Snips

Often in our lives, we don't realize the significance of a relationship until later, when the experience has passed. Then we understand how the person helped us along the way, took us to the next part of our journey, opened us up to begin learning the next lesson. And we see how we, in turn, helped shaped that person.One evening, as I was ready for sleep, I had a vision. I saw clearly before me a scenario of the dance we do with each other. I saw in my heart, understood deeply, the tangible, shaping impact each soul had on my life. Each moment, each interaction with another person, had been important - the quiet interactions, the ones I barely noticed, and the more significant relationships. Each moment - the moments that hurt, the moments that brought joy - had helped. We had touched each other. We were joined in an intricate dance, a dance in which our souls learned and grew. And we had taken our places with each other on time, for the dance was perfectly choreographed. I could almost see us waving gleefully to each other, happy for how we had connected, joyful that we had helped each other learn the lessons of the soul: courage, love, forgiveness, gentleness, self-love.
See how each soul touches you?
See how you touch them?
Ask you heart to guide you with honesty, love, and responsibility in all your encounters. Honor the sacredness of love. Honor the lessons of planet earth and the people who help you learn them.
Melody Beattie ©

Wisdom is like marinade. First you take what a book said or what a teacher said, and then you mix it with your own ideas. Then you add experience and pour in a few buckets of tears. Add memories of lost love, a pinch of personal humiliation and a teaspoon of deep regrets. Add to that a cup of courage. Leave it to soak for a few years and voila! - darn it if you have not become wise.
Marianne Williamson

AA Thought of the Day / The Seventh Step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God./ 12 & 12, p. 76

If my soul could get away from this so-called prison, be granted all the list of attributes generally bestowed on spirits, my first ramble on spirit-wings would not be among the volcanoes of the moon. Nor should I follow the sunbeams to their sources in the sun. I should hover about the beauty of our own good star. I should not go moping among the tombs, not around the artificial desolation of men. I should study Nature's laws in all their crossings and unions; I should follow magnetic streams to their source and follow the shores of our magnetic oceans. I should go among the rays of the aurora, and follow them to their beginnings, and study their dealings and communions with other powers and expressions of matter. And I should go to the very center of our globe and read the whole splendid page from the beginning. But my first journeys would be into the inner substance of flowers, and among the folds and mazes of Yosemite's falls. How grand to move about in the very tissue of falling columns, and in the very birthplace of their heavenly harmonies, looking outward as from windows of ever-varying transparency and staining!
John Muir

The only way to really be powerful in our lives is to stay in charge of our actions and reactions. It is not by expressing anger that we show power. Power can often be hidden in silent understanding and compassion. Power can be found in accepting that everyone is acting out their own life scenario, and that everyone, including you, writes their own script. Nobody writes your lines for you. No one decides whether you feel happy or depressed. No one can force you to react angrily or peacefully when faced with a stressful situation. Where does the true power lay? Within yourself, within your choices, within your view of yourself and your world.
Marie T. Russell

What you call thinking is the voice of knowledge making up stories, telling you what you know, and trying to make sense out of everything you don’t know. The problem is that the voice makes you do many things that go against yourself.
Don Miguel Ruiz

"Guidance isn't being told which action to take or not to take. Guidance is God's gift of peace - from which we proceed. The peace dissolves the question, and we simply do what we do in peace."
Hugh Prather

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now an then, to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Bertrand Russell

If doubt, despair, and denial threaten to dismantle your dreams today, let Love rear up in your defense.
Sarah Ban Breathnach

namaste...jim