heartsteps

Howard Thurman

Love not the shapely branch,
Nor place its image alone in your heart.
It dies away.

Love the whole tree;
Then you will love the shapely branch,
The tender and withered leaf,
The shy bud and the full-blown flower,
The falling petal and the dancing night,
The splendid shadow of full love.

Ah, love Life in its fullness.
It knows no decay.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne