Author: Posts

The continual search for pleasure or security, searching for a more comfortable situation at the domestic or spiritual level, are some of the things that keep us unhappy.  We will never have it all together, there is only this moment to live.  If you live in the moment, you will find the joy you are seeking.

Influencing others requires perception.  We need to know when to act, when to be passive, when others are receptive to us, and when they will not listen.  Possibly you need to change yourself.  This takes experience of course, so just keep practicing or make a game for yourself out of it.

What good is it to spend your life accumulating material things or conforming your behavior to others conventions?  Give yourself up to whatever the moment brings, there is nothing to hold onto.  Don’t think about your actions, just let them flow, hold nothing back from life.

If a person or persons are annoying you, sometimes it is best not to engage them, instead retreat with dignity and reserve.  When you carry retreat out correctly it is a sign of strength.  Through perseverance and single acts of resistance we prepare for the counter movement.  

Quote: Never complain to someone who can’t help you with the problem.

Each day reflect on the day ahead keeping a wide-open heart and mind.  Before retiring reflect on what you have done.  If you did something you aspired to do, even once, rejoice in that.  If you went against your aspiration rejoice that you can see what you did.

Spirituality lies in the ordinary everyday things you do, the only way to describe it is by comparing it to ordinary things.  If you regard spirituality as extraordinary, then it remains outside yourself -a myth, a fantasy, an unnameable quantity, but once you know it, it is part of your daily life.

Thinking and talking about a self-cultivation practice are not the same as practicing it.  Whoever became a good athlete by talking about sports?  Start by relaxing your mind and quieting your senses, this allows you to concentrate on your practice, no matter what it is.

After something is complete and before a new cycle gets started, there is a myriad of possibilities.  There is an opportunity, when things are not yet formed, to influence what they are going to become through care and consideration, this provides real motivation for innovative opportunities.

Quote: When you cultivate a natural response to what life is bringing, you react less and observe more.

Difficult people teach us how to learn and grow.  We all know people that complain constantly or that are irritated by everything.  When we meet them, we should look for the lessons they can teach us, humility, patience, kindness just to name a few.

We must understand how the past affects us; we should keep the present rich and full of satisfying experiences and devote some time each day to building the future.  Thinking of the past, present and future is a useful conceptual technique but must be appropriately balanced.

Embrace all things, accept everything, extend your goodwill in every direction, or you can deny everything, recognizing that everything you see, is an illusion.  Both paths lead to the spontaneous awareness of the harmonious oneness, then all you must do is participate in it.

It is easy to trust the universe when everything is going well, but when life gets difficult, we need to look carefully at the difficulty; usually you can find the solution or cause in the difficulty itself.  When the difficult times pass, we say “that wasn’t as bad as I anticipated”.

Quote: Our outside world is known from an inner point of view.

Setting goals for others is aggressive.  It could be more about wanting a success story for ourselves, we are asking them to live up to our ideals. Rather than having expectations for others, just be kind to them.  If people mess up, do anything you can to bring some happiness into their lives.

Actions in life can be reduced to two factors: positioning and timing.  Almost anything is appropriate if it accords with the time and place, but when life presents us an opportunity we must be ready to seize it without hesitation.  Position and timing is useless without awareness.

Chanting is no more holy than listening to the murmur of a stream, counting prayer beads no more sacred than simply breathing, religious robes no more spiritual than work clothes.  Just live a quiet and simple life, free of ideas and concepts to attain oneness.

To achieve results that are enduring and complete, be gentle with a steady influence that never lapses.  To produce such results, you must have a clearly defined goal.  Your results may be less striking than things done suddenly, but they will be more lasting.

Quote: What does a better you look like?

When we start to interrupt calling ourselves names or patting ourselves on the back, we are doing something extremely brave.  Slowly we move toward an open state, moving toward a place of no handholds, no footholds, no mind holds, giving us a feeling of freedom.

As we shape the situations in our lives, we must be aware of the form we want things to take.  The closer it comes to completion, the harder it is to change the shape and more definite it becomes.  Beauty or ugliness, utility or failure comes from this process of shaping.

