Reading Archives (Author)

Radical Response

M. Scott Peck

Although not wholly adequate, Matthew Fox's definition of prayer is still my favorite. It is a definition that doesn't even use the word 'God'. Fox defines it as "a radical response to the mysteries ...

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6K reads

Pain of Problems

M. Scott Peck

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...

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12K reads

Arriving At Truth

MacDonald-Bayne

We talked long into the night about what I did and what I had learned, and, when he was satisfied that the journey was not in vain he said: "I am glad indeed at your successful sojourn, but you know ...

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9K reads, 2 comments

Going Beyond the Roles We Play

Mack Paul

We seem so very real. But our bodies are really not our own and we have no control over either their coming or going. We have roles that we play and try to convince ourselves that they are real. It is...

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44K reads, 21 comments

Unencumbered By Thought

Magliozzi Brothers

There is a process for reaching nirvana and it is this: You must repeat the mantra. And the mantra, which happens to be emblazoned on our flag, is: Non impediti ratione cogitatonis. Which, of course,...

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61K reads

Law Of Love

Mahatma Gandhi

I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction. Therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would well-ordered society be intelligible and life wort...

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15K reads

Blink of an Eye

Malcolm Galdwell

When it comes to the task of understanding ourselves and our world, I think we pay too much attention to those grand themes and too little to the particulars of those fleeting moments. But what would...

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10K reads, 3 comments

Radiating Photons of Goodwill

Marc Ian Barasch

Every now and then, I'll meet an escapee, someone who has broken free of self-centeredness and lit out for the territory of compassion. You've met them, too, those people who seem to emit a steady str...

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13K reads, 10 comments

Accept What Is, Lead To Improve

Marc Lesser

“Accepting what is” and trusting the Universe is an essential approach to life. But so is “fighting for change.” And if you want to be effective in business — and in rela...

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14K reads, 11 comments

Enjoy Your Work

Margaret Stevens

There was a man who died and found himself in a beautiful place, surrounded by every conceivable comfort. A white-jacketed man came to him and said, "You may have anything you choose -- any food, an...

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4K reads

Between Yes and No

Margaret Wheatley

Root of happiness is knowing that everything changes. That's all there is to happiness. It's nothing you pursue. It's living in the constant continual paradox of life. The Vedas say that the yes an...

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7K reads

Evolving From Hope to Hopelessness

Margaret Wheatley

[Rudolf Bahro said,] "When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure." Could insecurity, self-doubt, be a good trait? I find i...

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17K reads, 15 comments

Disturb the System

Margaret Wheatley

Think about how we generally have treated information. We've known it was important, but we've handled it in ways that have destroyed many of its life-giving properties. For one thing, we haven't bee...

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4K reads

Element of Surprise

Margaret Wheatley

Very little about the emerging nature of life supports who we have tried to be. Life invites us to play along, discovering as we go. Life wants to work with us in surprising ways. We could make our...

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22K reads, 34 comments

Uncomfortable Place Of Uncertainty

Margaret Wheatley

We weren’t trained to admit we don’t know. Most of us were taught to sound certain and confident, to state our opinion as if it were true. We haven’t been rewarded for being confused...

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21K reads, 10 comments

Disturb Me, Please!

Margaret Wheatley

In graduate school, I had one professor who encouraged us to notice what surprised or disturbed us. If we were surprised by some statement, it indicate...

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23K reads, 48 comments

Who Do We Choose To Be?

Margaret Wheatley

The powerful always defend the status quo because it is the source of their power and privilege. Any change that benefits others would destroy their position. And their position is all they care about...

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32K reads, 10 comments

Hopium

Margaret Wheatley

The problem with hope is that it’s bipolar.  Every time we rely on hope, we always bring in fear. Wisdom teaches that hope and fear are two sides of the same dynamic. You already know ...

