In our way of life ...

In our way of life, in our government, with every decision we make, we always keep in mind the seventh generation yet to come. It's our job to see that the people coming ahead, the generations still not born have a world no worse than ours - and hopefully better. When we walk upon Mother Earth we always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them. (Oren Lyons, Faith Keeper of the Six Nations)

Navajo Blessing Way Prayer

In beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.
With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.

Good at Heart

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, For perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out." --Anne Frank

Intention and resolution

Uncertainty, when accepted, sheds a bright light on the power of intention. That is what we can count on--not the outcome, but the motivation we bring, the vision we hold, the compass setting we choose to follow. Hence the essential importance and beauty of bodhicitta, the motivation of the bodhisattva. In the Buddha Dharma it is also called adhitthana, which connotes resolve and steadfastness in choice, and also the physical foundation of a building. As we explored together how intention can work in our lives, other images arose: we saw it as a rudder by which we can steer, as a vehicle we can ride, as refuge, the one thing we can be sure about. Resolve can save us from getting lost in grief.
- Joanna Macy -

Grist for the mill

Our Souls do not seek to manage the height of our joy, the depth of our pain, or the flat nature of our boredom. Instead,our Souls grow through our life experiences. The wider and richer our life, the more our Souls are enriched. This actually makes a beautiful kind of sense and may be helpful to caregivers caught in wondering about God's "willingness" to allow suffering in the world. For the personality, hard times, failure, hopelessness may feel like a disaster, for the Soul it may be grist for its strangely joyful mill.

The Wise Elder

The wise elder knows that a balanced life is about both saving and savoring the world. She sees the world as whole, and the whole is not just 'us' and 'our' predicaments. Whatever language we give to that, whether we call it spiritual or something else, the central idea is to recognize that it's about something much bigger than we are, and that we each need to sort out our roles in it.

Funeral Announcement

Harry Rubin - b. New York City 1913, d. Santa Monica, Ca., 2008. From his days as an undergraduate at UCLA Harry never held back an opinion or ceased to question the establishment or status quo. He stood true to his beliefs in free speech and a utopian world in which education would unlock possibilities for all, banish economic disparities, and make war obsolete. The question he considered seminal was "What does it mean to be human?" Ultimately he summed it up with a single phrase, "to be compassionate."

Presence

"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

The next American Revolution

"We are at a stage in human history that is as monumental as changing from a hunter/gatherer society to an agricultural society and from an agricultural society to and industrial society. Where we're headed now will be different because we have exhausted planetary space and human space for us to continue to look at things through the Cartesian measurement of material things. We need to face the way we used the world for our gains, pleasures, satisfactions. This is the way we evolve to a higher stage of humanity. And unless we want to live in terror for the rest of our lives, we need to change our view about acquiring things. We have the opportunity to take a great leap forward in these very challenging times. We need to change our institutions and ourselves. We need to seize opportunities. We need to launch our imaginations beyond the thinking of the past. We need to discern who we are and expand on our humanness and sacredness. That's how we change the world, which happens because WE will be the change."

We're the first culture in human history that hasn't had initiation ...

What makes for the best relationship between mentor and apprentice? The core of it is trust. The only way to build trust is through deep presence - meaning that both parties need to sense that it is an embodied thing, an earned thing. Great mentors are lovers of questions. They have the presence to hit the pause button and listen. Then they ask more questions. It's out of this deeper presence, this willingness to listen with patience that a meaningful relationship will grow. Richard Leider (Claiming Your Place at the Fire)

A new creation

“A person awakening in the morning is like a new creation. If we begin the day with unkind words or even trivial matters – even though we may later turn to prayer, we have not been true to our Creation. All of our words each day are related to one another. All of them are rooted in the first words we speak.” (Ba’al Shem Tov)

To be human ...

