heartsteps

My head is bald…but hatted. My coat is warm. “Brave travelers dream time, hoist hope like a flag on a staff.” Green hills meet indigo sky. The wind pushes me on. “Clouds tell no stories.” The moon is bright. Prayer hurts. The sight of God is fatal. “Keep moving.”

Bernard Laurie Edwards

Consciousness is already conscious. It is the unmanifested, the eternal. The universe, however, is only gradually becoming conscious. Consciousness itself is timeless and therefore does not evolve. It was never born and does not die. When consciousness becomes the manifested universe, it appears to be subject to time and to undergo an evolutionary process. No human mind is capable of comprehending fully the reason for this process. But we can glimpse it within ourselves and become a conscious participant in it.

Consciousness is the intelligence, the organizing principle behind the arising of form. Consciousness has been preparing forms for millions of years so it can express itself through them in the manifested.

Although the unmanifested realm of pure consciousness could be considered another dimension as awareness, inner space, Presence. How does it do that? Through the human form that becomes conscious and thus fulfils its destiny. The human form was created for this higher purpose, and millions of other forms prepared the ground for it.

Eckhart Tolle

I think God might be a little prejudiced.
For once He asked me to join Him on a walk
through this world,

and we gazed into every heart on this earth,
and I noticed He lingered a bit longer
before any face that was weeping,

and before any eyes that were
laughing.

And sometimes when we passed
a soul in worship

God too would kneel down.

I have come to learn: God
adores His
creation.

Francis of Assisi

I am music waiting to be heard. I am a song unfolding. My notes are the voice of Life singing through me in majesty. I open my throat to the word of creation. I speak my truth and build my life upon it. I open my mouth to exclaim the glory that I feel within me. I give voice to God and God’s plan for me. I refuse to be small when God intends for me to be large. I expand without pride, without arrogance. I expand through love. I open my heart and mind to the brighter, clearer and more joyous vistas Life intends for me. I allow Life to create through me the better life which I speak and see.

Julia Cameron

"Golden Journey" by Linda Frimer

When I was the stream, when I was the
forest, when I was still the field,
when I was every hoof, foot,
fin and wing, when I
was the sky
itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever
wondered was there anything I might need,
for there was nothing
I could not
love.

It was when I left all we once were that
the agony began, the fear and questions came,
and I wept, I wept. And tears
I had never known
before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,
I begged – I begged to wed every object
and creature,

and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
And He did not say,
“Where have you
been?”

For then I knew my soul – every soul
has always held
Him.

Meister Eckhart

It’s the old rule that drunks
have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad:
he falls into a hole.
But down in that hole he finds
something shining,
worth more than any amount
of money or power.
Last night the moon came
dropping her clothes
in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks.
Everywhere is falling
everywhere.

Nothing else to do.

Here’s the new rule:
break the wineglass, and
fall toward the glassblower’s
breath.

Rumi

Look to this day, for it is Life, the very life of Life;
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence…
the bliss of Growth, the glory of Action, the splendour of Beauty.

For Yesterday is but a dream,
and Tomorrow only a vision;
But Today well lived makes Yesterday a dream of Happiness
and Tomorrow a vision of Hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.
Such is the salutation to the Dawn.

Kálidása

“If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, we can transform them into the kind of energy that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

In times of loss and difficulty, I choose to consciously deepen my strength through actively seeking the blessing hidden in my adversity. I do not deny my painful feelings or run from them but I do choose to move through them seeking the opportunity for insight that lies for me on the other side. I do not suffer for the sake of suffering or mistake pain as the only soil for my spiritual growth. Instead, I remind myself that suffering and pain are temporary while my spiritual comfort is eternal. Knowing this, I open my heart to the timeless comforts which Spirit provides. I take comfort in the moistening rain, in the scent of flowers, in the tall oak offering me its shade. Even when deeply troubled, I seek to find Spirit in the midst of my suffering. I soften my heart to the gentle touch of comfort. I allow Spirit to touch my grief.

