A blog about anything and everything
We are born to fight, there is no choice in the matter.
Our every desire must bring us into conflict.
But we can choose how and whom we will fight.
We can turn our anger against others, or we can turn it against what is selfish and angry in ourselves.
We can use our hands to strike at others or to wipe tears away.
The people who love me, the people I really depend on, were never the critics who were pointing at me while I stumbled.
They weren’t in the bleachers at all. They were with me in the arena. Fighting for me and with me.
Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.
The people who love me and will be there regardless of the outcome are within arm’s reach.
This realization has changed everything.”
Galileo was one of the first modern scientists, because he used the experimental method to find out how the world worked.
Rather than trying to decide whether or not his ideas lined up with philosophy, Galileo made theories about the world and then tested them through doing experiments.
Measure what is measurable,’ he once said, ‘and if something cannot be measured, figure out how it can be.
Taken from: The Story of the World Vol. II
Taken from Gratitude Works
When people regularly cultivate gratitude, they experience a multitude of psychological, physical, interpersonal, and spiritual benefits.
Gratitude has one of the strongest links to mental health and satisfaction with life of any personality trait—more so than even optimism, hope, or compassion.
Grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism, and gratitude as a discipline protects us from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed, and bitterness.
People who experience gratitude can cope more effectively with everyday stress, show increased resilience in the face of trauma-induced stress, recover more quickly from illness, and enjoy more robust physical health.
Many of these effects are quantifiable.
Consider these eye-popping statistics. People are 25 percent happier if they keep gratitude journals, sleep one-half hour more per evening, and exercise 33 percent more each week compared to persons who are not keeping these journals. …
Experiencing gratitude leads to increased feelings of connectedness, improved relationships, and even altruism.
We have also found that when people experience gratitude, they feel more loving, more forgiving, and closer to God.
| There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer; No disease that enough love will not heal; No door that enough love will not open; No gulf that enough love will not bridge; No wall that enough love will not throw down; No sin that enough love will not redeem. It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, How hopeless the outlook, How muddled the tangle, How great the mistake; A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough, you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world. |
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear of falling
or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
The act of writing down your blessings translates your thoughts into words,
and writing has been shown to have advantages over just thinking the thoughts.
Writing helps to organize thoughts, facilitate integration,
and helps you accept your own experiences and put them in context.
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.
When you think of spirituality think about a tree, how the tree grows….
The tree puts down many, many roots….
There is a balance between the roots and branches….
To have a balanced consciousness, you must have spirituality in the inner world, and spirituality in the outer world….
Your spirituality must be grounded or else your spirituality remains suspended in the air.
On one side you must further the expansion of your consciousness, and on the other side, you must show the fruits of the expansion of consciousness.
(Consciousness Vol. 1, p. 278).