Reading Archives (Author)
Arrivals and Departures
Cab Driver
A cab driver describing his 'view': And this (pointing to the windshield)...this is like my little window to the world, and every minute is a different show. Now I may not understand it, I may no...
Living at the Right Speed
Carl Honore
Fast and Slow do more than just describe a rate of change. They are shorthand for ways of being, or philosophies of life. Fast is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superfi...
Pale Blue Dot
Carl Sagan
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The ag...
No One is Better Off
Carlos Castaneda
All human beings are at the same level. At the beginning of my apprenticeship with Don Juan Matus, he tried to make me see how common man's situation is. I, as a South American, was very involved, i...
Use Our Whole Selves
Carly Fiorina
I can see now that I started my professional journey on the day at age 4 when I declared to my parents and to the world, \"Mom, Dad, I want to be a fireman\". Now this was not some precocious instinct...
Practice of Being Real
Carol Carnes
The practice of being real is something highly underrated. We have been taught to appear in certain ways to get the approval of others. We may have fallen prey to the image makers who tell us how to d...
Reveal Your Own Wholeness
Carol Carnes
All mental healing is based on the awareness of the presence of pure Life, or wholeness, at the center of the patient. It is a calling forth, if you will, of that wholeness into visibility. It is not ...
Stepping into the Present Is a Gift
Carolyn Hobbs
Most of us have heard of ego and let ego run our lives without realizing it. But few of us know how deeply our ego—the small, less mature, defensive part of us that reacts personally to every li...
The Posture of Presence
Carrie Gray
For years I have been searching for an education that is meaningful -- an education that doesn't press me into predetermined categories or ask me just to satisfy outer requirements, but one that I res...
Send Love -- It Matters
Carrie Newcomer
Somewhere someone needs help. Send love. It matters. If you can't get there yourself, Then take a deep breath. Breathe in the weight of their troubles, Breathe out and send all those burde...
As Way Opens
Carrie Newcomer
Lately I’ve been thinking about the traditional Quaker phrase, “Proceed as way opens.” Proceed as way opens or As way opens, is an encouragement to live with a kind of i...
Good Bones, Pushing Water
Carrie Newcomer
We had a small water crisis at our home this week. The break happened within a wall, and so we didn’t realize at first that a pipe had begun to leak until morning when my husband noticed w...
We Contain Multitudes
Chad Dickerson
Walt Whitman once wrote, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" It’s possible to be a person with all of a multi...
The New And Ancient Story Of Interbeing
Charles Eisenstein
Why does the sun shine? A random result of coalescing gases igniting nuclear fusion? Or is it in order to give its light and warmth to Life? Why does the rain fall? Is it the senseless product of blin...
Storyteller Consciousness
Charles Eisenstein
For words to truly be powerful, we must align them with our creative intention. Only then can we create the stories of our lives. Unconscious lying sabotages our credibility to ourselves and others...
Three Questions For A Better World
Charles Gibbs
My friends have helped me see the deadly consequences of the growing gap between rich and poor. A wise African religious leader named Jose Chipenda challenged me with a stark perspective on this...
The Great Dictator
Charlie Chaplin
I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible. We all want to help...
We Practice Forever
Charlotte Beck
Charlotte Joko Beck's rules to help her students with their practice (ironically, or perhaps not, all these rules are directly applicable to life situations as well) ... Don't begin a sitting peri...
Walking the Razor's Edge
Charlotte Joko Beck
When we aren’t into our personal mischief, life is a seamless whole in which we are so embedded that there is no problem. But we don’t always feel embedded because – while life is ju...
Willing to Experience our Suffering
Charlotte Joko Beck
A few weeks ago someone gave me an interesting article on suffering, and the first part of it was on the meaning of the word – “suffering”. I’m interested in these meanin...
Life is Relationship
Charlotte Joko Beck
Every moment of our life is relationship. There is nothing except relationship. At this moment my relationship is to the rug, to the room, to my own body, to the sound of my voice. There is nothi...
A Bigger Container
Charlotte Joko Beck
We can talk about “oneness” until the cows come home. But how do we actually separate ourselves from others? How? The pride out of which anger is born is what separates us. And the solutio...
Our Practice Is To Close The Gap
Charlotte Joko Beck
Our whole life consists of this little subject looking outside itself for an object. But if you take something that is limited, like body and mind, and look for something outside it, that something be...
