What Remains When Your Ego Dissolves Away?
“Think of a vast ocean filled with water on all sides. A jar is immersed in it. There is water both inside and outside the jar; but the water does not become one unless the jar is broken. What is the jar? It is I-consciousness – the ego. When the I disappears, what is, remains.”
–Sri Ramakrishna (a.k.a. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Indian Hindu Mystic and Promoter of Universal Religion, 1836-1886)
Expressing Your Unique Life Force
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.”
–Martha Graham (American Dancer, Teacher and Choreographer, 1894-1991)
The Wisdom of the Woods
“How deep our sleep last night in the mountain’s heart, beneath the trees and stars, hushed by solemn-sounding waterfalls and many small soothing voices in sweet accord whispering peace!
And our first pure mountain day, warm, calm, cloudless, –how immeasurable it seems, how serenely wild! I can scarcely remember its beginning.
Along the river, over the hills, in the ground, in the sky, spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm, new life, new beauty, unfolding, unrolling in glorious exuberant extravagance–new birds in their nests, new winged creatures in the air, and new leaves, new flowers, spreading, shining, rejoicing everywhere.”
–John Muir (Scottish-born American Naturalist, Writer, Founder of the Sierra Club, and “The Father of the National Park System,” 1838-1914)
“My First Summer in the Sierra: Illustrated Edition” (John Muir)
The Rhythm of Life
“The same stream of life that runs through the world runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.”
–Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Poet, Playwright, Essayist, Painter and, in 1913, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1861-1941)
“Gitanjali: Offerings of Song and Art” (Rabindranath Tagore)
The Simplest Meditation
“Meditative thinking need by no means be “high-flown.” It is enough if we dwell on what lies close and meditate on what is closest; upon that which concerns us, each one of us, here and now; here, on this patch of home ground; now, in the present hour of history.”
–Martin Heidegger (German Philosopher, 1889-1976)
Interconnection and Intent
“Science and religion tell us that we are energetically interdependent; that matter and energy are the same throughout the universe. Our spiritual interconnectedness and intuitive signals form, in effect, an energetic Internet.”
–Caroline Myss (American Medical Intuitive, Mystic and Author, 1952-)
“Invisible Acts of Power: Personal Choices That Create Miracles” (Caroline Myss)
Feeling the Force
“If a man doesn’t delight in himself and the force in him and feel that he and it are wonders, how is all life to become important to him?”
–Sherwood Anderson (American Writer and Poet, 1876-1941)
All Living Things Are Individual Instruments
“Kinship with All Life” (J. Allen Boone)
“All living things are individual instruments through which the Mind of the Universe thinks, speaks and acts. We are all interrelated in a common accord, a common purpose and a common good. We are members of a vast cosmic orchestra, in which each living instrument is essential to the complementary and harmonious playing of the whole.”
–J. Allen Boone (American Author, Film Producer and Correspondent for the Washington Post who specialized in Nonverbal Communication with Animals, 1882-1965)
Our Totally Inter-Related Universe
“Everything in the universe is made up of the very same stuff, and it’s all absolutely interchangeable at every moment. The electrons of you are indistinguishable from the electrons of me are indistinguishable from the electrons in a star…and it’s all totally interrelated.”
–Ram Dass (a.k.a. Richard Alpert, American Spiritual Teacher, Author and Lecturer, 1931-)
Exploring Unrealized Possibilities
I think that it would be fair to say that few of us have the courage to really explore outside of our comfort zone. Milan Kundera talked about that in a slightly different sense, but what he has to say may well resonate for you.
“The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own “I” ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. This novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.”
–Milan Kundera (Czech Author and Critic, 1929-)
