Category Archives: Inspiring Words

Glacier National Park, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

You Are Earth

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“You are comprised of: 84 minerals, 23 Elements, and 8 gallons of water spread across 38 trillion cells. You have been built up from nothing by the spare parts of the Earth you have consumed, according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix and small enough to be carried by a sperm. You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts and rebuilt into our planet’s most complex living thing. You are not living on Earth. You are Earth.”
– Aubrey Marcus

“Nature is not matter only. She is also spirit.”
– Carl Jung
Glacier Prisms

 

Animals, Glacier National Park, Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

An Acre, Any Being, Any Waterway

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“When you truly love any acre, any being, any waterway, you love them all and realize you’re intimately connected. You can’t change everything, but you can love it all.”

-Kitty O’Meara (from 4/26/21 blog post “Ordinary Things of Conspicuous Value” – The Daily Round

Ordinary Things of Conspicuous Value

Glacier National Park, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photo Gallery, Photography, Sweet Breathing

The Beauty of the Trees, The Softness of the Air

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“The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air,…speaks to me.
The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky… speaks to me.
The faintness of the stars, the freshness of the morning… speaks to me.
The strength of fire, the trail of the sun and the life that never goes away. They speak to me and my heart soars.”
~Chief Dan George
They speak to me too…

 

Crater Lake National Park, Glacier National Park, Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing, Travel Adventure

Mountains, Woods, Rivers, Lakes, Beaches – Find Me Inside

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Mountains, Woods, Rivers, Lakes, Beaches….

 

This is the God or nature of Spinoza:

“God would have said:
Stop praying and punching yourself in the chest!
What I want you to do is go out into the world and enjoy your life.
I want you to enjoy, sing, have fun and enjoy everything I’ve made for you.
Stop going to those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and say they are my house!
My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That’s where I live and there I express my love for you.
Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing!
Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. So don’t blame me for everything they made you believe.
Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can’t read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son’s eyes…
you will find me in no book!
Trust me and stop asking me. Will you tell me how to do my job?
Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you, I criticize you, nor get angry, or bother, or punishment. I am pure love.
Stop asking for forgiveness, there’s nothing to forgive. If I made you… I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies… free will. How can I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How can I punish you for being the way you are, if I’m the one who made you Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity?
What kind of god can do that?
Forget any kind of commandments, any kind of laws; those are wiles to manipulate you, to control you, that only create guilt in you.
Respect your peers and don’t do what you don’t want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life, that your alert is your guide.
My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step, not a step in the way, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing here and now and all you need.
I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues, no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.
You are absolutely free to create in your life heaven or hell.
I could tell you if there’s anything after this life but I can give you a tip. Live as if there is no. As if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist.
So, if there’s nothing, then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is, rest assured that I won’t ask if you behaved right or wrong, I’ll ask. Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?…
Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don’t want you to believe in me, I want you to feel in you. I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.
Stop praising me, what kind of egomaniac God do you think I am?
I’m bored being praised, I’m tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? Prove it by taking care of you, your health, your relationships, the world. Feeling looked at, shocked?… Express your joy! That’s the way to praise me.
Stop complicating things and repeating as a parakeet what you’ve been taught about me.
The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, that this world is full of wonders.
What do you need more miracles for? Why so many explanations?
look for me outside, you won’t find me. Find me inside… there I am beating on you.”
-Spinoza

 

 
Glacier National Park, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

Roots

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“Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.”

-Rumi

“…The old that is strong does not wither,                                        Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien

“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.”

-Virginia Woolf

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Stained by Ink, Paint, Tears & The Moon

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“A woman may crave to be near water, or be belly down, her face in the earth, smelling the wild smell. She might have to drive into the wind. She may have to plant something, pull things out of the ground or put them into the ground. She may have to knead and bake, rapt in dough up to her elbows. She may have to trek into the hills, leaping from rock to rock trying out her voice against the mountain. She may need hours of starry nights where the stars are like face powder spilt on a black marble floor. She may feel she will die if she doesn’t dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

For A New Beginning

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Spring has dawned, infusing us all with new beginnings…

FOR A NEW BEGINNING (by John O’Donohue)
“In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.”
-John O’Donohue
From ‘To Bless the Space Between Us’

 

Home, Inspiring Words, Sweet Breathing

Winter Wonderland

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“we walk
hand in hand
the wind whipping
around us like
a kind of magic
shimmering off the branches
the trees laced with snow,
tiny dancers spring from the ground
like dust, tossed
here and there on
the wind …
spinning
twirling
swaying
to a song that only
they can hear
oh but how romantic
did they appear
And yes
how it moved me …
To each side of us,
shimmering towers of white
rose reaching for the sky
as if grasping for the hem
of heaven itself
And here
in this mystic place,
time seemed to slow
and the cold could
not touch our soul
nor pierce our hearts
Our hearts, which walked
between the towers of ice
and beat as one, unscathed
by icy spells or bewitched
by the beauty of this enchanting
forest, drifted away on a sea of
mesmerizing romantic possibilities
in our very own winter wonderland”
-Michael Traveler, “Winter Wonderland”

Home, Inspiring Words, Photography, Sweet Breathing

The Winds of Being

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“I hope for you
the fires of transformation
that burns away the dross of ego
leaving oneness, grace, and light.
That you may breathe the winds of being
With wings of an eagle to soar
Sowing life into each other
opening hearts and doors
For you are a spring of heaven
A breeze in the desert of life
Giving hope to the hopeless and broken
Bringing grace, and peace, and light.”
-Bob Holmes, “Ode to a Mystic”