“To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. To remember the other world in this world is to live in our true inheritance. How we greet the dawn is a measure of the freedom we have made for ourselves.” (David Whyte)

Politics and Spirituality

"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

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
(from the Declaration of Independence)

A mature person

"A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity."
-Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and writer (1884-1962)

The humbleness of a warrior

The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn't permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor for anyone he deems to be higher, and yet demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.
(From Tales of Power by Carlos Casteneda)

Mottos

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.
(This poem is engraved on the wall of Mother Teresa's home for children in Calcutta)

The experience of belonging

"When we look at the world around us, we find that we are not thrown into chaos and randomness but are part of the great order, a grand symphony of life. Every molecule in our body was once a part of previous bodies-living or nonliving-and will be part of future bodies. In this sense, our body will not die but will live on, again and again, because life lives on. We share not only life's molecules but also its basic principles of organization with the rest of the living world. And since our mind, too, is embodied, our concepts, and metaphors are embedded in the web of life together with our bodies and brains. We belong to the universe, we are at home in it, and this experience of belonging can make our lives profoundly meaningful."
--Fritjof Capra

Necessities

"Love and Compassion are Necessities -
Not luxuries.
Without them humanity cannot survive."
~ The Dalai Lama

I believe the first living cell

...I believe the first living cell had echoes of the future in it
And felt direction and the great animals
The deep green forest and whale's track sea.
I believe this globed earth not all by chance and fortune
Brings forth her broods
But feels and chooses.
And the galaxy, the firewheel on which we are pinned
The whirlwind of stars in which our sun is one dust grain
One electron, this giant atom of the universe
Is not blind force
But fulfills its life, and intends its course.
(from De Rerum Virtute - Robinson Jeffers)

Why does history matter?

Amnesia is as detrimental to society as to an individual. The historian Daniel Boorstein put it very well. "Trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers." There is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. We are all influenced by people around us. Every action has consequences, and we have to be very careful about leaping to conclusions from first impressions. Integrity and character truly do count in the long run. The idea that no one has lived in more difficult or dangerous times is untrue. Others have weathered more horrendous storms; we can take heart from them.
David McCullough (Pulitzer Prize-winning Historian)

The Language of Soul is Meaning.

The language of soul is meaning. Meaning helps us to see in the dark. It strengthens the will to live in us. Finding meaning does not require us to live differently. It requires us to see our souls differently. Soul is not just a human capacity, it is a human need. In ancient times illness was defined in terms of "soul loss," that is a loss of direction, meaning, purpose, mystery, and awe. To have meaning in our lives keeps us healthy. Meaning heals many things that are beyond cure. Meaning is a form of strength. It has the power to experience, to open the most difficult of work to the dimension of joy and gratitude. Few works of service can endure unless they are sustained by a lived sense of their meaning and purpose.
Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

We are most human when ...

It is in meditation and reflection, dreams and imagination, where we make creative discoveries. We are most human when we are bored. To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world and to explore the internal one. We may emerge from boredom feeling we have accomplished nothing, but consider, boredom is often occupied by revery, and it is in revery that we have our deepest insights. Boredom is the essential human emotion underlying art, literature, philosophy, science, psychology, even love. Boredom engages the imagination; it is a doorway to that which underpins emotions. Feeling bored has a purpose. The most creative people have the greatest tolerance for long periods of boredom. Creative people strive to communicate that which seemingly cannot be communicated - truth, beauty, meaning. Feeling bored actually brings us back to basics, to levels of knowing ourselves, and to understanding our internal connections to "meaning" and "being."
(Image is Paul Cezanne's "The Smoker.")

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

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
(John Wesley)

The ability to laugh

The ability to laugh and to cry is one of the marks which distinguishes human beings from other animals. It is the ability to enter into life, to feel and to share joys and sorrows. This sharing of light and shadow, this ability to live both above and below the flat surface of things within the compass of companionship is one of the greatest gifts of life. Choose a companion with whom there is always shared laughter, it will never put money in the bank but it will ease many rough places along the way.
(Robert Rodenmayer, from the book "I, John, Take Thee, Mary")

Around Memorial Day

There are those - soldiers and nurses, poets and priests - for whom death is a sure companion. But most of us treat it as a notorious celebrity we watch from afar, fascinated but removed, until we have no choice, preferring myth to truth. Ten million people watched Professor Randy Pausch's Last Lecture on YouTube;see the shining, dying man; and quietly promise themselves to shift out of neutral, stop being stupid about stupid things. Celebrate Memorial Day as a day when gratitude comes to life.
(Nancy Gibbs, Senior Editor, Time Magazine, paraphrased)

Answers to question put to Mick Jagger

I respond first by saying that being human means to be humble and to learn how to be confident without being selfish and self absorbed. It means to live with a level of understanding not measuring life by attainment of materials, but having a high level of morals and beliefs and sticking to them. Measuring success by failures overcome. JUST LIVE. By the end of our lives those who knew us will remember us in an honorable and loving way.

