If we gaze deeply at the deceptively simple word “opportunity”, we have a chance to see hidden beauty shining from below, which is the Roman god Portunus, patron of harbours.
Seen in this light
every new circumstance is like sailing into a strange and distant port,
which may offer a haven, if we choose to take refuge.
Phil Cousineau, The Painted Word: A Treasure Chest of Remarkable Words and their Origins
The true purpose is to see things as they are,
to observe things as they are,
and to let everything go as it goes.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
If we try to get rid of a problem, then we are making it into something solid, something real. That is the mistake.
Instead, if we look directly at the feeling, at its energy, we can see its true nature. The problem itself dissolves into wisdom.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche in conversation with Helen Tworkov
It isn’t necessary to know exactly how your ideal life will look; you only have to know what feels better and what feels worse…
Begin making choices based on what makes you feel freer and happier, rather than on how you think an ideal life should look.
It’s the process of feeling our way toward happiness, not the realization of the Platonic ideal, that creates our best lives.
Martha Beck
We do ourselves a great disservice by judging where we are in comparison to some final destination. This is one of the pains of aspiring to become something: the stage of development we are in is always seen against the imagined landscape of what we are striving for.
It helps to see ourselves as flowers. If a flower were to push itself open faster, which it can’t, it would tear. Yet we can and often do push ourselves. When we push ourselves to unfold faster or more deeply that is natural, we thwart ourselves. For nature takes time, and most of our problems of will stem from impatience.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
If time is a circle,
as the Indigenous world view presumes,
the knowledge we need is already within the circle.
Robin Wall Kimmerer 1953 – Author and Director of the Center for Native Peoples & the Environment at the State University of New York, Ancient Green
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