On death and dying
"Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!"
-- Thomas F. Healey
"The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the
affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and
transformation."
-- Hermann Hesse
"What is here is also there; what is there, is also here. Who sees multiplicity
but not the one indivisible Self must wander on and on from death to death."
-- Katha Upanishad
"Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening."
-- Sir Walter Scott
Nothing needs to be fixed
"Tolerance does not . . . do anything, embrace anyone, champion any issue. It
wipes the notes off the score of life and replaces them with one long bar of
rest. It does not attack error, it does not champion truth, it does not hate
evil, it does not love good."
-- Walter Farrell
As we understand it, the spiritual journey is not about becoming perfect. It’s
about acceptance, releasing judgment, and embracing everything in wholeness.
This is a great challenge for our personality. We’ve grown up comparing
ourselves to others, always judging how we’re better and worse than those around
us. And many of us are very good at finding fault with ourselves.
If we release judgment, then nothing needs to be fixed -- including you. Explore
inviting your soul to help you accept all that is and experience a whole new way
of living.
"Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix
anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place.
Start right where you are."
-- Julia Cameron
How are you sabotaging yourself?
"If you play it safe in life you've decided that you don't want to grow any
more."
-- Shirley Hufstedler
How are you sabotaging your potential for change?
We unconsciously use defence mechanisms to shield us from situations we perceive
to be scary or painful. A part of you may want to grow and change, but another
part may be resisting because change always moves you into new territory in your
thinking and emotions.
If you find you are getting anxious, fearful, angry, frustrated, dismissive or
unmotivated, then defence mechanisms are at work. Watch for them and know them
to be signs of fear that wants to hold you back. Then courageously move through
them.
"I have never been contained except I made the prison."
-- Mary Evans