As you cultivate the mind, body and spirit and simply balance the polarities, you discover the truth.  Once we understand this, we will have peace and universal harmony that naturally arises making all things one.  Forget this because the universe is already a harmonious oneness, just realize it.

If your mind is open and far-reaching you can recognize the truth in all things.  This way you can combat evil and promote the good with the strength that this openness gives you.  Using this kind of strength and clarity, you can embrace myriad principles and response to myriad things.

Quote: The garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind.  Rumi

Problems are a projection of your own mind, the unwanted parts of yourself you want to get rid of.  Problems will go away by working with them using compassion and patience.  If they still linger on, remember when the resistance is gone, so are the problems.

In the midst of any situation, it is best to be patient.  Whether the situation is illness, calamity, or your own anger, know that healing always follows upheaval.  No matter how extreme the situation is, it will change, because natural events always seek their opposite.

If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place because the mind is the governing aspect of human life.  To correct your mind, stop thinking and clinging to complications, and avoid daydreaming.  Eliminate mental muddiness and obscurity; keep your mind crystal clear.

Excess and insufficiency are injurious to your health.  Put a limit on your expenditures and actions, not excessive or too little, look for balance.  If we impose limitations on others and evade them ourselves this will cause resistance and resentment.

Quote: No matter how difficult a situation is there is a point where it turns favourable.

The more we get to know our judgementalness, pettiness and arrogance we realize they are not sins, but workable habits of the mind.  The more we get to know them, the more they lose their power, and we come to trust our basic simple nature free of struggle between good and bad.

When disaster strikes, we can do nothing other than accept it.  It may alter the course of our actions and thinking.  However, we must keep to our deeper convictions and remember our goals and not get caught up in the chaos.  Whether we remain the ash or become the Phoenix is up to us.

If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be truly fulfilled.  If your happiness depends on money or possessions, you will never be happy.  Be content with what you have and rejoice in the way things are, then you will realize nothing is lacking.

To bring about abundance, a union of clarity of mind and energetic movement is needed.  In periods of abundance, we become used to an easy situation, that is the time for caution and careful planning in preparation for the decline that must follow.

Quote: It’s your road, and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you. Rumi

Practice opening up to whatever you feel rather than shutting down on yourself, by doing this something will shift permanently in us.  We will find that our habitual patterns will begin to soften, and we will begin to see the faces and hear the words of people who are talking to us.

We see activities only as obligations and we often strain against our fate.  But there is a joy to working and doing things in harmony with the proper time.  When we do things at just the right occasion and those efforts bear fruit later, the gratification is tremendous.

In ancient times people lived holistic lives, if an invention appeared they looked for the problems it might cause, as well as the shortcuts it offered.  They valued old ways that had been proven effective as well as new ways, if they could be proven effective.

In society conflicts are unavoidable, sometimes you have to give up your own interests and ideas to chime in with others but continue to do what you intuitively know is right.  However, you must adapt to the demands of the time rather than wear yourself out resisting.

Quote: When you perceive an act done to another is done to yourself, you have understood a great truth.

When you have thoughts and feelings of unworthiness use your intelligence, courage, and humor to turn the tide.  Ask yourself,  “Do I want to strengthen what I am feeling right now?”  Remind yourself that your fundamental nature is unconditionally open and free.

We can all benefit from living according to seasonal circumstances.  Whether it’s the time or the method, living is half initiative and half knowing how to let things proceed on their own according to the times.  Do seasonal things rather than trying to go against them.

Nothing in the realm of thoughts or ideologies is absolute, because of this there is nothing more futile that relying on the mind.  Quiet your thinking, quit making distinctions between one thing and another, just stay in your centre, and accept all things as being part of you.

Nourishing yourself is not a matter of the food you eat, it is a matter benevolence, justice, and enlightened qualities.  The way to fill oneself with benevolence, justice and taste enlightenment qualities is all about seeking them by yourself, not relying on others.

Quote: You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within. – Galileo