What we gave. we have ...

What we gave, we have ...
What we spent, we had ...
What we kept, we lost.
(Epitaph for Edward,
Earl of Devonshire, 1419)

"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?"
Rainer-Maria Rilke

"'Quicquid reciptur per modem recipientis reciptur.' What is received is received in the manner of the recipient. As a man is, so he sees.'"
Seneca

Wholeness has a temperature

We should:
"Determine with the Spirit,
Receive with the Mind,
Give with the Heart,
Hold with the body."
Grandmother Twylah Nitsch

Disassociating time

Louis Mumford noticed that the clock creates the idea of moment to moment. He says clocks are metaphors which we are not educated to recognize. He realized that the clock’s product is seconds and minutes and has the effect of disassociating time from human events and thus nourishes the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences. The clock, invented in the 14th century, made us time-keepers, then time-savers, and now time servers. In a world made up of seconds and minutes the authority of nature is superseded. With the invention of the clock eternity ceased to be the focus of human beings. Belief in God’s supremacy is weakened with every ticking second. Perhaps that was what the God that spoke to Moses on Sinai also meant by “graven images.”

The Gift of Motionless Integrity

Integrity encompasses three concepts which are coherent to one another. One is probity (virtue, honesty;) one is completeness (roundness, wholeness;) and the third is sanctuary, or a sacred space. Our integrity is the place where our Spirit is present. It is a sacred place where all is complete and there is accurate truth which is knowledge of the existence of the Intelligence of Being. Integrity is the most powerful quality in the movement of chaos. Integrity moves the movements of power or harmony and holds the energy that teaches and heals, because Integrity is the only thing in the universe that is motionless.

The Radiance of the Source

"This pure Mind, which is the source of all things, shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection. Most people are not aware of it. They think that the Mind is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels, and knows. If we are blinded by our own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing we will not perceive the radiance of the source."
(Zen Master Huang-po)

The Talmud teaches

The Talmud teaches us that the child in the womb of his/her mother looks from one end of the world to the other and knows all the teachings, but the instance (s)he comes in contact with the air of the earth an angel strikes the child’s mouth and the child forgets almost everything except traces of the archetypal patterns of knowledge with which the human child can reacquire spiritual knowledge, the teachings, and can then do God’s service.

Ubuntu

"'Ubuntu.' It's a Bantu word which means you can't be human alone!" (Bishop Desmond Tutu.) Wikipedia also reports the concept of 'ubuntu' may be rendered roughly as "humanity toward others", "we are people because of other people", or "I am who I am because of who we all are."

Before we are born, we know

Children are born with a understanding of the world hardwired into their brains. Newborns genetically anticipate the basics of communication codes; have emotions, and are aware of their biological functions; and newborns hold an intuitive knowledge of the physical universe’s properties of solidity, inertia, and gravity. At birth there is just one world, the environment, permeated with power and assimilating humans, animals, plants, objects into a whole landscape. At birth we sense a unity to reality, a connection between all things. Individual objects are indistinguishable from the whole. Infants have innate knowledge of quantum virtues. Babies have genes for learning patterns like the codes of grammar. They understand the abstract (symbols and variables) of language, for instance, before they learn the meaning of words. Sensitivity to abstract patterns is a universal property of the human mind.
Jeffrey Mishlove, "The Roots of Consciousness"

For the People

In this ever changing world. the philsophy of my People is fading. Where has RESPECT, WISDOM, BRAVERY, GENEROSITY, COMPASSION, FORTITUDE and HUMILITY gone? Faded to the new ways of this earth, the different songs, and ways of thinking. Now money is all consuming. Not the people, but money and material things. When someone passes on, it's what can I get, not compassion for the family of the deceased. It is not the color of one's skin, or how much money one has, but how and to what end do we walk on Mother Earth, and do for the People, not for ourselves.
Jack Burnette, Rosebud Reservation, Mission, South Dakota

The animals know more than we do.

The animals know more than we do, they are the teachers and we are the students. The very wise have always known this. Our companion animals teach unconditional love, forgiveness and gratitude. The beasts of the wild take only what they need. The elders say a society can be judged by the way it treats its animals. Our "civilized" society has a long way to go. Those of us who have this understanding must lead the way.
Nancy O'Donohue
Animal Healer
www.LakeshoreHealing.com