Rainy day meditation

Ripples and reflections

If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.

~ Masaru Emoto

If we were having coffee: After Thanksgiving edition

Wednesday’s sunrise lights in the meadow.

If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, it is truth opening his eyes. When you close your eyes, it is truth who is closing its eyes.

This is a tremendous meditation. If you can simply understand the device, you don’t have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are sleeping, it is truth resting; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent.

This is one of the most simple meditation techniques. Slowly, slowly everything settles by this simple formula, and then there is no need for the technique.

When you are cured, you throw away the meditation, you throw away the medicine. Then you live as truth–alive, radiant, contented, blissful, a song unto yourself. Your whole life becomes a prayer without any words, or better to say a prayerfulness, a grace, a beauty which does not belong to our mundane world, a ray of light coming from the beyond into the darkness of our world.

Osho, The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Chapter 23

What say ye, Woolly Bear?

Back in mid-October.

Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.

~ Peter Drucker

A Monday walk

Yesterday’s red sunset.

Gratitude goes beyond the ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift.  In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline.  The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

If we were having coffee: Art and inspiration edition

Moon and reflections.

I don’t know your story or your dreams or the things that steal your sleep, but I know they matter.  I hope your story is rich with characters, rich with friends and conversation.  I hope you know some people who carry you, and I hope you have the honor of carrying them.  I hope that there’s beauty in your memories, and I hope it doesn’t haunt you.  And if it does, then I hope there is someone who will walk you through the night and remind you of the promise of the sunrise, that beauty keeps coming, that there are futures worth waiting and fighting for, and that you were made to dream.

~ Jamie Tworkowski