An individual has not started living until he[she] can rise above the narrow confines of his/[her] individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Martin Luther Kind Jr. www.brainyquotes.com
Weekly Pause & Ponder
The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.
Frank Herbert, Dune. www.goodreads.com
Weekly Pause & Ponder
Contemplation, understood in the light of a hologram universe, is not a special gift. It is simply seeing from the perspective of oneness… It can indeed be practiced, and over time, with sincerity and persistence, it becomes an abiding state of consciousness. At times this unitive seeing may sweep you up in rapt adoration; at other times it simply deposits you powerfully and nakedly in the present moment. Either form is an expression of the same underlying consciousness. It is this consciousness itself that is the attained state of contemplation and it is neither infused nor acquired, because it was never absent – only unrecognized.
Cynthia Bourgeault. Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. https://markvotava.com
Weekly Pause & Ponder
Never forget that you are not in this world; the world is in you. When anything happens to you, take the experience inward. Creation is set up to bring you constant hints and clues about your role as co-creator. Your soul is metabolizing experience as sure as your body is metabolizing food.
Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life. www.goodreads.com
Weekly Pause & Ponder
Transformation is something we all crave. This is what we are looking for under the guises of the many things we do. We seek fulfillment through security, pleasure, power, personal relationships, artistic creativity, intellectual insight, and mystical experiences. We are intimately familiar with ourselves as beings available for mutation. And yet we also put obstacles in the way of the very transformation we most deeply desire. We really want to lose ourselves, and yet we cling to ourselves, pulling up adjectives by which we – and, we hope, we alone – can be described; but at the same time we know, on some secret level, that we are indefinable.
‘The Easter Mysteries’ – Beatrice Bruteau. www.spiritualityandpractice.com