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12K reads, 23 comments

The Order on the Other Side of Chaos

Margaret Wheatley

I use the word "chaos" to describe those times in an organization when people are confused, don't know what to do, and feel overwhelmed by information that they can't make sense of. ...

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65K reads, 20 comments

Big Enough to Take It All In

Margaret Wheatley

To want to see clearly is a true act of fearlessness. To open our heart and mind, to be open to what life is offering us in this moment, requires tremendous courage and steadfastness. In the openne...

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23K reads, 7 comments

Love is the Source of Fearlessness

Margaret Wheatley

Some of the prison bars that we have constructed for ourselves are our fear of losing our jobs. Our fear of not being liked. Our need for approval. Our desire to make important changes but not have to...

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17K reads, 11 comments

Absurd Heroism

Margaret Wheatley

Consider Sisyphus. As described in both Greek and Roman mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to an eternity of futile and hopeless labor. He had to roll a rock to the top of the mountain, onl...

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22K reads, 23 comments

To Have Without Holding

Marge Piercy

Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the ...

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220K reads, 63 comments

What Breaks Your Heart?

Maria Shriver

What breaks your heart? What does your soul long for? And, how is that connected to how you are living your life now? I love this question because it’s made me think about my passion and purp...

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39K reads, 22 comments

We Start Where We Are

Marianna Cacciatore

When we learn to be of service to one another without imposing our ideas and advice, eventually the truth of our wholeness begins to reveal itself. This is how it unfolds.  In the beginning, w...

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12K reads, 5 comments

Emotional Chains

Marianne Williamson

The problem isn't that we're lost or apathetic, narcissistic or materialistic. The problem is we're terrified. A lot of us know we have what it takes--the looks, the education, the talent, the cred...

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5K reads

Born With One Purpose

Marianne Williamson

We spend so much time on unimportant things -- things with no ultimate meaning -- yet for reasons no one seems to fully understand, such nonessentials stand at the center of our worldly existence. The...

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5K reads

Giving it All up to the Stillness

Marion Wilson-Gruzalski

I realize that I have spent much of my life waiting for inspiration. Ever since I was a child, I have had an Inner Voice that has guided me through these many years, through all the difficult and pai...

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17K reads, 2 comments

Businessman and the Fisherman

Mark Albion

A young businessman was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Seeing several large yellowfin tuna inside the small boat, the businessman compliment...

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60K reads, 4 comments

Thinking, Feeling, Willing

Mark Finser

In these difficult times, my great hope is that we can move to a culture that balances our needs and wants with our actions and insights.  Insights come from our capacity to think in ways that ...

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12K reads, 4 comments

Integrity Grows From A Humbling Realization

Mark Gerzon

"The purpose of life is ... to know oneself. We cannot do so unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi. I have never seen a conflict in which everyone could ...

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6K reads, 5 comments

From Transaction To Trust

Mark Manson

The most precious and important things in life are, by definition, nontransactional. And to try to bargain for them is to immediately destroy them. You cannot conspire for happiness; it is impossible....

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18K reads, 9 comments

Not Taking Things Personally

Mark Manson

An unfortunate side effect of our consciousness residing in our brains is that everything we experience in our lives involves us somehow. The car in traffic today cut you off. The cable news show...

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17K reads, 12 comments

Wisdom in Blinking

Mark Nepo

We blink a thousand times a day. A thousand times a day the world goes dark. A thousand times a day we wake. We can't escape this opening and closing. It's a reflex we can't control. Even as you read...

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16K reads

The Energy of Being Real

Mark Nepo

"Mana" is a term originally used in a Polynesian and Melanesian cultures to describe an extraordinary power or force residing in a person or an object, a sort of spiritual electricity that charges any...

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75K reads, 14 comments

The Work Of Love Is To Love

Mark Nepo

My own time on earth has led me to believe in two powerful instruments that turn experience into love: holding and listening. For every time I have held or been held, every time I have listened or bee...

