Nothing Outside

There is nothing outside of yourself
that can ever enable you to get better,
stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter.
Everything is within. Everything exists.
Seek nothing outside of yourself.

Miyamoto Musashi

The Peace of God

This is A Course in Miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. I does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

This course can there be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.

Do It Now

Into this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky,
Take an axe to the prison wall, escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly
born into color.
Do it now.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

Deception?

We read the world wrong
and say that it deceives us.

Rabindranath Tagore

Social Action with Love

With this political scene, I don't think
we should sit back and be "just perfect."
But I want to say that in social action,
don't do anything that you do with negativity,
frustration, or anger. Because that will rile
the opposition. Do your social action with love.

Ram Dass

Moving Without Harming

Snowflakes are beautifully telling
the possibility of fellow travelers
moving without harming each other.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

Out of the Heart

If words come out of the heart,
they will enter the heart, but if
they come from the tongue, they
will not pass beyond the ears.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

Do Not Hide

If you want the moon, do
not hide from the night.
If you want a rose, do not
run from the thorns.
If you want love, do not
hide from yourself.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

I Will Be Waiting

I will be waiting here ...
For your silence to break,
For your soul to shake,
For your love to wake!

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

Function of the Universe

You are a function of what
the whole universe is doing
in the same way that a wave
is a function of what the
whole ocean is doing.

Alan Watts

Lose the Questions

In Zen,
we don't find the answers,
we lose the questions.

Zen Saying

Completely Unknowable

A lot of what our brain does is
synthesize a hallucination,
a model of the world that
we proceed to live in.
This is a model reality,
the real reality is completely
unknowable.

Dennis McKenna

Be Patient

When you're anxious or worried, be patient.
The key of patience opens the door of happiness.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

Just Keep Going

Let everything happen to you.
Beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Vehicle for Awakening

We don't need to wait until
we are enlightened before
we act in the world, and
we don't need to withdraw
from the world to
become enlightened.
Conscious social action
can be our own work
on ourselves that becomes
the vehicle for our awakening.

Ram Dass

Final, Most Essential

The party told you to reject
the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command.

George Orwell, "1984"

Everyone is Struggling

In all honesty, everyone is struggling.
Some people are just better at hiding it than others.

Will Smith

See Him in Everything

The whole universe is our home and
all residing in it belong to our family.
Instead of trying to see God in a
particular appearance, it is better to
see him in everything.

Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji)

What Else Have You Got Going

There are no professionals in
the field of self-exploration.
That's everybody's job.
I mean, you are all PhD's
in consciousness exploration,
or if you're not, you should be,
because what else have you got going?

Terence McKenna

Relax

Don't seek, don't search, don't ask,
don't knock, don't demand ~ relax.
If you relax, it comes. If you relax,
it is there. If you relax, you start
vibrating with it.

Osho

You Know How It Is

You know how it is. Sometimes
we plan a trip to one place,
but something takes us to another.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

Still a Donkey

A donkey carrying
a pile of holy books
is still a donkey.

Zen Proverb

Your Own Understanding

You have to take seriously the notion
that understanding the universe
is your responsibility, because
the only understanding of
the universe that will be useful
is your own understanding.

Terence McKenna

Lost Continent

God is not an idea.
God is a lost continent
in the human mind.

Terence McKenna

With His Own Wings

No bird soars too high if
he soars with his own wings.

William Blake

Act of Destruction

Every act of creation is first
an act of destruction.

Pablo Picasso

Wise Person

Did you ever picture
a wise person
as being busy?

Thaddeus Golas

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ears fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Don't Cling

Don't cling to a mistake just because
you spent a lot of time making it.

Unknown

Choosing What One Desires

To develop depth a man must practice choosing
what he desires - being clear about what is most
important to him, and moving forward with action.
Sometimes this practice will manifest results in
the moment, but most often reaching a larger goal,
living in alignment with purpose, requires making
choices; choices that may not be the most pleasurable
in the moment; choices that require saying "No;"
choices that postpone and delay pleasure. We can
choose how we use the hours and days of our lives,
who we share our life with. Choice is one of our
greatest freedoms and responsibilities. Shallow men
are washed along with the currents of life and soon
find themselves washed up and stranded in some
backwater of life.

Christopher Sunyata

Choose!

There are moments when one has to choose between
living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely - or
dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence
that the world in its hypocrisy demands.
You have that moment now. Choose!

Oscar Wilde

The Song Still in Them

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Henry David Thoreau (misquoted)

Become Acquainted with Your Animal

We are prejudiced in regard to the animal. People don't understand when I tell them they should become acquainted with their animals or assimilate their animals. They think the animal is always jumping over walls and raising hell all over town. Yet, in nature, the animal is a well-behaved citizen. It is pious, it follows the path with great regularity, it does nothing extravagant. Only man is extravagant. So if you assimilate the character of the animal you become a peculiarly law-abiding citizen, you go very slowly; and you become very reasonable in your ways, in as much as you can afford it.

Carl Jung

The Animal in Man

When we say "the animal in man," this always strikes us

as something horrible. But this animal in man

is not horrible, no more that animals are horrible,

for they fulfill God's will most faithfully; they live

to fulfill their Creator's purpose. We do not do this.

We meddle with the work of the Creator, for we always

want to be something different from what we are.

Our ambition is not to be the whole of ourselves, for that

would be unpleasant. But the animals are themselves and

they fulfill the will of God that is within them in a true

and faithful manner.

Carl Jung

Manhood

We tend to view manhood as the outcome
of some external achievement, not as
the development of inner strength.

Ray Raphael

What is the Point?

We fight a fierce war within.
What is the point of fighting
with others?

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

Enter Into Life Fully

We can't push away the world.
We have to enter into life fully
in order to become free.

Ram Dass

Before You Speak

Before you speak, let your words
pass through three gates.
At the first gate, ask yourself, "Is it true?"
At second gate ask, "Is it necessary?"
At the third gate ask, "Is it kind?"

Sufi saying

We Are All Quite Similar

Joy and ultimate happiness
come from living a life of purpose.
It's so much easier to put up walls
and judge others who seem different
from you, but when you pull back
the layers underneath it all, we realize
we are all quite similar.

Katie Meyler

Standing Naked

You are not naked when you take off your clothes.
You still wear your religious assumptions, your
prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions.
When you shed the cultural operating system, then,
essentially you stand naked before the inspection
of your own psyche.

Terence McKenna