Some Inspirations for the Year Ahead: 2015

Far too frequently we see ourselves as doers. This means that in order to feel worthy in our own or [Spirit’s] eyes, we feel we must endlessly work and achieve. We have not always learned just to be receptive, to be in the presence of [Spirit] – quiet, available...              Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Let my doing nothing, when I have nothing to do, become untroubled in its depth of peace, like the evening in the seashore when the water is silent.                                  Rabindranath Tagore

Listen in deep silence. Be very still and open your mind…. Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this insane world.
                                                                                                                        A Course in Miracles

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
                                                                                                                                Virginia Woolfe

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?                                                         Tao Te Ching

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.                               A.A. Milne

We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.                                         Pema Chodron

Not knowing where you are going creates more than uncertainty; it fosters a sense of aliveness, an appreciation of the particulars around you. It wakes you up...we are far closer to what is real when we do not see our destination clearly.                                                 Rachel Naomi Remen

Growth and forward motion continue whether we are vigilant or not. Pushing ourselves often slows the process: it stirs resistance in the healthy parts of us that are protecting the natural flow from being overthrown or interfered with. When you get scared that you'll never come out of this (or any other place in which you find yourself) remember that everything in us moves always toward growth and change–no matter how it looks to our outside eye.
                                                 Robyn Posin
         
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.                                                                                                                                                         Francis Bacon

Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers, but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.          Rachel Naomi Remen    

If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead in winter and later proves to be alive.    
                                                                                          Pablo Neruda, translated by Alstair Reid