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27K reads, 15 comments

The Rabbit And The Garden

Mark Nepo

In the movie Phenomenon, John Travolta's character has done everything he can think of to keep this pesky rabbit out of his garden. He's even put in fencing that goes three feet underground, and sti...

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12K reads

To Separate and Unify

Mark Nepo

The destruction or healing of the world hinges on which way this thought unfolds. Whether we pull things apart or put things together makes all the difference. Indeed, human history has unfolded with ...

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44K reads, 16 comments

Outlasting the Fog

Mark Nepo

We all have these moments when the rose loses it color for some reason, or the music no longer stirs us, or the sweet, gentle soul across from us no longer seems to soften our heart. To move in and...

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11K reads, 10 comments

Honoring the Gill Inside You

Mark Nepo

A simple fish nosing its way along the bottom is in itself a profound teacher, and like the deepest teachers, it doesn't even know it is teaching. Yet in its tiny, efficient gill lives the mystery...

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21K reads, 9 comments

Living In The Freshest Chamber Of The Heart

Mark Nepo

Our ability to find something to love, and to love again for the first time depends greatly on how we resolve and integrate where we've been before. A great model for us exists in the chambered na...

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35K reads, 9 comments

The Exquisite Risk

Mark Nepo

At any moment, if quiet enough and open enough, we can drop into the fabric of existence in which everything, even pain, has its vivid signature of energy that we call, at different times, truth or be...

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11K reads, 6 comments

Be Alight with Who We Are

Mark Nepo

There is always purpose in being, but not always being in purpose. How easily we get caught up in defining who we are in relation to those around us. I remember walking home from school in fourth g...

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21K reads, 6 comments

The Practice Before The Practice

Mark Nepo

From the moment we open our eyes, we are meaning-seeking creatures, looking for what matters though we carry what matters deep within us. And more than the hard-earned understandings we arrive at, mor...

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30K reads, 20 comments

Love Like Water

Mark Nepo

Water in its clear softness fills whatever hole it finds. It is not skeptical or distrusting. It does not say this gully is too deep or that field is too open. Like water, the miracle of love is that ...

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36K reads, 11 comments

The Unwatched Space

Mark Nepo

I tried so hard to please that I never realized no one is watching. I imagined, like everyone else at school, that my parents were sitting just out of view like those quiet doctors behind clean mi...

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10K reads, 8 comments

Waterfall of Words

Mark Nepo

There was a time in my life during my years in college when I was so talkative that the waterfall of words kept others at a safe distance. Of course, in time, this cascade pushed others away. But wha...

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4K reads

To Witness and To Hold

Mark Nepo

We have been battered by modern times into obsessive problem solvers, but as life pares us down into only what is essential, it becomes clear that the deepest sufferings of heart and spirit cannot...

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5K reads

The Great Divide

Mark Vandeneijnde

The great divide: On the left there is business It loves to think and problem solve Move fast and talk with resolve Perform so hard it wears you down If only it would stop to breathe and look a...

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7K reads, 6 comments

Superstition

Marshall Goldsmith

Walking under a ladder. Breaking a mirror. A black cat darting across our path. Whoa! Most of us scorn superstitions as silly beliefs of the primitive and uneducated. Deep down inside, we assure ours...

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5K reads

Blessed Unrest

Martha Graham

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will ...

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56K reads, 3 comments

A Newly Rich Life With Yourself

Martha Nussbaum

Do not despise your inner world. That is the first and most general piece of advice I would offer. Our society is very outward-looking, very taken up with the latest new object, the latest piece of go...

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22K reads, 23 comments

The Broken Piano In 1975

Marti Leimbach

My favourite piece of music is Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert, an hour-long piece improvised, as all of Jarrett’s concerts are, on a solo piano in front of a live audience. You know the...

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16K reads, 15 comments

Three Supports For Turning Towards Mystery

Martin Aylward

There are three primary supports for nonconceptual awareness. These three supports are obvious in many ways, and yet, their simplicity belies their extraordinary depth. Over the last thirty years of m...

