let it go.........

 

Don't be afraid of verbal abuse or criticism.

     Only the morally weak feel compelled to defend or explain themselves to others.  Let the quality of your deeds speak on your behalf.  We can't control the impressions others form about us, and the effort to do so only debases our character.

     So, if anyone should tell you that a particular person has spoken critically of you, don't bother with excuses or defenses.  Just smile and reply, "I guess that person doesn't know about all my other faults.  Otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned only these."

-Attributed to Epictetus, from A Manual for Living

seek..................

 

     Spirituality is one of those realities that you have only so long as you seek it; as soon as you think you have it, you've lost it.  In rediscovering this basic spiritual insight, the earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous tapped the essence of open-endedness that characterizes a spirituality of imperfection.  Spirituality is boundless, unable to be fenced in:  We do not capture it; it captures us.  As much as we might like to "wrap things up," to lock spirituality in and hold it fast, it will forever escape our grasp.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

Let it be.....................

 

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in its breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from its nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be."

-Robert Frost, Acceptance

fences........................

 

That which is necessarily and inevitably axiomatic—that upon which everything else depends—is to be touched at great peril.

-Jordan Peterson

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

-G. K. Chesterton

conquer the need..................

 

     The next time you face a political dispute or a personal disagreement, ask yourself: Is there any reason to fight about this?  Is arguing going to help solve anything?  Would an educated or wise person really be as quarrelsome as you might initially be inclined to be?  Or would they take a breath, relax, and resist the temptation for conflict?  Just think of what you could accomplish—and how much better you would feel—if you could conquer the need to fight and win every tiny little thing.

-Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

likely true.....................

 I'm crazy enough to believe that the happiest man on earth is the man with the fewest needs.

-Henry Miller

let things be.......................

 

     What I eventually figured out—not that it ever seems to get particularly easy—is that other people's negative emotions are ultimately a problem that belongs to them.  And you have to allow other people their problems.  This in one more area in which the best thing to do, as a finite human with limited control, is usually not to meddle, but to let things be.

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

Breathe.......................

 

             thanks Chris

Nirvana.........................

 I want to sit here longer, to move unhurried, to glide, to breathe, to be ordered but not scheduled, to release into reverie, to let my mind wander, my shoulders loosen, my being melt and flow with curiosity, delight, warmth, ease.

-Annie Mueller, from here

Let it be...........................

 If it is someone else's problem, you probably don't have the solution.

-Anne Lamott, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

Freedom...........................

 But there is something freeing about doing your best, being yourself and letting the chips fall where they may.

-Ben Carlson, from here

Resign...........................

If you add up the time you spend where it's none of your business, or none of your concern, or that you cannot affect the outcome (news, TV reruns, and other crap) you could have been the greatest salesperson in the world or a syndicated columnist, or an author.  But no, you'd rather piss your time down the drain thinking that you're some kind of savior to mankind when in fact, it's just the opposite.  Save your own ass first. . . .
In 1972, when the twins were born, I was in a rotten marriage, I was broke, and I was studying positive attitude daily.  I first read the phrase resign your position as general manager of the universe.  I have searched back and cannot find its origin.  I wish I could.  I wish I could tell you that I created this phrase, but I can't.  What I can tell you is that I have used this philosophy as one of the building blocks of my success.  The reason I have saved it for last is because it is the least evident and the most difficult.

-Jeffrey Gitomer,  The Little Red Book Of Selling

transcendence.................

     In surfing and in life, it's true that one can't have a "too willful will," as the Zen master says.  One won't be very well attuned to things beyond oneself without paying careful attention to them, and it is difficult to pay close attention to other things if one is preoccupied with oneself.  Perhaps one need only withdraw certain "attachments" consistent with one's aim of hitting the target, such as an attachment to performing well, or to winning, or to pleasing one's parents or oneself.  But Zen seems to require more, and indeed nothing less than "withdrawing from all attachments whatsoever, by becoming utterly egoless: so that the soul, sunk within itself, stands in the plentitude of its namely origin."
     Surfing simply can't be so exactingly ego-free.  No aquatic movement is so fixed to permit falling into a fully passive state;  there's no time for not actively adapting.  If you had to find a trance state or wakeful dream sleep, and the wave's next movement was coming quickly, you'd eat it, or quickly become out of sync.  The bodily dynamism and moment by moment demands on one's attention naturally draw one's consciousness out into the waves, away from oneself.  But this ego transcendence serves the surfer's active purposes, of being adaptively attuned.  If that isn't Zen, it's a blessedly easy way of being while doing.

-Aaron James: Surfing With Sartre:  An Aquatic Inquiry Into A Life Of Meaning

Checking in with..............................

............................................................................Ram Dass:

“The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.” 

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”

“It's only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.” 

“Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.”

“Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.” 

“The human mind is like that monkey, incessantly active by its own nature, then it becomes drunk with the wine of desire, thus increasing its turbulence. After desire takes possession comes the sting of the scorpion of jealousy at the success of others, and last of all the demon of pride enters the mind, making it think itself of all importance.” 

“I think the message is that you don’t need to go to anywhere else to find what you are seeking.”

Let it go.............................

"Frustration itself is therefore a sign of trying to control that which is not really controllable."

-David R. Hawkins

Let them be..........................

“Let the water flow beneath the bridge; let men be men, that is to say, weak, vain, inconstant, unjust, false, and presumptuous; let the world be the world still; you cannot prevent it. Let every one follow his own inclination and habits; you cannot recast them, and the best course is, to let them be as they are and bear with them. Do not think it strange when you witness unreasonableness and injustice; rest in peace in the bosom of God; He sees it all more clearly than you do, and yet permits it. Be content to do quietly and gently what it becomes you to do, and let everything else be to you as though it were not.” 


-François Fénelon, Spiritual Letters

Different paradigms..........................

     I do not see how science and religion could be unified, or even synthesized, under any common scheme of explanation or analysis;  but I do not understand why the two enterprises should experience any conflict.  Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts.  Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values—subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.

-Stephen J. Gould, from his 1999 book, Rocks Of Ages:  Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life

On leaving us alone...................

"Politics can oppress people, but it cannot make them wiser or more sensible, independent of mind, or just. Happiness in the older sense has never required “political action.” Instead, it takes joy in friendship and community."

-David Warren, from this blog post

Let it be..........................

"Some of the most dangerous people are those who want to save the world."

-Michael Wade