Reading Archives (2014)
Not Resisting Resistance
Peter Russell
The building where I used to run a meditation group was on the same street as a fire station; one could almost guarantee that sometime during the meditation a fire engine would come rushing past, sire...
Kindness Includes Everything
George Saunders
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded ... sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. Or, to lo...
Our Environment Is An Integrated Whole
Ganoba
We have a very special relationship with our environment. The sooner we realize it, the better it is for all of us. Life as we know it came into being because of the environment. Having given birth...
A Heart Wide Open
Joel and Michelle Levy
"Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts where neither sin nor knowledge could reach, the core of reality, the person that each one is in the...
Anyone Else Suffer From Active Laziness?
Sif Anna Dal
I was recently reading a book about a boy who becomes acquainted with philosophy through the need to answer questions about living and dying and the meaning of life after his mother is killed in a car...
A Pledge For Grateful Living
Brother David Steindl-Rast
In thanksgiving for life, I pledge to overcome the illusion of entitlement by reminding myself that everything is gift and, thus, to live gratefully. In thanksgiving for life, I pledge to overc...
Who are you, really?
Kosi
“Any thought that you have had about yourself, however deflated or inflated, is not who you are. It is simply a thought. The truth of who you are cannot be thought, because it is the source of a...
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...
Be Nobody
Lama Marut
Consider this: We all know that it is in those moments when we completely lose ourselves — engrossed in a good book or movie, engaged in an all-consuming task or hobby, or immersed in our child&...
Don't Go Back to Sleep
Elizabeth Lesser
To be human is to be lost in the woods. None of us arrives here with clear directions on how to get from point A to point B without stumbling into the forest of confusion or catastrophe or wrongdoing....
Conscious Simplicity
Duane Elgin
Here are three major ways that I see the idea of simplicity presented in today’s popular media: 1) Crude or Regressive Simplicity: The mainstream media often shows simplicity as a path o...
The Difference Between Education and Training
Rachel Naomi Remen
For me, the process of education is intimately related to the process of healing. The root word of education -- educare -- means to lead forth a hidden wholeness in another person. A genuine education...
The Place That is Free of Suffering
Eckhart Tolle
The world promises fulfillment somewhere in time, and there is a continuous striving toward that fulfillment in time. Many times people feel, "Yes, now I have arrived," and then they realize...
Get a Life
Anna Quindlen
There are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive w...
Suffering Leads to Grace
Ram Dass
For most people, when you say that suffering is Grace it seems off the wall to them. And we’ve got to deal now with our own suffering and other people’s suffering. That is a distinction th...
Ninety Six Words for Love
Robert Johnson
The first difficulty we meet in discussing anything concerning our feelings is that we have no adequate vocabulary to use. Where there is no terminology, there is no consciousness. A poverty-stricken ...
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...
Come Home to Love
Rick Hanson
Take a breath right now, and notice how abundant the air is, full of life-giving oxygen offered freely by trees and other green growing things. You can't see air, but it's always available for...
Search Inside or Outside?
Rabiya
A famous Sufi mystic, Rabiya, was searching for something on the street outsider her small hut. The sun was setting and darkness was descending, as few people gathered around her. "What have...
The Golden Eternity
Jack Kerouac
I have lots of things to share now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Eve...