Clutter

"As we learn to let go of the extraneous chatter that clutters our mind, we discover that our true nature - our essential self - is actually the center of awareness, peace and compassion."
Joan Borysenko

Ten things that make us heppy

1. Savor Everyday Moments
Pause now and then to smell a rose or watch children at play. Study participants who took time to "savor" ordinary events that they normally hurried through, or to think back on pleasant moments from their day, "showed significant increases in happiness and reductions in depression," says psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky.

2. Avoid Comparisons
While keeping up with the Joneses is part of American culture, comparing ourselves with others can be damaging to happiness and self-esteem. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, focusing on our own personal achievement leads to greater satisfaction, according to Lyubomirsky.

3. Put Money Low on the List
People who put money high on their priority list are more at risk for depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, according to researchers Tim Kasser and Richard Ryan. Their findings hold true across nations and cultures. "The more we seek satisfactions in material goods, the less we find them there," Ryan says. "The satisfaction has a short half-life-it's very fleeting." Money-seekers also score lower on tests of vitality and self-actualization.

4. Have Meaningful Goals
"People who strive for something significant, whether it's learning a new craft or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don't have strong dreams or aspirations," say Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener. "As humans, we actually require a sense of meaning to thrive." Harvard's resident happiness professor, Tal Ben-Shahar, agrees, "Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable."

5. Take Initiative at Work
How happy you are at work depends in part on how much initiative you take. Researcher Amy Wrzesniewski says that when we express creativity, help others, suggest improvements, or do additional tasks on the job, we make our work more rewarding and feel more in control.

6. Make Friends, Treasure Family
Happier people tend to have good families, friends, and supportive relationships, say Diener and Biswas-Diener. But it's not enough to be the life of the party if you're surrounded by shallow acquaintances. "We don't just need relationships, we need close ones" that involve understanding and caring.

7. Smile Even When You Don't Feel Like It
It sounds simple, but it works. "Happy people...see possibilities, opportunities, and success. When they think of the future, they are optimistic, and when they review the past, they tend to savor the high points," say Diener and Biswas-Diener. Even if you weren't born looking at the glass as half-full, with practice, a positive outlook can become a habit.

8. Say Thank You Like You Mean It
People who keep gratitude journals on a weekly basis are healthier, more optimistic, and more likely to make progress toward achieving personal goals, according to author Robert Emmons. Research by Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology, revealed that people who write "gratitude letters" to someone who made a difference in their lives score higher on happiness, and lower on depression-and the effect lasts for weeks.

9. Get Out and Exercise
A Duke University study shows that exercise may be just as effective as drugs in treating depression, without all the side effects and expense. Other research shows that in addition to health benefits, regular exercise offers a sense of accomplishment and opportunity for social interaction, releases feel-good endorphins, and boosts self-esteem.

10. Give It Away, Give It Away Now!
Make altruism and giving part of your life, and be purposeful about it. Researcher Stephen Post says helping a neighbor, volunteering, or donating goods and services results in a "helper's high," and you get more health benefits than you would from exercise or quitting smoking. Listening to a friend, passing on your skills, celebrating others' successes, and forgiveness also contribute to happiness, he says. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn found that those who spend money on others reported much greater happiness than those who spend it on themselves.

The happiest people

The happiest people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything they have. Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain. Truth needs no embellishment, no beauty, not even sincerity. Truth serves without spoiling. The invincible shield of caring is a weapon from over yonder against being profane. There is an old Sanskrit proverb that says: “Look to this day. Yesterday is a dream, and tomorrow is a vision. Today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, now here, to this day.”

Desiderata

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
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Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
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Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
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Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
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Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
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Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
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Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
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Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
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And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.
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Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann - American Poet

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