Julia Cameron

Stephanie Nolen with AIDS-affected boy

National Newspaper Award and Amnesty International Award for Human Rights Reporting winner Stephanie Nolen is The Globe and Mail’s current India, and formerly Africa, correspondent. She just received an honorary Doctorate in Civil Laws from King’s and this is part of her address to students:

Sometimes bad luck turns out not to be so bad.

That you learn the most from the hardest things.

That opportunities come in places where you’re not looking.

And, as Amelia Earhart said (words I later took as my own motto when I was learning to fly), “Courage is the price that life demands for granting peace.”

Something else happened to me along the way in those early years of working overseas: I think it began the first time I went to a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and really spent some time there. I came away with a whole new understanding of my privilege, as a Canadian, and of the fact that really, I didn’t know anything about anything in the world. I didn’t know what life was really like for — as I would soon start to realize — the great bulk of people in the world.

And here’s something I only started to figure out even later: that even if you spend the rest of your life right here, you are responsible for much of what happens elsewhere in the world.

For how those other people live.

Regardless of what you choose to do with your new degree, your new skills, you will be responsible.

If you have an iPod like mine, or a cellphone, or a Wii, you are connected to the 14-year-olds I have met who are enslaved by rebel groups in the Congo and who dig for coltan, the mineral that is the essential ingredient in our gadgets.

If you have a Gap T-shirt like I do, then you are connected to the Bangladeshi women who stitched it for five bucks a day, and who cannot develop their textile sector into better-paying jobs because of our trade restrictions.

If, like me, you are a Canadian citizen, you are connected to the children in Swaziland who cannot go to school today, who will never have the moment you are having today, because Canada, as a voting, policy-setting member of the World Bank, forces the Swazi government to charge school fees for their primary schools — even though ours are free.

And if, like me, you enjoy the occasional Starbucks latte, you are connected to the women in Ethiopia who earn 70 cents a day sorting their coffee beans. Ah-hah, you think. I always order the fair trade blend. Well, great. The women in the fair trade factory earn 96 cents a day. I know — I spent an afternoon on a Starbucks factory line in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a couple of years ago.

So I can tell you that those women are glad to have their jobs.

I’m not sure that’s good enough.

You are connected to these people. And you decide how much responsibility you will take for that.

Stephanie Nolan

"The Wire" by Noel Counihan

On the acorn side of surrender, freedom almost always means what Thomas Merton calls “choice freedom.” It’s about having the means to do what I want, go where I want, say what I want, buy what I want. What the acorn usually doesn’t see is how much these apparently “free” choices are actually dictated by cultural conditioning and the hidden agendas of the lower self, with its compulsive wanting and needing.

Real freedom, according to spiritual teaching, does not mean “choice freedom” but rather “spontaneity freedom,” in Merton’s words. A modern Sufi master, Sara Sviri, cuts to the heart of this with powerful words: “When the heart surrenders willingly to the Divine hold, it becomes free of the manipulations of the lower self. Paradoxically, such freedom is reflected by a letting go of choices.” Quoting an 11th Century Sufi master, she summarizes the classic spiritual teaching: “Man does not become a true servant until he becomes free of all but God.”

Cynthia Bourgeault

What a luxury to have a year to live! With 250,000 people dying each day and knowing we are somewhere down that line, who has time to put life aside? We prepare for death by living every second, living life minutely, exploring our body and mind with a merciful awareness. To be this close to the moment in which our life is unfolding we need to cultivate a deeper awareness through the development of a meditation practice.

Awareness is itself a healing quality. Where awareness is focused the deepest potentials for clarity and balance present themselves. Though what we are aware of may be incessantly changing, awareness itself remains a constant, a luminous spaciousness without beginning or end, without birth or death. It is the essence of life itself. It is what remains when all that is impermanent falls away. It is the deathless.

Stephen Levine

A rich man asked Sengai to write something for the continued prosperity of his family so that it might be treasured from generation to generation.

Sengai obtained a large sheet of paper and wrote: Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.”

The rich man became angry. “I asked you to write something for the happiness of my family! Why do you make such a joke as this?”

“No joke is intended,” explained Sengai. “If before you yourself die your son should die, this would grieve you greatly. If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would be broken-hearted. If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the orfer I have named, it will be a natural course of lfe. I call this real prosperity.”

Paul Reps