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10K reads, 10 comments

Love Your Enemy

Martin Luther King Jr.

"Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances,...

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5K reads

His Own Eulogy

Martin Luther King Jr.

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common denominator--that something we call death. We all think about it...

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103K reads, 59 comments

I Have Decided to Stick With Love

Martin Luther King Jr.

I’m concerned about a better World. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood and sisterhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that...

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102K reads, 16 comments

Drum Major Instinct

Martin Luther King Jr.

There is deep down within all of us an instinct. It's a kind of drum major instinct.a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first. And it is something that runs the whole...

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11K reads, 2 comments

Definition of Greatness

Martin Luther King Jr.

The setting is clear. James and John are making a specific request of Jesus -- "Now when you establish your kingdom, let one of us sit on the right hand and the other on the left hand of your throne....

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33K reads, 7 comments

We Shall Overcome

Martin Luther King Jr.

I refuse to accept the idea that the "is-ness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "ought-ness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the ide...

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20K reads, 2 comments

Building a Creative Temple

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whenever you set out to build a creative temple, whatever it may be, you must face the fact that there is a tension at the heart of the universe between good and evil. Hinduism refers to this as a str...

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19K reads, 28 comments

Pilgrimage to Nonviolence

Martin Luther King, Jr.

First, it must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violen...

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40K reads, 32 comments

Renewability Makes Something Valuable

Martin Prechtel

In the village, people used to build their houses out of traditional materials, using no iron or lumber or nails, but the houses were magnificent. Many were sewn together out of bark and fiber. L...

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17K reads, 14 comments

Keeping The Smoke Hole Open

Martin Shaw

In Siberian myth, when you want to hurt someone, you crawl into their tent and close the smoke hole. That way God can’t see them. Close the smoke hole and you break connection to the divin...

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18K reads, 18 comments

Three Types Of Leadership

Marty Krasney

There are three ways that human beings can accomplish anything together and each of them has its own type of leader. Very simply, the three domains of shared human endeavor can be characterized as For...

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20K reads, 4 comments

What Is Your Storyteller Doing?

Mary O'Malley

At 8:28 AM I slipped into the pool at my gym for my half hour swim. There was a water aerobics class that began at 9:00, which left just enough time for me to complete my swim. At around 8:55 a number...

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49K reads, 14 comments

When Death Comes

Mary Oliver

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when...

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291K reads, 77 comments

My Work is Loving the World

Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird -  equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand...

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163K reads, 25 comments

The Central Commitment Of The Creative Life

Mary Oliver

Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always -- these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of th...

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21K reads, 7 comments

Starlings In Winter

Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy, but with stars in their black feathers, they spring from the telephone wire and instantly they are acrobats in the freezing wind. And now, in the theater of air, they swing ...

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12K reads, 15 comments

Meaning of Yin and Yang

Masahiro Oko

Everything has a right to live.  Everything wants to exist and we have to respect that.  The weaker side in any relationship naturally demands things, because of the need for mutual balance....

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23K reads, 13 comments

Do-Nothing Cultivation

Masanobu Fukuoka

The usual way to go about developing a method is to ask, "How about trying this?" or "How about trying that?" bringing in a variety of techniques one upon the other. This is modern agriculture and it...

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47K reads, 13 comments

The Way of the Farmer

Masanobu Fukuoka

Extravagance of desire is the fundamental cause which has led the world into its present predicament. Fast rather than slow, more rather than less -- this flashy "development" is linked d...

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29K reads, 11 comments

The Difference Between Natural and Unnatural

Masanobu Fukuoka

For thirty years I lived only in my farming and had little contact with people outside my own community.  During those years I was heading in a straight line toward a "do nothing" agric...

