Tag: Vision

Happiness as nowness: 31 inspirational quotations for December

 

Do photographs live in the now? If so how - where and when and with whom?
Do photographs live in the now? If so how - where and when and with whom?

My chosen favorite quotations for December and mainly about enlightenment, ‘now’ and the importance of living in the now.  They are not by Eckhart Tolle – but by an extraordinary variety of writers, even though Tolle is the outstanding teacher about now-ness.   My thanks espcially to two of the very best sources of quotations online WisdomQuotes and the Quote Garden

 

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RUMI

1 Into my heart’s night / Along a narrow way / I groped; and lo! the light,……. – Rubaiyat of Rumi

 

ANON

2 Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. – Anon (?)

 

VIKTOR FRANKL

3 “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” — Victor Frankl

 

W.B. YEATS

4 “Man can embody the truth but he cannot know it.” – W.B. Yeats

 

MARK TWAIN

5 ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.’ Mark Twain

 

BUDDHA

6 “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” (Buddha)

 

SENECA

7 “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” (Seneca)

 

KEVIN KELLY

8 There is only One machine.

The web is its OS.

All screens look into the One.

No bits will live outside the web.

To share is to gain.

Let the One read it.

The One is us.

Kevin Kelly (see YouTube)

 

KAREN ARMSTRONG

9 “Like poetry, religion is an attempt to express the inexpressible.” – Karen Armstrong

 

M SCOTT PECK

10 Love = “The willingness to extend myself for the spiritual growth of myself or another”. (From “The Road Less Travelled”).

 

ANON and ECKHART TOLLE

11 The voice of God is silence

 

ANON and GHANDI

12  He/She/It has no religion.

 

ANAIS NIN:

13 The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

 

ANAIS NIN:

14 We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

 

ANNE FRANK:

15 How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

 

ARTHUR MILLER:

16 The word now is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.

 

BRENDA PETERSON:

17 The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers.

 

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN:

18 Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.

 

CORITA KENT:

19 Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING:

20 Light tomorrow with today!

 

GWENDOLYN BROOKS:

21 Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. 

And be it gash or gold it will not come 

Again in this identical guise.

 

HENRY FORD:

22 History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.

 

HUGH PRATHER:

23 To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.

 

THICH NHAT HANH:

24 Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life..

 

JOANNA RUSS:

25 Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler’s bet: it’s an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, the old Eternal Now.

 

KALIDASA:

26 Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!

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 Splendor of Beauty;

For Yesterday is but a Dream,

And To-morrow is only a Vision;

But To-day well lived makes 

Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,

And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.

Look well therefore to this Day!

Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

 

MARGARET BONNANO:

27 It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.

 

MATTHEW ARNOLD:

28 Is it so small a thing 

To have enjoy’d the sun, 

To have lived light in the spring, 

To have loved, to have thought, to have done…

 

PEMA CHODRON:

29 Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.

 

ROBERT FROST:

30 Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:

31 The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.

Set your goals to motivate your success – through ‘singing’ your ‘uni-verse’

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In my work as a life-coach I lead people to develop and focus their life-force so that they can get from where they are at, to where they want to be.

Getting in tune with your self and your life’s purpose is central to such achievement and success.

Getting in tune with you self and your life’s purpose is a matter of harmonization – of vision, goals, plans and action  and of head, heart and circumstances.

To ‘sing one’s song’ is a metaphor for finding and staying tuned with your life’s purpose.

Harmonization is also a matter of getting in touch with our inner wisdom.  Chinese wisdom places great emphasis on harmony.  Inner and outer harmony are both important.

Outer harmony depends on inner harmony.
Inner harmony depends on being, doing and having in relation to our life purpose – i.e. getting alignment.

We need to get alignment between head and heart, and between the activities of our inner and outer lives. Then we get ‘flow’ – when we are able to function in energized harmony – like an athlete ‘in the zone’.

Episodes of silence are vital.

If we are in a situation we don’t see as getting us toward our dream then ‘see it differently’ – that is see it as a stepping stone, as opposed to a mill-stone!

Decide on your life’s purpose – don’t worry it will evolve via experience – and further reflection.

Locating, tuning and singing your ‘song’ also requires a sufficiency of silence and experiences of living in the now – see my Eckhart Tolle articles and better still read and listen to Eckhart Tolle.

Just DECIDE and START!   (‘Ready. Fire. Aim!)

Set your goals – and work your goals day by day.  How? – here’s one way great way.

