All real living is meeting.
Meeting is not in time and space,
but space and time in meeting.

-- Martin Buber

Commerce is supported by keeping the individual at odds
with himself and others, by making us want more than we need,
and offering credit to buy what refined senses do not want.

The masses become shackled- I see how their eyes weep
and are desperate--of course they feel desperate--for something,
for some remedy

that a poor soul then feels needs
to be bought.

I find nothing more offensive than a god
who could condemn human instincts in us that time in all its wonder
have made perfect.

I find nothing more destructive to the well-being of life
than to support a god that makes you feel unworthy and in debt to it.
I imagine erecting churches to such a strange god will assure
endless wars that commerce loves.

A god that could frighten is not a god--but an insidious idol
and weapon in the hands
of the insane.

A god who talks of sin is worshipped
by the infirm;

I was once spiritually ill--we all pass through that--
but one day the intelligence
in my soul
cured
me.

***Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)

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 frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' 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 people won't feel insecure around you. 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 all of us. And when 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.

--Nelson Mandela in his inauguration speech in 1994
(quoting Marianne Williamson in her book: A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles )

“Ego is the one and only one obstacle to enlightenment.”

--Andrew Cohen, spiritual teacher

A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be good.
And is therefore not good.

A truly good man does nothing
Yet leaves nothing undone.
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to be done.

When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.
When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order.

Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there is ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao.
It is the beginning of folly.

Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real
and not what is on the surface,
On the fruit and not the flower.
Therefore accept the one and reject the other.

--translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

"Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% percent of everything you think and everything you do, is for your self— and there isn't one"

-Wei Wu Wei

“Ego is the deeply ingrained, compulsive need to remain separate and superior at all times, in all places, under all circumstances. . . . It is the part of you that has no interest whatsoever in freedom, feels victimized by life, avoids anything that contradicts its self-image, is thoroughly invested in its personal fears and desires, and lives only for itself. Ego is an anti-evolutionary force of powerful inertia in human nature—attached to the past, terrified of change, and seeking only to preserve the status quo."


—Andrew Cohen, spiritual teacher

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

“If you would deny the ego and scorch it by ignoring it, you would be free. If you accept it, it will impose limitations on you and throw you into a vain struggle to transcend them. To be the Self that you really are is the only means to realize the bliss that is ever yours.”

—Sri Ramana Maharshi, Indian sage

“Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.”

—Sigmund Freud

If we're willing to give up hope that insecurity

and pain can be exterminated, then we can

have the courage to relax with the groundlessness

of the situation. This is the first step on the path.

-- Pema Chodron

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
Has grown so weary that it cannot hold
Anything else. It seems to him there are
A thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
The movement of his powerful soft strides
Is like a ritual dance around a center
In which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
Lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
Rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles
Plunges into the heart and is gone.

-- Rainer-Maria Rilke

Learning is pursued through daily addition;
Tao is practiced through daily subtraction.

Keep on diminishing action.
When nothing is pursued through action,
Nothing remains undone.

To win the world, one must renounce all.
If one still has one's own ends to serve,
One will never be able to win the world.

-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;

what is essential is invisible to the eye.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It acts like love--music, it reaches toward the face,
touches it, and tries to let you know
His promise: that all will be okay.

It acts like love--music, and tells the feet,
"You do not have to be so burdened."

My body is covered with wounds this world made,
but I still longed to kiss Him, even when God said,

"Could you also kiss the hand that caused each scar,
for you will not find me until you do."

It does that--music--helps us to forgive.

-- Rabia of Basra (c. 717-801)

In the world of bodies, we are all separate.
In the world of spirit, we are all one. . . .
We heal the separation between the two
by shifting our awareness
from ‘body identification’ to ‘spirit identification.’
This heals the body as well as the mind.”

~ Marianne Williamson

To love.
To be loved.
To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence.
And the vulgar disparity of life around you.

To seek joy in the saddest places.
To pursue beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated
Or complicate what is simple.
To respect strength, never power.

Above all, to watch.
To try and understand.
To never look away.
And never, never to forget.

-- Arundhati Roy, from The End of Imagination