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178K reads, 21 comments

Cultivating An Eagle Mind

Matthieu Ricard

Human qualities often come in clusters. Altruism, inner peace, strength, freedom, and genuine happiness thrive together like the parts of a nourishing fruit. Likewise, selfishness, animosity, and fear...

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42K reads, 8 comments

Go Placidly Amid the Noise and Haste

Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and cle...

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233K reads, 35 comments

Now I Become Myself

May Sarton

Now I become myself. It's taken Time, many years and places; I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people's faces, Run madly, as if Time were there, Terribly old, crying a warning,...

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24K reads, 18 comments

The Day I Learned The Value of a Smile

Maya Angelou

My paternal grandmother who raised me had a remarkable influence on how I saw the world and how I reckoned my place in it. She was the picture of dignity. She spoke softly and walked slowly, with her ...

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30K reads, 13 comments

Objectivity and Relationships

Meg Wheatley

Why has expressing love become such a problem when it's a fundamental human characteristic? This is where I think we have over analyzed and over complexified something that is known to everyone alive....

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6K reads

Going Beyond Hope and Fear

Meg Wheatley

For me and most of my colleagues, life these days is a roller coaster ride between hope and fear, oscillating wildly between what's possible and what is. Like all roller coasters, this one is both exh...

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17K reads, 9 comments

Groundlessness

Meg Wheatley

Hope is what propels us into action. We’ve been taught to dream of a better world as the necessary first step in creating one. We create a clear vision for the future we want, then we set a stra...

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12K reads, 20 comments

The Messiah Is One Of Us

Megan McKenna

Once upon a time there was a wise abbot of a monastery who was the friend of an equally wise rabbi. This was in the old country, long ago, when times were always hard, but just then they were even wor...

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25K reads, 11 comments

I-ness At Arm's Length

Meher Baba

The activities you are engaged in of serving the nation and the people are good. But to acquire the full bliss through "karma yoga", there is only one way and method. And that is, while rendering ser...

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4K reads, 2 comments

The Danger of Service Without Spirituality

Meher Baba

Service, even when it is utterly selfless, ought to be guided by spiritual understanding; for selfless service, when unintelligently handled, often creates chaos and complications. It could even be th...

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14K reads, 8 comments

I Have Noticed

Melody Anderson

I have noticed that emptiness is just another word for spaciousness. I have noticed that attachments, like anchors in the water, may give you a feeling of bein...

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3K reads

The Simplest Meditation

Melvin McLeod 

How can everything be perfect if it’s so screwed up? That question goes to the heart of the situation we find ourselves in, which Buddhists call samsara. That’s the endless cycle driven...

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9K reads, 16 comments

Gymnastics Of Attention

Menka Sanghvi

I once tried an improv class to see if that would finally help calm my stage nerves. It didn't. But I did learn something amazing. If an actor is trying to show the audience that they love some...

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8K reads, 18 comments

What Breathes Us?

Meredith Krugel

When you touch your bliss, it rings, confirming with the showering of further delight. A song emerges from the core of your being when you touch this sacred space. Unlike any other joy, it is fulfilli...

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4K reads

Attachment is Habitual Thinking

Miao Tsan

We all judge our experiences through the filter of habitual think­ing. In other words, we are unconsciously driven by how we think, and how we think determines the feelings and opinions we develop...

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37K reads, 25 comments

Giving Within For-Give-Ness

Michael Bernard Beckwith

People often say that Jesus taught, "You should turn the cheek if someone smites you; you should turn the other cheek if they wrong you."  Many people interpret this as saying that if s...

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34K reads, 27 comments

Enlightenment is Intimacy with All Things

Michael Damian

Depending on how we use it, the mind can obscure or reveal truth and thereby create hell or heaven for us. In that sense, where we really live is in the quality of our state of mind. The factor t...

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26K reads, 9 comments

You Are Saved By Your Love

Michael Damian

Love is the power that reveals truth and drives our search for it. You may have noticed that if you study something deeply - an animal, a face, a piece of music - you begin to love it. You become one ...