For every day draw 4 circles.

1st circle =   My Lifelong Dream,

2nd circle  = My Year,

3rd circle  =  My month,

4th circle =   My day.

Keep the 4 circles of your personal universe in harmony via working to your daily goal-setting.

The ‘universe’ as Wayne Dyer reminds us means ‘one song’.

Live your life singing your single, harmonised, song and you will succeed.

Harmony here is what enables us to be focused, and motivated.

Plan and work every day to achieve toward your monthly goals – etc.

Periodically adjust them all according to each other, so you have the motivation of always operating in a single, harmonized universe.

Keep the dream sharply visualized.

Don’t be afraid of adjustments – think of life as a ship’s journey – course corrections are inevitable and necessary.

Occasionally remind yourself of these two quotations;

1 “If you don’t think about the future, you won’t have one.” Henry Ford

2 “The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke’s statement takes us even deeper by telling us that we create our future by what we are.

Balance doing, knowing and having with being.  The current master of ‘being’ is – Eckhart Tolle.

If you don’t plan your journey don’t be surprised if you end up somewhere you don’t want to be!

Have fun singing your song – literally as well as metaphorically.

Keep the dream – even if a ‘credit crunch’ means you have to do stuff that is a temporary delay.

Sometimes just surviving is the biggest step you can make that particular day – but that day in the future will be seen as being just as important – because you didn’t give up!

Survival is sometimes progress.

Sometimes survival is the best singing of your song possible on that particular day.  It’s still worth celebrating – you can’t sing at your own wake!

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I once used What’ll we do with a drunken sailor as a class song but be careful, a full rendition of all verses would remove all desire to go on living!  Others might be shocked as to how brutal was the British Navy of that time.

What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
Earl-aye in the morning?

Chorus:
Way hay and up she rises
Patent blocks o’ diff’rent sizes,
Way hay and up she rises
Earl-aye in the morning

1. Sling him in the long boat till he’s sober,
2. Keep him there and make ‘im bale ‘er.
3. Pull out the plug and wet him all over,
4. Take ‘im and shake ‘im, try an’ wake ‘im.
5. Trice him up in a runnin’ bowline.
6. Give ‘im a taste of the bosun’s rope-end.
7. Give ‘im a dose of salt and water.
8. Stick on ‘is back a mustard plaster.
9. Shave his belly with a rusty razor.
10. Send him up the crow’s nest till he falls down,
11. Tie him to the taffrail when she’s yardarm under,
12. Put him in the scuppers with a hose-pipe on him.
13. Soak ‘im in oil till he sprouts flippers.
14. Put him in the guard room till he’s sober.
15. Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter*).
16. Take the Baby and call it Bo’sun.
17. Turn him over and drive him windward.
18. Put him in the scuffs until the horse bites on him.
19. Heave him by the leg and with a rung console him.
20. That’s what we’ll do with the drunken sailor. Source

You won’t believe the background to this song see WikiPedia HERE

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NB This article was inspired by Steve Chandler’s brilliant ‘100 Ways to Motivate Yourself’, one of my Top 10 Personal Development texts.

The Whole and the Parts – a personal view updated

I updated the short version of the ‘Whole’ to which all of my posts relate. Please share your own version.

The Whole and the Parts

SunWALK model of being human & the expression of the human spirit
SunWALK model of being human & the expression of the human spirit

We all go through each day doing particular things but what’s our view of ‘the Whole’ to which all the parts relate? From these two, our sense of the Whole and our myriad thoughts, feelings & action comes the meaning and purpose of our lives.

The Whole for me I see this way;

Humanization is everything. De-humanization is hell. We are human in our caring our creativity & our criticality – acting individually and in community. Through these 4 ways we experience, grow and heal, through them we come to know who we are, our identity, and what it is that we all called to do, our purpose.

However, even when being scientific the ultimate context in which we operate is always mystery. Consequently we are also more or less human in how we relate to mystery and to how others relate to mystery.

From such a model of being human we can create personal, professional & community systems for holistic learning & healing.

Q. What is it to be professionally or personally holistic? My answer: It is to develop that consciousness that enables us to proceed, in all particular acts, with a sacred sense of the Whole, and vice versa. – just as the Zen saying says; “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water”. Q. What’s this universalist approach called? Ans: Perennial Philosophy – the identical core you can find in all of the great wisdom traditions.

Q. What is your ‘Whole’ or world-view to which the particular actions of your life relate?