Spiritwalk Thought for Today

Archive/March 1999

March 4, 1999

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character;
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.

~ The Buddha

March 5, 1999

The way to use life is to do nothing through acting,

The way to use life is to do everything through being.

~ Lao Tzu

March 6, 1999

A mind once stretched by a great idea or new understanding
will never fully return to its original dimensions.

~ William James

March 7, 1999

I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me
is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying that change
a living power that is changeless, that holds all together,
that creates, dissolves, and re-creates.
That informing power is God.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

March 8, 1999

Consciousness is the inner light kindled in a soul…
a music, strident or sweet, made by the friction of existence.

~ George Santayana

 
March 9, 1999

Whatever else you do or forbear,

impose upon yourself the task of happiness;

and now and then abandon yourself

to the joy of laughter.

 

And however much you condemn

the evil in the world, remember that the

world is not all evil; that somewhere

children are at play, as you yourself in

the old days; that women still find joy

in the stalwart hearts of men;

 

And that men, treading with restless feet

their many paths, may yet find refuge

from the storms of the world in the cheerful house of love.

 

~ Max Ehrmann

March 10, 1999

Life can only be understood backwards.

It must be lived forwards.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

March 11, 1999

It may be said that God
cannot be known in the mind
but only experienced in the heart.
You cannot know God,
you can only be God.
Thus you cannot know “the truth”
but only enter directly
into the moment in which truth resides.
Truth is an experience,
a sip at the deep well of being,
not a cluster or words or thoughts
or even insights in the mind.

~ Steven Levine

March 12, 1999

 

Mind is like a mirror; it gathers dust while it reflects.

It needs the gentle breezes of Soul-Wisdom

to brush away the dust of our illusions.

 

~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

March 13, 1999

All changes,
even the most longed for,
have their melancholy,
for what we leave behind us
is a part of ourselves;
we must die to one life
before we can enter into another.

~ Anatole France

March 14, 1999

 

Effortlessly,

Love flows from God into man,

Like a bird,

Who rivers the air

Without moving her wings.

Thus we move in His world

One in body and soul,

Though outwardly separate in form.

As the Source strikes the note,

Humanity sings ~

The Holy Spirit is our harpist,

And all strings

Which are touched in Love

Must sound.

 

~ Mechthild of Magdeburg

March 15, 1999

Life is difficult ~
This is a great truth,
one of the greatest truths.
It is a great truth because
once we truly see this truth,
we transcend it.
Once we truly know that life is difficult ~
once we truly understand and accept it ~
then life is no longer difficult.
Because once it is accepted,
the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

~ M. Scott Peck

March 16, 1999

So many people walk around with a meaningless life.
They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy
doing things they think are important.
This is because they’re chasing the wrong things.
The way you get meaning in your life
is to devote yourself to loving others,
devote yourself to your community around you,
and devote yourself to creating something
that gives you purpose and meaning.

~ Morrie Schwartz

March 17, 1999

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
May the rain fall soft upon your fields,
And, until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of your hand.

~ Irish Blessing

March 18, 1999

If your mind is empty,
it is always ready for anything;
it is open to everything.
In the beginners mind there are many possibilities,
in the expert’s mind there are few.

~ Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

March 19, 1999

The beauty of the soul shines out
when a man bears with composure
one heavy mischance after another,
not because he does not feel them,
but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.

~ Aristotle

March 20, 1999

 

Ten thousand flowers in spring,

The moon in autumn.

A cool breeze in summer,

Snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,

This is the best season of your life.

 

~ Wu-men

March 21,1999

A Spring Garden of Meditation

Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.

~ Theodore Roethke, poet

Earth laughs in flowers.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet
and the winds long to play with your hair.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Keep close to Nature's heart ...
and break clear away, once in a while,
and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.
Wash your spirit clean.

~ John Muir

Since the whole world cannot buy a single spring day,
of what avail to seek yellow gold?

~ Hsi Pei Lan

If a man walks in the woods for love of them, half of each day,
he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer;
but if he spends his whole day
as a speculator shearing off those woods
and making earth bald before her time,
he is esteemed as an industrious and enterprising citizen.

~ Henry David Thoreau

I wanted others to believe.
I thought if enough of us did,
if we learned to care again about the wild places
from which we'd driven the magic away,
then maybe it would return.

~ Charles de Lint

March 22, 1999

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves,
and impossible to find it elsewhere.

~ Agnes Repplier

March 23,1999

Blessed are the pure in heart;
For they shall see God.

~ Jesus

March 24, 1999

I dwell in possibility -
A fairer house than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of Eye –
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the sky -

Of Visitors-the fairest-
For Occupation-This-
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise-

~ Emily Dickenson

March 25, 1999

I cannot prove to you that God exists,
but my work has proved empirically
that the pattern of God exists in every man
and that this pattern in the individual has at its disposal
the greatest transforming energies of which life is capable.
Find this pattern in your own individual self and life is transformed.

~ Carl Gustav Jung

March 26, 1999

Life moves on,
whether we act as cowards or heroes.
Life has no other discipline to impose,
if we would but realize it,
than to accept life unquestioningly.
Everything we shut our eyes to,
everything we run away from,
everything we deny, denigrate or despise,
serves to defeat us in the end.
What seems nasty, painful, evil,
can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength,
if faced with an open mind.
Every moment is a golden one
for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

~ Henry Miller

March 27, 1999

A Native American elder
once described his own inner struggles in this manner:
"Inside of me there are two dogs.
One of the dogs is mean and evil.
The other dog is good.
The mean dog fights the good dog all the time."
When asked which dog wins,
he reflected for a moment and replied,
"The one I feed the most."

~ Author unknown

March 28, 1999

If the Spirit is real, it is joy in essence, it is peace and faith.
Now faith, divine faith, is a illumined state,
it challenges everything mortal with a confident joy;
indeed I would like to use the word merriment
instead of joy here, as in the old English song,

“God rest you merry, gentlemen;
let nothing you dismay!”

Yes, the world is sad, tragic and the suffering terrible.
But we have been shown how in such times
we must and can be gallant and to be gallant
is to be joyous and to have true joy we must have faith.
The kingdom of heaven is happiness
because those who have found it and abide in it
have become aware of the beauty of infinite Spirit.

~ Anonymous,
    from Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood, edited by Mary Strong

May 29, 1999

If the mind is happy,
not only the body
but the whole world will be happy. 
So one must find out
how to become happy oneself. 
Wanting to transform the world
without discovering one’s true self
is like trying to cover the whole world with leather
to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. 
It is much simpler to wear shoes. 

~  Ramana Maharshi

 

 

March 30, 1999

The Way is perfect like a vast space
Where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
That we do not see the true nature of things.
Live neither in the entanglement of outer things,
Nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things
And such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.
When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity
Your very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
You will never know the oneness.

~  Seng t`san

[Next Meditations, April 1999 or return to Thoughts Archive]              [Search Spiritwalk]

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