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21K reads, 6 comments

Longer Ladders Don't Get You To The Moon

Michael Gordon

Sundials came into being over 3,000 years ago, telling time-based on shadows cast by the sun. But they were thrown off by variations in the length of days and by differences in latitude. Geometry was ...

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8K reads, 11 comments

End of Absence?

Michael Harris

As we embrace a technology’s gifts, we usually fail to consider what they ask from us in return — the subtle, hardly noticeable payments we make in exchange for their marvellous service. W...

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11K reads, 7 comments

Difference Between Healing and Curing

Michael Lerner, PhD

In my thirty years of working with cancer patients, I've seen a profound distinction between curing and healing. Curing is what a physician seeks to offer you. Healing, however, comes from with...

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44K reads, 14 comments

We Can See Only What We Can Think

Michael Lipson

Fortunately or not, everything we do is led by our thinking. There's just no way around it. Even if I say, "I'm going to stop thinking and let feeling be my guide" -- that's...

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6K reads, 8 comments

The Process Of Understanding

Michael Lipson

We'll focus on the union of two apparently contradictory gestures: simultaneous holding and releasing. Holding.  I have a project, like writing a letter, or choreographing a musi...

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7K reads, 4 comments

Zero-Sum Game of Violence

Michael Nagler

When we have a non-violent outlook, we no longer look on a dispute as what's called a 'zero-sum game.' Instead of thinking that for me to win, you have to lose, we now believe there must be a way tha...

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7K reads, 6 comments

Zorba The Greek

Michael Pastore

From a book review of 'Zorba The Greek': The plot of Zorba is deceptively simple: a bookwormish writer (called in the novel "the boss"), who sleeps with a pocket edition of Dante's poems, travels to...

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56K reads

Surrender Your Data

Michael Quattrone

Surrender your data, and I will give you wisdom. Empty your bank accounts, and let me show you value. Shut your eyes to entertainment, and open them to beauty. Unplug your high-speed connection and I ...

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16K reads, 8 comments

Spiritual Activism

Michael Singer

I'm an environmentalist and I'm very much into cars that get high mileage and don't pollute, and I see that somebody's driving a Hummer. It's a classic example, somebody's driv...

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23K reads, 7 comments

The Highest Spiritual Path

Michael Singer

The highest spiritual path is life itself. If you know how to live daily life, it all becomes a liberating experience. But first you have to approach life properly, or it can be very confusing. To beg...

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22K reads, 9 comments

What You Have Given Your Mind to Do

Michael Singer

If you mistreat an animal, it becomes afraid. This is what has happened to your psyche. You have mistreated it by giving it a responsibility that is incomprehensible. Just stop for a moment and see wh...

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32K reads, 19 comments

Pain, the Price of Freedom

Michael Singer

Wise beings do not want to remain a slave to the fear of pain. They permit the world to be what it is instead of being afraid of it. They wholeheartedly particip...

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39K reads, 23 comments

The Surrender Experiment

Michael Singer

Life rarely unfolds exactly as we want it to. And if we stop and think about it, that makes perfect sense. The scope of life is universal, and the fact that we are not actually in control of life&rsqu...

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30K reads, 34 comments

The Anatomy Of Falling

Michael Singer

Leaving the seat of Self is not generally a willful act. The laws of attraction will cause it to happen. Consciousness is always drawn to the most distracting object: the bumped toe, the loud noise, o...

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22K reads, 18 comments

Blind Spots

Michael Talbot

Studies suggest that less than 50% of what we "see" is actually based on information entering our eyes. The remaining 50% plus is pieced together out of our expectations of what the world should look...

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6K reads

Attention Is Inseparable From Interrogation

Michel de Salzmann

Our attention is much more than we generally think. It is much more than a simple mental or cerebral mechanism. It concerns our whole being. If its potentialities are far from being fully actualized i...

