“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear”
“No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place”
These are Zen proverbs that I could endlessly revisit, falling ever deeper into meaning.
Meditative absorption.
Direct understanding.
The Zen of Winter.
“To the mind that is still the whole universe surrenders”
Lao Tzu
“Music in the soul can be heard by the universe”
“To attain knowledge,
add things every day.
To attain wisdom,
remove things every day.”
Lao Tzu
“When you want only love
you will see nothing else”
I have this quote by my bedside (from A Course in Miracles). When I use the love eyes this quote evokes my day is transformed – my eyes are seeing from my heart…
How much of what we “see” is a reflection of ourselves?
“There are two ways of spreading light … To be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.”
Edith Wharton
“The experience of bliss will give you an insight into the very phenomenon of beauty. Not only does it make you beautiful, it suddenly transforms the whole world. The whole world becomes beautiful because the world reflects you, it is a mirror.”
-osho
…”beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror”
Kahlil Gibran
Winter’s way has laid the outside world bare. The bareness of winter, the quiet serenity, and the snow blanket, can lay bare our inner world too – if we let it.
As above so below.
An unsealed inner universe is open for marvelous reflection and deepening. So much going on while the world sleeps.
Bare, defined, disclosed, discovered, naked, resolved, solved, uncovered, unprotected, clear, debunked, denuded, divulged, exhibited, manifest, open, peeled, revealed, shown, stripped, unmasked, unsealed, unveiled, apparent, brought to light, evident, dug up, on view, unconcealed, unhidden, unsheltered…
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
-Joseph Campbell
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
-Joseph Campbell
Are we brave enough to lay bare our souls?
To be authentic, real and raw?
To be open?
Out here in the woods, the tree dance brings a welcome, hearty, and ever changing song.
Season to season they stand in place and in witness of all of life’s wonder – a constant teaching.
“A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. -John Muir
“Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When men reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver
“My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.”
Mary Oliver
“For one human being
to love another…
that is perhaps the
most difficult of
all our tasks, the
final and ultimate proof,
the task for which all
others are but
preparation”
–R. Maria Rilke
“If all the beasts were gone,
men would die
from a great loneliness of spirit,
for whatever happens to the beasts
also happens to the man.
All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the Earth
befalls the sons of the Earth.”
― Chief Seattle
“I’m in love with Montana.
For other states I have admiration,
respect, recognition, even some affection.
But with Montana it is love.
And it’s difficult to analyze love
when you’re in it.”
John Steinbeck
