Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
~ Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor
Deep trust in life is not a feeling but a stance that you deliberately take. It is the attitude we call courage.
~ Br. David Steindl-Rast
Our experiences of embodiment may not always correspond with idealized images of holiness, but these preconceptions derive from masculine standards of perfection. Such paradigms have caused great harm, and they are no longer valid. I invite you to abandon your efforts to fix yourself and instead reclaim your innate beauty and worth as a luminous cell in the body of Mother Earth.
~ Mirabai Starr
We can touch wonder in every moment as we slow down and perceive the world around us as if for the first time. And when we contact wonder, we know thankfulness for the most ordinary, extraordinary things of life.
~M. J. Ryan
Like billowing clouds,
Like the incessant gurgle of the brook,
The longing of the spirit can never be stilled.”~ Hildegard of Bingen
And I would be the wind, whispering through the tangled woods, running airy fingers over the island’s face, tingling in the chill of concealed places, sighing secrets in the dawn. And I would be the light, flinging over the island, covering it with flash and shadow, shining on rocks and pools, softening to a touch in the glow of dusk. If I were the rain and wind and light, I would encircle the island like the sky surrounding earth, flood through it like a heart driven pulse, shine from inside it like a star in flames, burn away to blackness in the closed eyes of its night.
~ Richard Nelson, The Island Within
When there has been a breakthrough, make it a point to relive it again and again. Just sitting silently, remember it; don’t just remember it, relive it.
Start feeling the same as you felt when the breakthrough happened. Let the vibrations surround you. Move into the same space, and allow it to happen so it becomes, by and by, very natural to you. You become so capable of bringing it back that any moment you can do it.
Many valuable insights happen, but they need follow-up. Otherwise they become just memories and you will lose contact and will not be able to move into the same world. By and by, one day you yourself will start disbelieving them. You may think that it was a dream or a hypnosis or some trick of the mind. That’s how humanity lost many beautiful experiences.
Everybody comes to beautiful spaces in life. But we never try to make a path to those beautiful spaces so that they become as natural as eating, taking a bath, or going to sleep, so that whenever you close your eyes you can be in that space.
~ Osho, Everyday Osho, Day 103
breezes at dawn 