Words that move me

THE GUEST HOUSE

2009-05-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

Swimming Quotes

2009-05-04T18:02:00.000-07:00

The water is your friend. You don't have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move. ~Aleksandr Popov

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

From http://www.quotegarden.com/swimming.html

Manifesting Myself

2009-02-26T20:48:00.000-08:00

If my thinking creates reality

then really, who am I?

Flesh and bones, a writer of poems...

Now I'm really thinking!

Perfect President

2008-11-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

"I will not be a perfect president. But I can promise you this — I will always tell you what I think and where I stand."

Barack Obama - 29th October 2008

Now

2008-11-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

Life is ever changing and the present moment will never be again.

Make the most of Now!

Love and Hate

2008-11-06T15:19:00.000-08:00

Hatred hurts the Hater

Love heals the Lover

Moderation

2008-10-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

"Moderation in all things, including moderation."

Petronius

BLOG INDEX

2008-10-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

Aloha!
Atlantis - WH Auden

Begin it Now! - Goethe
Behold the Day!

Criticism

Fun
Gorgeous and Talented - Marianne Williamson
Hawaiian Fable
I think continually ... - Stephen Spender
Joy and Pain
Living, Loving and Learning - Leo Buscaglia
Negative Capability - Keats
Path With a Heart - Don Juan

The Work of Love

Valuable Life - Steven van Bodegraden

What is Love? - Henry Van Dyke

Work - Kalil Gibran

A Valuable Life

2008-10-23T15:26:00.000-07:00

"Only do that which adds value to your life"

Steven van Bodegraven, TI coach

Begin it Now!

2008-10-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

Criticism

2008-04-23T08:21:00.000-07:00

"True constructive criticism leaves the person feeling better and more capable of doing a better job in the future."

There is a lot more wisdom on this website: www.evadeblackbeltschool.com

Fun

2008-02-27T01:37:00.001-08:00

Fun is a good think but only when it spoils nothing better.

George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-born US philosopher

Work

2008-02-27T01:36:00.001-08:00

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

Kahlil Gibran (1833-1931) Lebanese poet

The Work of Love

2008-02-27T01:33:00.000-08:00

We really have to understand the person we want to love.

If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love.
If we only think of ourselves, if we only know our own needs

and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.
We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs,

aspirations and suffering of the person we love.
This is the ground of real love.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen master

I Think Continually Of Those Who Were Truly Great

2007-11-05T00:52:00.000-08:00

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

Stephen Spender

Behold the Day

2007-11-05T00:50:00.001-08:00

This day is the very day of very days.
Yesterday is only a memory,
Tomorrow is but a dream.
But if I live this day well,
Every yesterday is a memory of bliss,
Every tomorrow is a dream of hope.
I look well therefore to this day,
I join with the sun.

'Atlantis' by WH Auden

2007-10-29T04:52:00.000-07:00

Being set on the idea
Of getting to Atlantis,
You have discovered of course
Only the Ship of Fools is
Making the voyage this year,
As gales of abnormal force
Are predicted, and that you
Must therefore be ready to
Behave absurdly enough
To pass for one of The Boys,
At least appearing to love
Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.

Should storms, as may well happen,
Drive you to anchor a week
In some old harbour-city
Of Ionia, then speak
With her witty sholars, men
Who have proved there cannot be
Such a place as Atlantis:
Learn their logic, but notice
How its subtlety betrays
Their enormous simple grief;
Thus they shall teach you the ways
To doubt that you may believe.

If, later, you run aground
Among the headlands of Thrace,
Where with torches all night long
A naked barbaric race
Leaps frenziedly to the sound
Of conch and dissonant gong:
On that stony savage shore
Strip off your clothes and dance, for
Unless you are capable
Of forgetting completely
About Atlantis, you will
Never finish your journey.

Again, should you come to gay
Carthage or Corinth, take part
In their endless gaiety;
And if in some bar a tart,
As she strokes your hair, should say
"This is Atlantis, dearie,"
Listen with attentiveness
To her life-story: unless
You become acquainted now
With each refuge that tries to
Counterfeit Atlantis, how
Will you recognise the true?

Assuming you beach at last
Near Atlantis, and begin
That terrible trek inland
Through squalid woods and frozen
Thundras where all are soon lost;
If, forsaken then, you stand,
Dismissal everywhere,
Stone and now, silence and air,
O remember the great dead
And honour the fate you are,
Travelling and tormented,
Dialectic and bizarre.

Stagger onward rejoicing;
And even then if, perhaps
Having actually got
To the last col, you collapse
With all Atlantis shining
Below you yet you cannot
Descend, you should still be proud
Even to have been allowed
Just to peep at Atlantis
In a poetic vision:
Give thanks and lie down in peace,
Having seen your salvation.

All the little household gods
Have started crying, but say
Good-bye now, and put to sea.
Farewell, my dear, farewell: may
Hermes, master of the roads,
And the four dwarf Kabiri,
Protect and serve you always;
And may the Ancient of Days
Provide for all you must do
His invisible guidance,
Lifting up, dear, upon you
The light of His countenance.

"Living, Loving and Learning" by Leo F. Buscaglia

2007-10-18T18:21:00.000-07:00

"... my responsibility to you is to make myself enormous, full of knowledge, full of love, full of understanding, full of experience, full of everything so that I can give it to you and then you can take it and build from there."

...

"Imagine what this world would be like if everyone ... had the opportunity to be encouraged to be a unique human being."

What is love?

2007-10-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

"Love is not getting but giving.
Not a wild dream of pleasure and a madness of desire - oh, no - love is not that!
It is goodness and honour and peace and pure living - yes, love is all that and it is th the best thing in the world and the thing that lives the longest."

Henry Van Dyke

Aloha

2007-06-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

... one of my favourite greetings.
In Hawai'i it means 'hello", "goodbye" and other things besides...

I really an aspect of the deeper meaning that is harder to translate:

"A joyful sharing of life energy in the present"

ALOHA!

Joy and Pain

2007-06-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

In moments of happiness it is important to remember the challenges that preceded them, just as it is important to remember the triumphs when we are struggling. Thus we may come to rejoyce in the struggle and the triumph of life alike, for these are the very essence of life itself.

A Fable from Hawaii

2007-05-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

This is a story about 4 people called Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody

There was an important job to be done
and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it,
but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that.
Because it was Everybody's job, Everybody thought
that Anybody could do it,
but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.
It ended up that Everybody
blamed Somebody
when Nobody did
what Anybody could have done.

Negative Capability - Keats

2007-05-10T05:28:00.000-07:00

Negative Capability is a theory of the poet John Keats, expressed in his letter to George and Thomas Keats dated Sunday, 21 December 1817.

"I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

Gorgeous and Talented

2007-05-05T23:02:00.000-07:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

from "A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles" by Marianne Williamson. note: this quote was used by Nelson Mandella and is often mistakenly attributed to him.

The Path With A Heart

2007-05-05T05:23:00.000-07:00

"Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is not affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition.

I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old person asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it.

I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart?

All paths are the same, they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My benefactor's question has meaning now. "Does this path have a heart?" One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

The trouble is nobody asks the question: and when a person finally realizes that they have taken a path without heart, the path is ready to kill them. At that point very few people stop to deliberate and leave the path.

A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

For my part there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length.

And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly."

From "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge" by Carlos Castaneda