Spiritwalk Thoughts for April 1998

Spiritwalk

Spiritwalk Thoughts for April 1998

Wednesday, April 1, 1998

A human life is like a single letter in the alphabet.

It can be meaningless, or it can be part of a great meaning.

~ Quoted by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Thursday, April 2, 1998

Despair is often the first step on the path of spiritual life

   and many people do not awaken to the Reality of God

    and the experience of transformation in their lives until

they go through the experience of emptiness, delusion and despair.

~ Father Bede Griffiths

Friday, April 3, 1998

Be patient with everyone,

but above all with yourself.

I mean do not be disheartened by your imperfections,

But always rise up with fresh courage.

How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbors faults

if we are impatient in dealing with our own?

He who is fretted with his own failings will not correct them.

All profitable correction comes from a calm, peaceful mind.

~ St. Francis de Sales

Saturday, April 4, 1998

At the heart of each of us,

Whatever our imperfections,

There exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm,

A complex of wave forms and resonances,

Which is absolutely individual and unique,

And yet which connects us to everything in the universe.

~ George Leonard

Sunday, April 5, 1998

A person is not a thing or a process,

But an opening through which the absolute manifests.

~ Martin Heidegger

Monday, April 6, 1998

Fame or integrity: which is more important?

Money or happiness: which is more valuable?

Success or failure: which is more destructive?

If you look to others for fulfillment,

you will never truly be fulfilled.

If your happiness depends on money,

you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have;

rejoice in the way things are.

When you realize that nothing is lacking,

the whole world belongs to you!

~ Lao Tzu

Tuesday, April 7, 1998

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and

the life of the candle will not be shortened.

Happiness never decreases by being shared.

~ Buddha (B.C. 568-488)

Wednesday, April 8, 1998

The first peace, which is the most important,

is that which comes within the souls of people

when they realize their relationship,

their oneness with the universe and all its powers,

and when they realize that at the center

of the universe dwells the Great Spirit,

and that this center is really everywhere,

it is within each of us.

~ Black Elk

Native American spiritual leader

Thursday, April 9, 1998

Every part of the Earth is sacred to my people.

Every shining pine needle,

every sandy shore,

every mist in the dark woods,

every clear and humming insect is holy

in the memory and experience of my people.

The sap which courses through the trees

carries the memory and experience of my people….



… I am a red man and do not understand.

The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond,

and the smell of the wind itself,

cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with the pinon pine…



…Teach your children what we have taught our children,

that the Earth is our mother.

Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.

If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

This we know - the Earth does not belong to man - man belongs to the Earth.

This we know.

All things are connected like the blood which unites one family.

All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the Earth - befalls the sons of the Earth.

Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it.

Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

~ Attributed to Chief Seattle

Written by Ted Perry for TV Movie "Home"

Friday, April 10, 1998

We give up what we want to give up

and keep what in some small way we want to keep.

There are payofffs for holding on to small, weak patterns.

We have an excuse not to shine.

We don't have to take responsibility for the world

when we're spending all our time in emotional pain.

We're too busy.

The truth that sets us free is an embrace of the divine within us.

~ Marrianne Williamson

Saturday, April 11, 1998

Always remember,

Joy is not incidental to spiritual quest.

It is vital.

~ Rebbe Nachman

&

The beating heart of the universe is holy joy.

~ Martin Buber

Sunday April 12, 1998

Jesus said:

"What is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.

For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed."

"Split a piece of wood; I am there.

Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

~ The Gospel of St. Thomas

Monday, April 13, 1998

Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life,

for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings.

It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.

~ Rollo May

Tuesday, April 14, 1998

To be nobody ~ but yourself~

in a world that is doing its best, night and day,

to make you everybody else ~

means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.


~  e. e. cummings 1894-1962

Wednesday, April 15, 1998

A human being is part of the whole, called by us the "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest–a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein

Thursday, April 16, 1998

The only real hope of people today . . .

is a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in Earth and, at the same time, in the cosmos.

This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-trans-cendence.

Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us,

   to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe;

transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need

   to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not,

   what we do not understand,

   what seems distant from us in time and space,

   but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because,

   together with us, all this constitutes a single world.

~ Vaclav Havel

Friday, April 17, 1998

We shall not cease from exploration,

and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started,

and to know the place for the first time.

~ T. S. Eliot 1888-1965

Saturday, April 18, 1998

Energy is an eternal delight,

and he who desires, but acts not,

breeds pestilence.

~ William Blake

Sunday, April 19, 1998

To see the world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wild flower

To hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

~ William Blake

Monday, April 20, 1998

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give away to hating

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;

If you can think-and not make thought your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:

If you can hear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a work about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kinds-nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the earth and everything that's in it,

And-which is more-you'll be a man, my son!

~ Rudyard Kipling

Tuesday, April 21, 1998

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,

It is better that you should leave your work and

Sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference,

You bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes,

Your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels and not love the singing,

You muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Wednesday, April 22, 1998

A person is not a thing or a process,

but an opening through which the absolute manifests."

~ Martin Heidegger

Thursday, April 23, 1998

It is only through letting our heart break that we discover something unexpected: the heart cannot actually break, it can only break open. When we feel both our love for this world and the pain of this world - together, at the same time - the heart breaks out of its shell. To live with an open heart is to experience life full-strength.

~ John Welwood

Friday, April 24, 1998

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 Tomorrow is only a Vision:

But Today 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!

Sanskrit poem, author unknown

Saturday, April 25, 1998

The aim of life is to live,

and to live means to be awake,

joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely awake."

~ Henry Miller

Sunday April 26, 1998

The only journey is the one within.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Monday, April 27, 1998

Spiritual Work is not easy.

It means the willingness to surrender feelings that seem,

while we're in them,

like our defense against a greater pain.

It means that we surrender to God our perceptions of all things.

~ Marrianne Williamson

Tuesday, April 28, 1998

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown

is the belief that one's work is terribly important.