"I have found there is a place in myself that I can enter……..and there I find outbreaks of happiness for no reason.
I had never been there before and did not even know that place existed"
Bjorn Brunstad.
The longer I live, the more I see that all is one and this blog is a reflection of feelings and thoughts upon that reality
"I have found there is a place in myself that I can enter……..and there I find outbreaks of happiness for no reason.
I had never been there before and did not even know that place existed"
Bjorn Brunstad.
"After the Farhud, life changed drastically for the city's Jews. Up to that point Haddad had had many Muslim friends.
"Suddenly I changed my attitude. I didn't feel any more Iraqi. I felt I'm a Jew and I vowed that I wanted to kill an Arab," he says.
One day, swimming in the River Tigris, he encountered a drowning man, and instinctively helped him to the shore.
"When I came home I was shook up. Not because I saved the guy but because I didn't follow my vow to kill an Arab. And when I went to see the rabbi, he said, 'You can't make a vow to kill. You can only make a vow to help.'
"That's what stimulated me to go into medicine, actually. I knew that I want to save lives, not to kill people."
The mind is so used to trying to solve problems that to actually not have a problem, to just sit and be okay with what is exactly as it is, feels weird and uncomfortable to it... so it looks for (and always manages to find, have you noticed?) something to worry about just to give it something "to do."
Benjamin Smythe
"There are many in this world who have devoted much energy and time to the study of religion, comparative religion and even philosophy. They are immersed in the nuances of academia and are walking libraries of centuries of other people's thoughts. This is their pleasure.
There are others who have very simply studied love and have reached an awareness of what unconditional love actually is. Usually, but not exclusively, this dawning of awareness of their inner loving self has been signposted by the actions of some small child. For these, love is not simply their joy, it is the meaning of their life and it manifests in tolerance, kindness, compassion."
gg
"Everyone is a prisoner of his own experience. No one can eliminate prejudices--just recognize them."
"It is in this recognition that we disempower them - and empower our lovingness"
gg
The really great thing about this time of the year is the way in which beauty is tantalizingly revealed a little at a time.
A journey into beauty and magnificence should not be an F1 race, but a gradual ascent into ecstasy.
gg
The devastation continues to have a profound effect upon our hearts. Further news that another powerful earthquake shook the area in the past few hours reminds us of the trauma born by so many in the area.
Our thoughts are with you – and our hearts weep with yours.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
Nelson Mandela
and the poem that has been his inspiration
This post is in memory and tribute to a very special young Japanese woman – but is also a recognition that so many in Japan in recent weeks have given much of themselves for the benefit of others.
You may read Miki Endo's moving and life-saving story HERE
or you can also watch a YouTube short documentary that tells her heroic story HERE
Sometimes, being true to our inner self costs us everything and it is only in that moment that we have fully defined who we are in spirit.