Just for Being

“You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don’t have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success – none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.”

“The universe is an example of love. Like a tree. Like the ocean. Like my body. Like my wheelchair. I see the love.”

“The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it’s in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I’m caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.”

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”

“I sit with people who are dying. I’m one of those unusual types that enjoys being with someone when they’re dying because I know I am going to be in the presence of Truth.”

“We’re fascinated by the words, but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”

All quotes by Ram Dass

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Who You Truly Are

“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

“We cannot change anything unless we accept it.”

“What you resist, persists.”

“The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.”

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”

“Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the moon than it is to penetrate one’s own being.”

All quotes by C.G. Jung

A Very Simple Secret

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

“It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.”

“When you give yourself, you receive more than you give.”

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

“No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.”

“Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.”

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

All quotes by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Meant For You

“Don’t drink at the water’s edge, throw yourself in. Become the water. Only then will your thirst be quenched.” — Jeanette Berson

“Move, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.” — Rumi

“Detachment creates room for creation.” — Tosha Silver

“What is meant for you is always meant to find you.” — Saint Lalleshwari

“Abundance is something to be, not seek or await.” — Tosha Silver

“There’s no formula.” — J. K. Rowling

If You’re Falling

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

“What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of fiasco. But there’s also the possibility of bliss.”

“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.”

“If you are falling, dive.”

“If there were already a path, it would have to be someone else’s; the whole point is to find your own way.”

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

All quotes by Joseph Campbell

Underground Secret of the Redwoods

“Sometime ago I was with a friend, and we were walking through Muir Woods. Which is a redwood forest, close to San Francisco. Actually, every year I go with this friend there. We like to just be alone and walk through the redwood trees and share our thoughts. This one particular year, as we were going through the forest, there was a forest ranger speaking to a group of tourists. He said, “I want to share with you the underground secret of the redwood trees.” Now being from the 60s, something that never leaves my heart is an attraction for underground secrets. So I told my friend, let’s listen. So we stopped, and the ranger explained how in this forest we find some of the oldest, largest trees in the entire planet. He said, “Interestingly, the redwood trees do not have roots that grow very deep, and here it’s hilly ground with loose soil. Over the centuries there have been devastating earthquakes and massive storms. How do these trees keep growing?” He was quiet, to let everyone think. Then he revealed the underground secret, “Just underground, the redwood trees roots grow out, and they reach for the roots of other trees. And when two redwood trees roots meet, they wrap around each other. They embrace and create a permanent bond. In this way the trees support each other. And the little tiny redwood trees, that are just growing, they wrap their little thread-like roots around the giant roots of the ancients. And in this way they are all helping each other.” The ranger said, “Every tree in the entire forest is directly or indirectly supporting each other.” When we actulally care about each other, and share what we have with each other — unity is our strength. And like this story of the redwood forest, despite all the storms and challenges of life, we continue to grow, and grow and grow. And we need each other to do that.”

Quote by Radhanath Swami

What Poetry Does

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” — T. S. Eliot

“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.” — Carl Sandburg

“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.” — Novalis

“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.” — Allen Ginsberg

“Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.” — Albert Einstein

“Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.” — Vincent Van Gogh

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.” — Plutarch

“Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.” — Jorge Luis Borges

“Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.” — Umberto Eco

“The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.” — Muriel Rukeyser

“Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.” — Alice Walker