on Sleep, by William Shakespeare

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life,
sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds,
great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.

Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.

- John DePaola

on Eating:

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.

- Aesop's Fables

on Rest

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.

- Etty Hillesum

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

- Leo F. Buscaglia

A story of awakening

One night, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread.  I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been.  The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train – everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world.  The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence.  What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery?  Why carry on with this continuous struggle?  I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.

“I cannot live with myself any longer.”  This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind.  Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was.  “Am I one or two?  If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me:  the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.”  “Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.”

I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped.  I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts.  Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy.  It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated, I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake.  I heard the words “resist nothing.” as if spoken inside my chest.  I could feel myself being sucked into a void.  It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside.  Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void.

I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window.  I had never heard such a sound before.  My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond.  Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like.  I opened my eyes.  The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains.  Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize.  That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself.  Tears came into my eyes.  I got up and walked around the room.  I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before.  Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence.  I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all.

That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.

For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss.  After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity, or perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state.  I could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had.

I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn’t understand it at all.  It wasn’t until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had already happened to me….A time came when, for a while, I was left with nothing on the physical plane.  I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity.  I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy.

But even the most beautiful experiences come and go.  More fundamental, perhaps, than any experience is the undercurrent of peace that has never left me since then.  Sometimes it is very strong, almost palpable, and others can feel it too.  At other times, it is somewhere in the background, like a distant melody.

Later, people would occasionally come up to me and say: “I want what you have.  Can you give it to me, or show me how to get it?”  And I would say: “You have it already.  You just can’t feel it because your mind is making too much noise.”

* * * * * *

Excerpted from the Introduction to The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle

Gangaji - Simply Stop Looking

on Health

To preserve one's health by too strict a regimen is in itself a tedious malady.

- Francois, duc de La Rouchefoucauld

quote by Seneca (4 B.C. - 65 A.D)

No one is free who is a slave to the body.

on Work

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

- Confucious

Four Shamanic Questions for Healing

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

 - Gabrielle Roth

Cooking Up A Cure