We Are All Beggars
Chaz Howard
A lived theology of the bottom does not see the world through good and evil lenses. This is not a denial of the existence of evil, rather it is believing that evil is something that is done by p...
Say Wow
Chelan Harkin
Each day before our surroundings become flat with familiarity and the shapes of our lives click into place, dimensionless and average as Tetris cubes, before hunger knocks from our bellies like...
I No Longer Pray
Chelan Harkin
I no longer pray— now I drink dark chocolate and let the moon sing to me. I no longer pray— I let my ancestors dance through my hips at the slightest provocation....
Ten Rules For Being Human
Cherie Carter-Scott
Rule One: You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth. Rule Two: You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-...
Web of Life
Chief Seattle
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experie...
Spiritual Shopping
Chogyam Trungpa
There is a general tendency to be involved with all kinds of fascinations and delusions, and nothing very much takes root in one's being. Everything in one's life experience, concerning spirituality o...
Want To Escape
Chogyam Trungpa
Q: Many people are aware of the truth of suffering but do not move on to the second step, awareness of the origin of suffering. Why is that? A: I think that it is largely a matter of paranoia. We w...
Psychological Materialism
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Even if you are against the materialism of society and you do not want to support it, refusing to work is still grasping at the wrong end of the stick. Not taking part in work and practical activity i...
Into The Chrysalis
Chris Corrigan
Chrysalises both inspire and baffle me. The thought that a caterpillar can crawl into a sac made of its own body and dissolve its form and come out as a butterfly is a cliched image of transformation,...
Mistakes: Results That Show The Truth Of Things
Chris Lombard
The biggest fears are actually the biggest opportunities. I have seen falls. I have seen blood. I have seen gashes and swelled joints and broken bones and I have seen death along with them. I have ...
Beginner's Mind Vs. Expert Mind
Christina Feldman
We collect, store, and accumulate so much weight in this life. The thousands of thoughts, ideas, and plans we have are imprinted on our minds. We have engaged in countless conversations an...
When My Life Is In Danger
Christina Feldman
A few years ago, an elderly monk arrived in India after fleeing from prison in Tibet. Meeting with the Dalai Lama, he recounted the years he had been imprisoned, the hardship and beatings he had endur...
Aliveness and Harmony
Christopher Alexander
A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in. [...] To be happy, and to be alive,...
The Empty Boat
Chuang Tzu
He who rules men lives in confusion; He who is ruled by men lives in sorrow. Tao therefore desired Neither to influence others Nor to be influenced by them. The way to get clear of confusion And...
Planetary Beings with Planetary Hearts
Clare Dakin
The instinct to fit in and feel safe seems stronger – to maintain the status quo – to be as comfortable and insulated as possible whilst praying like mad that someone else is going to step...
We Were Made for These Times
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. ...
You Were Made For This
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another so...
Being Human
Climbing PoeTree
I wonder if the Sun debates dawn some mornings not wanting to rise out of bed from under the down-feather horizon if the sky grows tired of being everywhere at once adapting to the mood swings...
A Flame In A Dark Cave
Colin Walsh
It was just another day of that, when it happened. I don’t know why, but the teacher suddenly broke off what he was saying and considered us for a moment. A movement like a camera shutter happen...
Who Me, Stealing?
Constance Habash
When I’m teaching the five (ethical principles of Yoga), I often feel a little stumped with conveying the practical application of (one of the principles) Asteya (pronounced “uh-stay-...
True Humility: Selfless Respect for Reality
Costica Bradatan
From the potential unique location – the site of devastation that we might become – we understand that we are no grander than the rest of the world. Indeed, we are less than most thin...
Fishing Before You Know How To Fish
Courtney Martin
Through the pines and the one maple I hear her. I shouldn’t have gone fishing if I didn’t know how to fish. I shouldn’t have gone fishing if I didn’t know how to fish. ...
Not Loneliness, But Aloneness
Craig Childs
Alone is a state of being. Not loneliness, but aloneness. It is something sought rather than avoided. You can find it in just a moment, a breath: in Central Park, or early morning on the street, sitti...
We Actually Never Experience 'It'
Culadasa
The "I" of the narrating mind is nothing more than a fictional but convenient construct used to organize all the separate conscious experiences occurring in the mind-system. Our very concept...
Heart Is Not About Emotions
Cynthia Bourgeault
"Put the mind in the heart." From page after page in the Philokalia, that hallowed collection of spiritual writings from the Christian East, this same refrain emerges. It is striking in both...