And whatever keeps widening your heart… when you get down to it…that’s the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love, but to *persist* in love.

— Sue Monk Kidd

About ‪#‎concentration‬ ‪#‎buddhism‬ has identified five key factors for steadying the mind: 1. Applied attention – initial directing of attention to an object, such as the beginning of the breath. 2. Sustained attention – staying focused on the object of attention, like having full awareness of the entire “breathing in and out” process. 3. Rapture – intense interest in the object that brings a feeling of bliss. 4. Joy – opening of the heart, happiness, contentment and tranquility. 5. Singleness of mind – awareness of unity, experiencing everything as a whole. Less thoughts, a feeling of being more present. ‪#‎mindfulness‬ ‪#‎heart‬ ‪#‎meditation‬ ‪#‎temescalcanyon‬ ‪#‎trailrun‬

— Suddha Prem

No wonder planning is such a misleading concept. It takes your eyes off where you are and how your life is now, which is the essential data of existence. You fail to arrive where you planned, not because you couldn’t visualize the place but because you didn’t see that the path you were on was the place – if only you could see it at the right angle to reveal its iridescence.

William Bridges

If we know how to take refuge in Mother Earth, we can experience healing through sitting, walking, or simply by breathing. We can feel her solidity under our feet; we can see her majesty in high mountain peaks and lakes, in the vast blue sky, winding rivers, and deep oceans. If we truly believe in the planet’s power to heal herself, we know she can also heal us. We don’t have to do anything at all. Just surrender ourselves to Mother Earth and she will do everything for us. We are the Earth. The Earth is us. We can allow this  process to happen by itself.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

Ideals are like stars: You will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.

–Carl Schurz

This is artificial because you’re bringing cause and effect into a region where it doesn’t work. It is true that the feeling “accept” is associated with Conscience, and you say, “If I work on this, will this help Conscience to develop?” It sounds very sensible, but it misses the point. This is difficult for people to grasp, because they expect to see results arising from causes in this spiritual life, but it doesn’t work in that way. When we spoke about causality last week, we said that causality is the lowest of all the forces that work in the world. Always try to remember this. In the spiritual world it is the unpredictable, the unexpected that happens. It is the realm of freedom. It is spontaneity. If you try to import into it cause and effect—doing things in order to get some result—you’re keeping yourself away from that world.