The Mind And Awareness

There is no ideal in observation.
When you have an ideal,
you cease to observe,
you are then merely
approximating the
present to the idea,
and therefore there
is duality, conflict,
and all the rest of it.

The mind has to be in the
state when it can see, observe.
The experience of the observation
is really an astonishing state.

In that there is no duality.
The mind is simply—aware.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti

Be Curious, Be Aware

Our business in living
is to become fluent
with the life we are living,
and art can help this.

― John Cage

Just Be

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Lightly

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly.
Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.

Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.


Aldous Huxley, Island

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

― John O'Donohue

Blessing in the Chaos

To all that is chaotic in you,

let there come silence.

Let there be a calming

of the clamoring,

a stilling of the voices that

have laid their claim

on you,

that have made their

home in you,

that go with you

even to the

holy places

but will not

let you rest,

will not let you

hear your life

with wholeness

or feel the grace

that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you

cease.

Let what divides you

cease.

Let there come an end

to what diminishes

and demeans,

and let depart

all that keeps you

in its cage.

Let there be

an opening

into the quiet

that lies beneath

the chaos,

where you find

the peace

you did not think

possible

and see what shimmers

within the storm.

―John O’Donohue

real strength

I've come to know, 

the better I feel about myself, 

the less I feel the need to show off.

~Indigo Girl