we have acquired even a novice's skill; and often our moments of seeming mastery are upset by new demands, for which we have acquired no preparatory facility. Life is a score that we play at sight, not merely before we have divined the intentions of the composer, but even before we have mastered our instruments; even worse, a large part of the score has been only roughly indicated, and we must improvise the music for our particular instrument, over long passages. On these terms, the whole operation seems one of endless difficulty and frustration; and indeed, were it not for the fact that some of the passages have been played so often by our predecessors that, when we come to them, we seem to recallsome of the score and can anticipate the natural sequence of the notes, we might often give up in sheer despair. The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression."
Lewis Mumford, Historian of Technology & Science, (1895-1990)

Five green vows.

I vow to myself and each of you: To commit myself daily to the healing of our world and the welfare of all beings. To live on earth more lightly and less violently in the food, products and energy I consume. To draw strength and guidance from the living Earth, the ancestors, the future beings, and all my brothers and sisters of all species. To support each other in our work for the world and to ask for help when I feel the need. To pursue a daily spiritual practice that clarifies my mind, strengthens my heart and supports me in observing these vows.
Joanna Macy

Servant leadership

"It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions...The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature." "Servant leadership" also is a management philosophy which implies a comprehensive view of the quality of people, work and community spirit. It requires a spiritual understanding of identity, mission, vision and environment. A servant leader is someone who is servant first, who has responsibility to be in the world, and so he contributes to the well-being of people and community. A servant leader looks to the needs of the people and asks himself how he can help them to solve problems and promote personal development. He places his main focus on people, because only content and motivated people are able to reach their targets and to fulfill the set expectations.
Robert K. Greenleaf

The Path

If anybody asks you what the Path is about.... it's about generosity. It's about morality. It's about concentration. It's about gaining insight through focused self-observation. It's about the cultivation of subjective states of compassion and love based on insight. And it's about translating that compassion and love into actions in the real world. Shinzen Young

If I do nothing else today

If I do nothing else today, I will take the time to tap into the deep and abiding awareness that is always present inside of me.

Optimism/Pessimism

"When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand 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."
- Paul Hawken

Listen

"Everything in life is speaking in spite of it's apparent silence."
Hazrat Inayat Khan

"The more and more you listen, the more and more you will hear. The more you hear, the more and more deeply you will understand."
Khyentse Rinpoche

All transformation is linguistic

What does the word thrive convey that the word sustainable does not?I would suggest four principles of Thriving:

1. Thriving is the spiritual dimension of sustainability. What sustainability is to a material economy, thriving is to the spiritual economy. We intuitively know that it is not enough to birth a new world that provides the necessities of life without acknowledging and attending to the spiritual implications for each person in their own lives. To the extent that sustainability is about economics, then thriving is about each of us embodying (living our true nature) that new economy: becoming that new economy expresses not only our love of each other but manifests Love as the primary principle of being alive.

2. Thriving is the fire of spirit and the air of open heart-space.Sustainability evokes the esthetics of earth and water. Thriving is about the inception and integration of a divine fire that infuses all our actions with open-hearted possibility.

3. Thriving is the precarious edge of balance.If sustainability invokes balance, thriving challenges us as chaos challenges predictability, birthing an order where emergent complexity demands continuous innovation. Here, at an evolutionary edge, consciousness speaks nature into being, becoming the locus of adaptation and experimentation, the trial and error of organic vitality.

4. Thriving is the mythic dimension of sustainability, the meta-narrative of possibility. It is a reference to the continuous, spontaneous process of creating, modifying and re-forming the open architecture of diversity; where distributed networks of freely accessible information and self-organizing governance activate the free-flow of resources to meet real needs."

-Gary Horvitz

Learning how to be kind

"Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it's important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe."
Ane Pema Chodron

"Ubuntu"

"Ubuntu" is not easy to describe because it has no equivalent in any of the Western languages...Ubuntu speaks to the essence of being human and our understanding that the human person is corporate. The solitary individual is in our understanding a contradiction in terms. You are a person through other persons. Ubuntu speaks about the importance of communal harmony... speaks about warmth, compassion, generosity, hospitality, and seek to embrace others."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Conscious

" The human being in whom the earth has become spiritually aware, has awakened into consciousness, has become self-aware and self-reflecting. In the human, the earth begins to reflect upon itself. In our deepest definition and deepest subjectivity, we humans are earth. Conscious."
Sister Miriam McGillis

Happy

"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down "happy". They told me I didn't understand the assignment. I told them they didn't understand life." ~ John Lennon

One-sided

"Choose one side of a dilemma and the other side resurfaces with a vengeance. For picking one side or being "one-sided" about a true dilemma only delays and even intensifies the issue. Choose one side and the conflict will return at a deeper level at some future time. That's the nature of the genuine dilemmas of life in this left and right, dark and light, abundant and empty world. Only when the tension of opposing forces can be held long enough does a genuine solution appear that can dissolve the tension and renew the flow of life at another level."
Michael Mead, in his book "The World Behind the World"

