The Pleasure of Serving
Gabriela Mistral
All of nature is a yearning for service: The cloud serves, and the wind, and the furrow. Where there is a tree to plant, you be the one. Where there is a mistake to undo, let it be you. You be...
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...
Effects of Adversity
Eranda Jayawickreme
Adversity may help people distinguish between events they can really control by changing their environment versus uncontrollable events. While they cannot change the environment in the latter case, th...
Call Me by My True Names
Thich Nhat Hanh
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, le...
Money is a Lot Like Water
Lynne Twist
We’ve allowed this culture of money to shut down our heart, close off access to our soul, and drive us such that we behave in ways that undermine and erode the very center and core of our most h...
Man's Most Important Mistake
G. I. Gurdjieff
One of man's most important mistakes, one which must be remembered, is his illusion in regard to his I. Man such as we know him, the ‘man-machine,’ the man who cannot ‘do,&rsq...
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...
Privacy Is Not Possible
Vimala Thakar
Traditionally, the investigating of psychological weaknesses in relation to social action has been taboo, not acceptable. As long as a social activist provided service to others, it was considered irr...
Not Minding What Happens
Eckhart Tolle
J. Krishnamurti, the great Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher, spoke and traveled almost continuously all over the world for more than fifty years attempting to convey through words - which are ...
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...
Eulogy Versus Resume Virtues
David Brooks
About once a month I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good. They listen well. They make you feel funny and valued. You often c...
A Strange Predicament
Pavithra Mehta
When I stop to consider the facts they astonish me. There you are, couched in your own skin, and Here I am in mine. No matter how close We must each do our own living. Your heart cannot be persuad...