Here are some of my favourite poems, quotes and stories….
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”.
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up , after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival,
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice. meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes. because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
— Jelaluddin Rumi
Eternal Now
by Adyashanti
Take a moment to check and see if you are actually here
Before there is right and wrong
we are just here.
Before there is good or bad, or unworthy,
and before there is the sinner or saint,
we are just here.
Just meet here, where silence is
where the stillness inside dances.
Just here
before knowing something,
or not knowing.
Just meet here where all points of view merge into one
and the one point disappears
Just see if you can meet right now
where you touch the eternal
and feel the eternal living and dying at each moment.
Just to meet here
before you were an expert
before you were a beginner.
To just be here,
where you are what you always will be,
where you will never add anything to this, or subtract anything.
Meet me here where you want nothing
and where you are nothing.
The here that is unspeakable.
Where we meet only mystery to mystery
or we don’t meet at all.
Meet here where you find yourself
by not finding yourself.
In this place where quietness is deafening
and stillness moves too fast to catch it.
Meet here where you are what you want and you want what you are
and everything falls away into radiant emptiness
The Conversation of the Unborn Twins
An unborn couple or twins’ conversation in the womb of their mother.
“Say, do you actually believe in live after birth?” the one twin adds.
“Yes, definitely! Inside we grow and are prepared for what will come outside” answered the other twin.
“ I believe that’s nonsense!” says the first. “There can’t be life after birth – what is it supposed to look like?”
“I don’t exactly know either. But there will certainly be much more light than in here. And maybe we will walking about and eating with our mouths?”
“I’ve never heard such nonsense! Eating with our mouths? What a crazy idea. There is unbilical cord that nourishes us. And how do you want to walk about? The unbilical cord is much too short”
“I am sure it is possible. It just that everything will be a little bit different”
“You are crazy nobody ever came back after birth. Life is over with birth. That’s it!”
“I admit nobody knows what life after birth will look like. But I know that we will see out mothers then, and that she will take care of us”
“Mother??? but you don’t believe in a mother, do you? Where is she?”
“She is here, all around us. We are and we live within her and around her. Without her we couldn’t exist at all!”
“Nonsense! I’ve never sensed a mother, consequently she doesn’t exist”
“Yes, sometimes when we are very quiet you can hear her sing, or feel how she caresses our world” Author unknown
: “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go” TS Eliot
American Beauty The final words of the film –
It’s hard to stay mad when there is so much beauty in the world.
Sometimes I feel like I am seeing it all at once and its too much.
My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst.
And then I remember to relax and to stop trying to hold onto it
And then it flows through me like rain.
And I can’t feel anything but gratitude
For every single moment of my stupid little life.
Opening
Opening the Eye of the Heart requires practise, patience and trust to bring it into being.
When we are prepared to become but a humble servant of life, devoted to caring for it and healing it, we become free from all fear.
We are then able to resonate with life, harmoniously and ecstatically.
Scilla Elworthy and Anne Baring
This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed non-conformists….. The saving of our world from impending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a non-conforming minority…. Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King Jr
Love after Love
The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,
And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you
All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
Here I am
Here I am
It’s late at night
Tired.
But everything is still and quiet.
The moments that passed so fast
In daylight with much to do
Lengthen like elastic.
The clock in the kitchen ticks
Marking off the seconds of time,
Of life, of the future.
And where have I been today?
I have been immersed in frenetic activity,
Cleaning and making up for busy days.
But I have missed me
In the rush
I have missed the timeless eternal me.
A puzzle for all us unenlightened souls –
How do we connect with spirit
And still live life
Eating, working and looking after ourselves?
There are never enough hours
To do everything – it seems
And to be present.
But if I can just wake up a few times an hour
To the beauty of being alive –
To the act of being –
Of life –
Then……
Here I am.
Pearls of Wisdom
Great love and great achievements involve great risk – TAKE RISKS
-Just live your dream.
Respect self, others, take responsibility for your actions.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
Open your arms to change but don’t give up your values.
Silence is sometimes the best answer.
A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
Once a year, go some place you’ve never been before.
Remember the best relationship is the one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
Louise’s Pearls of Wisdom
Be wary of stepping into roles
Everyone has value
Be more strategic/structured (for me)
I have a choice, I can choose how to be
Have spontaneity – experience things as if for the 1st time
All situations are new – they have never happened before
Be open hearted
Be like a child
Allow myself to be. See where it takes me.
Don’t account for who I am. Just be.
Speak with an open heart and authenticity
Stick your neck out
I don’t need to be validated
Flex my emotional muscles
I need to jump into the river and not stand on the bank or cling to the edge
Don’t put myself down and don’t judge myself
Be in the middle ground – between hope and despair
Remember that what you put out, you get back
When you are not coming from the story, you can do anything – life has huge possibilities
I can be anything
Accept everything. Take what comes – be in the moment
Belief in myself is empowering
Wake in the morning with the possibility of being whoever you want to be.
Take risks – great love and great achievements involve taking great risks.
My way forward
Laugh and smile more
Move into my fears, be the fear,
Feel the fear and do it anyway
Trust in all and everything and everyone and most important of all – in life.
Stop trying to fix myself and the world – trying to fix things makes them worse, instead change how I feel and think about the ‘problem’
Grow my adult self
Be prepared to fall off – lots, be prepared and happy to get things wrong – be happy to fail!
Think what is the worst that could happen – consequences are usually not as bad as we think
Power
My powerlessness breeds prevarication
Prevarication breeds powerlessness.
Both breed resignation.
Excuses and justifications abound
My story goes round and round and round.
So Stop. Stop this madness.
Whose life is this?
It’s mine!
Stop trying to avoid the issues.
Why am I powerless?
Because my story says I might fail
Because I might get it wrong
Because I think I might make myself look stupid
Because I think I might be exposed as an idiot
As naive, or foolish and no-one will like me.
It has all blocked, blocks and still blocks me.
See the story for what it is as it is not me.
Have compassion for the rotten little voice in my ear
That makes excuses and
Stop being powerless –
Just do it!
Take a risk!
Take lots of risks!
Stick my neck out!
Risk looking like a fool!
Live life with the breaks off!
Goooooooo for it!!!
What is the worst that could happen?
Maybe I will get it wrong –
But we all make mistakes.
After all, to err is human
Being perfect is a no-hearted robot.
So seize the moment, be in my power
Believe in myself, live life with integrity –
And wake each morning with the possibility
Of being whoever I want to be.
Helen Cranston 