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

In the point of rest at the centre of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.

Dag Hammarskjold

I am the child of the universe.
She puts her almighty protection around me.
I am free from accidents, death, sickness.
I am now shining with golden light from top to toe.
I am her chosen protected child, and she is my shield.
The winds shall aid my progress.
Water shall cleanse me from fear,
Fire will purify my doubts.
And the earth shall nourish me to health.
All is well, all is well, all is well.

Zsuzsanna E. Budapest

Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.

Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.

If you realize that you have enough,
you are truly rich.

If you stay in the center
and embrace death with your whole heart,
you will endure forever.

Lao-Tzu

Life is intentional, not accidental. I bless this central fact. Consciousness instigates shifts in outer reality. Recognizing that I have the power to change my world by changing my thinking, I set for myself a gentle vigilance towards negative thoughts. When I fear abandonment, I remind myself that the universe itself is my loving companion. When I fear stagnation, I surrender into the deeper flow of life rather than willfully forcing artificial solutions. Constantly partnered by an interactive universe, I do my part by reminding myself that I am part of a larger plan, partnered by infinite intelligence. In its perfect pink blossoming, the bloom of the apple tree does not concern itself whether a bee will appear. The blossom does its job just by blossoming. The bee is drawn to do the rest. Rather than imagine that my yearnings are self-centred or counter to the flow of life, I practice simply blossoming in the faith that I attract what I need simply by following and blessing my true nature.

Julia Cameron

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

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson

Not
Christian or Jew or
Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.
Not any religion

Or cultural system. I am
not from the east
or the west. Not
out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not
natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all.
I do not exist,

am not an entity in this
world or next,
did not descend from
Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is
the placeless, a trace
of the traceless,
neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one and
that one
call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner
only that breath breathing
Human being.

Rumi