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16K reads, 5 comments

Heart And Soul Bonds

Michelle

Our lives are greeted by different types of relationships. Some fun, some cozy and intimate, some crazy and adventurous, some inseparable. Nevertheless, there are also other type of connections, which...

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26K reads, 7 comments

Why I Make Movies

Mickey Lemle

All movies are an illusion. We think we are seeing motion but in fact we are seeing twenty-four still pictures every second. Half the time the screen is actually black. Yet movies seem so real, and so...

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57K reads, 7 comments

On Good and Evil

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Contemporary understanding of matter and energy also suggests a new way of thinking about good and evil. Evil in human affairs is analogous to the process of entropy in the material universe. We call ...

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9K reads, 4 comments

Changing Existence into Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"[Flow means] being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jaz...

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15K reads

Keep No Accounts With Love

Mikhail Naimy

You are the tree of Life. Beware of fractioning yourselves. Never set fruit against fruit, a leaf against a leaf, or a bough against a bough, the stem against the roots, or the tree against the mother...

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25K reads, 11 comments

Accessing Desire As Loving Motivation

Miki Kashtan

When Yannai, my sister Inbal’s son, was three and a half, his grandparents were visiting and were staying in the downstairs room. At about 8am the next morning Yannai started banging a pole on t...

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18K reads, 10 comments

Thirsty For Wonder

Mirabai Starr

Contemplative life flows in a circular pattern: awe provokes introspection, which invokes awe. Maybe you’re making dinner and you step outside to snip chives from the kitchen garden just as t...

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11K reads, 9 comments

The Dark Side of the Sacred

Miriam Greenspan

Emotions live in the body. It is not enough simply to talk about them, to be a talking head. We need to focus our attention on emotions where they live. This willingness to be present allows the emoti...

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14K reads, 9 comments

Wave is Part of the Ocean

Mitch Albom

"I heard a nice little story the other day," Morrie says. He closes his eyes for a moment and I wait. "Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. H...

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15K reads

Embarrassed by Silence

Mitch Albom

He enters the classroom, sits down, doesn't say anything. He looks at us, we look at him. At first, there are a few giggles, but Morrie only shrugs, and eventually a deep silence falls and we begin...

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11K reads

Part of the Ocean

Mitch Albom

Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air - until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing ag...

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4K reads

The Phenomenon of Boredom

MJ Ryan

The labeling of a huge part of human experience as boring is a relatively new phenomenon. The concept of boredom -- a sense of emptiness and a lack of stimulation -- didn't even exist until the ninete...

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24K reads, 16 comments

Secret of Aikido

Morihei Ueshiba

The secret of Aikido [a form of martial arts] is to harmonize ourselves with the movement of the universe and bring ourselves into accord with the universe itself. He who has gained the secret of Aik...

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8K reads, 3 comments

To Do Something Well

Mother

"If you want to do something well, what ever it may be.... you must become what you are doing and not remain a small person looking at himself doing it... Take a very amusing instance: you want to ...

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3K reads

Missing Drop In The Ocean

Mother Teresa

A friend of Mother Teresa from her early days came by hoping to have a quiet word with her and found, to her pleasant surprise, that there were few visitors that afternoon. She sat down on the old w...

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26K reads

Give It Your Best Anyway

Mother Theresa

It is reported that Mother Theresa had this on her wall ... People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ...

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11K reads

No Better Place to Meet Yourself

Moussa Ag Assarid

Moussa Ag Assarid (MAA): I don’t know my age. I was born in the Sahara desert, with no papers. I was born in a nomadic camp of Touaregs, between Timbuktu and Gao, in the north of Mali. ...

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70K reads, 23 comments

Reflections on Life from Death Row

Moyo

Reggie once told me that we could use these cells like meditation cells used by monks in monasteries. But prison is not a monastery. And although I may do my best to take advantage of the opportuni...

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16K reads, 14 comments

Me We

Muhammad Ali

Me We....

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5K reads, 2 comments