Right relationship

"Right relationship means right relationship with the elements, the land, the sacred directions...The seed of pure mind is within all people. It is always there. It is not made impure. Our actions may be impure and set up a stream of reactions, but always we can come again to the seed of pure mind and right relationship... it is time now for people to choose. Their first step is to see the power of your own consciousness... The common kernel is care for all beings, good relationship, cycles of reciprocity, generosity, giving of oneself, being an empty bowl so you can know what is."
Dhyani Ywahoo - in Voices of Our Ancestors

Discover what is already there.

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there."
Henry Miller

Who is hearing?

Who is hearing? Our physical being doesn't hear, nor does the void. Then what does? Strive to find out. Put aside rational Intellect, give up all techniques. Just get rid of the notion of self. What is this mind? 
Who is hearing these sounds? 
Do not mistake any state for 
Self-realization, but continue to ask even more intensely, 
what is it that hears?
Bassui

become human

We become human by talking and listening to each other. Individual heroes and impersonal corporations have failed at leading people as though they're machines. That paradigm, now ending, has brought overwhelming problems that we can't solve from the same level of consciousness that created them.
Margaret Wheatley

The greatest evildoers...

"The greatest evildoers are those who don't remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back. For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing ourselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur-the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world."
Hanna Arendt

Anything less... is just something less.

"Earthkind has grown from pack to village... and then from village to tribe, then from tribe to territory...and from territory to nation. It is time to go from nation to planet. The First Earth Battalion hereby declares its primary allegiance to the planet... Making this planet whole... requires the ethical use of force. But even subcultures of force must evolve into a master culture. The Army is no exception....Soldiers are in the business of life and death. As a leader during war, I must know that if my soldiers are to die... that it's for the right reasons. When at peace they deserve nothing less than a chance of personal evolution. Soldiers can be a real part of the evolution of this Earth. Anything less... is just something less.
Excerpted from "The First Earth Battalion: Dare to Think the Unthinkable, Ideas and Ideals for Soldiers Everywhere" by Jim Channon, Lt. Col. (Ret), US Army, in the Journal of Non-Lethal Combatives, February 2000

Subtle Ray

The universe is a vast net of energy rays. The primary ray is that which emanates from the Subtle Origin, and it is entirely positive, creative, and constructive. Each being, however, converts the energy of this primary ray into its own ray, and these lower rays can be either positive or negative, constructive or destructive. An individual who is not yet fully evolved can be adversely affected by negative energy rays in the net around him. For example, the combined influence of several negative rays might cause an undeveloped person to believe that his life is being controlled by an invisible, oppressive ruler. Such a misconception can be a significant barrier to enlightenment. To attain full evolution and the status of an integral being, you must be aware of this intricate net and its influences upon you. By integrating the positive, harmonious energy rays with the positive elements of your own being, and eliminating the subtle negative influences, you can enhance all aspects of your life. In order to eliminate the negative influences, simply ignore them. To integrate the positive influences, consciously reconnect yourself with the primary energy ray of the Subtle Origin by adopting the practices of the Integral Way. Then all the rays in the net around you will merge back into harmonious oneness.
Lao Tsu ~ Hua Hu Ching ~ #57

We use the word 'love'

"We use the word 'love' but we have no more understanding of love than we do of anger or fear or jealousy or even joy, because we have seldom investigated what that state of mind is. What are the feelings we so quickly label as love? For many what is called love is not lovely at all but is a tangle of needs and desires, of momentary ecstasies and bewilderment - moments of unity, of intense feelings of closeness, occur in a mind so fragile that the least squint or sideways glance shatters its oneness into a dozen ghostly paranoias. When we say love we usually mean some emotion, some deep feeling for an object or a person, that momentarily allows us to open to another. But in such emotional love, self-protection is never far away. Still there is "business" to the relationship: clouds of jealousy, possessiveness, guilt, intentional and unintentional manipulation, separateness and the shadow of all previous 'loves' darken the light of oneness. But what I mean by love is not an emotion, it is a state of being. True love has no object." - Steven and Ondrea Levine

When we cease from human thought

"If we have become a people incapable of thought, then the brute-thought of mere power and mere greed will think for us. If we have become incapable of denying ourselves anything, then all that we have will be taken from us. If we have no compassion, we will suffer alone, we will suffer alone the destruction of ourselves. These are merely the laws of this world as know to Shakespeare, as known to Milton. When we cease from human thought, a low and effective cunning stirs in the most inhuman minds."
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2005 in LEAVINGS

...to serve first

"It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions...The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature."
Robert K. Greenleaf