Earth is not a platform for human life. It’s a living being. We’re not on it but a part of it. Its health is our health.
~ Thomas Moore
Sopoaga Falls, Samoa - photo by Misa Mazurkova, bigstockphoto.com
With a cosmology of a living universe, a shining miracle exists everywhere. There are no empty places in the world. Everywhere there is life, both visible and invisible. All of reality is infused with a vital presence and this creates a profound relatedness among all things.
~ Duane Elgin
Seascape, Norway - photo by Taiga, bigstockphoto.com
There is a world behind this world. The old cultures used to be in constant conversation with it through the sacred practices of storytelling, dreaming, ceremony, and song. They invited the Otherworld to visit them, to transmit its wisdom to them, so that they might be guided by an ancient momentum.
~ Toko-pa Turner
Elf Garden, Iceland - photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir
Sometimes, if I’m feeling woe is me, or woe is the world, I go outside. I find reason for hope. There are miracles all around us. You see little flowers popping up where it seems so unlikely. You can get so tangled up and so focused on things that surround us every day that you forget that life is a miracle.
~ Sylvia Earle
Flowers in Olive Grove, Sicily - photo by Leonid Tit, bigstockphoto.com
Dr. Beatrice Bruteau asks the right question: "How big is your we?" Can we expand our vision of community beyond our own skin, family, race, tribe, culture, country, and species? Spiritual life is more than what we believe, it also includes how we relate. Who is included in the we and who is not? That is both a spiritual and a political question. How we answer it will likely determine our future.
~ Jim Wallis
Spring Blossoms - photo by Kateryna Ovcharenko, bigstockphoto.com
The whole of planet earth is a sacred site.
All people are the chosen people,
and the purpose of our lives is a spiritual one.
May we care for each other, and the earth,
for everything relates to everything else.
Feeling this oneness, may we radiate the light
of love and kindness that all may live in unity
and peace.
~ Radha Sahar
Sunset, Mt. Tibrogargan, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia - photo by Martin Valigursky, bigstockphoto.com
We should never underestimate the power of kindness to positively affect our world. Simple kindness is a powerful spiritual force. If we had more of it in the world, we could transform society into a manifestation of compassion, and that would truly be a blessing!
~ David Spangler
Cosmos Flowers - photo by kamill, bigstockphoto.com
Seeing beyond our filters—our accumulated knowledge and beliefs—does not always come naturally. We have spent years growing attached to them in various degrees, and they feel safe. Whatever we become attached to can begin to shape our future experiences and limit our perception of what exists outside our vocabulary. Like blinders on a horse, our attached beliefs limit our vision, and this in turn limits our perceived direction in life. The stronger our level of attachment, the less we can see.
~ don Miguel Ruiz Jr
False Kiva and Milky Way, Canyonlands National Park, UT - photo by Kris Wiktor, bigstockphoto.com
Love is the real power. It's the energy that cherishes. The more you work with that energy, the more you will see how people respond naturally to it, and the more you will want to use it. It brings out your creativity, and helps everyone around you flower. Your children, the people you work with—everyone blooms.
~ Marion Woodman
Tree Above Black Sea at Sunset - photo by Mr. Smith, bigstockphoto.com
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Lotus - photo by Ange DiBenedetto
Everything around you is alive: believe it. Tell stories to stones, sing to trees, start conversations with birds. Build relationships. You’ll never be lonely again.
~ Sharon Blackie
Sunrise, Hunts Mesa, Monument Valley, AZ - photo by Bill45, bigstockphoto.com
Over the centuries, human beings have come to care more about collecting material things than supporting Nature’s gifts, people and living creations. There has been a loss of our sense of the Sacredness of Life…We’ve placed more emphasis on wanting, getting, measuring and comparing than on living, loving, learning and being. What we’ve forgotten is that every life is precious and unique. Every day, every moment. Every forest, meadow and stream, every tree, child, river and lake, is a sacred gift from the Universe.
~ Christopher Chase
Deep Montana Forest - photo by Virrage Images, bigstockphoto.com
We are living in a world that is in the late stage of a Caterpillar. It is very important to let go of the old and start to gravitate to the new because we are leaving behind a world that is no longer sustainable and moving into a world in which we can thrive.
~ Bruce Lipton
Peacock Eye Butterfly - photo by Elkov, bigstockphoto.com
When we know nature as the mother’s body and everything in nature as utterly sacred then, and then only, will we do everything in our power to preserve, honor and protect nature.
~ Andrew Harvey
Bucegi Mountains, Carpathians, Romania - photo by Project-Photo, bigstockphoto.com
You might want to practice stopping and looking throughout the day, even if only for a few moments. It's remarkable what we can see when we stop and turn the light of awareness on the things we take for granted.
~ John Brehm
Early Spring, Kawaguchi Lake, Japan at Mt. Fuji -photo by SeanPavonePhoto, bigstockphoto.com
The Universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees, all these have voices and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.
~ Thomas Berry
Bright Full Moon and Stars - photo by kdshutterman, bigstockphoto.com
For thousands of years it has been known that everything that exists in this world is alive and has a spirit.
We are connected to a web of life that reflects the impact of the behavior of all that is alive. We can speak to the spirit of the trees, plants, rocks, rivers, animals, birds, insects, and reptiles and perceive their divine nature. As everything that exists is alive, each being also recognizes the divine in us. The earth is alive and is a sacred being. It is time for us to align with the heartbeat of the earth.
~ Sandra Ingerman
Yosemite National Park, CA - photo by jimjab, bigstockphoto.com
Diversity is the nature of evolution. Evolution has worked for billions of years to create biodiversity, cultural diversity, religious diversity, linguistic diversity and truth diversity. But now, in our mistaken view of the world, we are turning this diversity, which we should be celebrating, into divisions. And now we see each other as separate. When you create divisions you have a conflict. Conflict leads to wars, poverty and injustice. If we wish to reduce, or hopefully remove altogether, the possibilities of conflict, wars, poverty, exploitation, then we have to rise above these divisions which we have created in the world and celebrate our diversity.
~ Satish Kumar
Tropical Landscape at Disk, Thailand - photo by smithore, bigstockphoto.com
Consider the other kingdoms.
The trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding titles: oak, aspen, willow. Or the snow, for which the peoples of the north have dozens of words to describe its different arrivals. Red Deer Stag in Foggy Forest - photo by Veneratio, bigstockphoto.comOr the creatures, with their thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze. Their infallible sense of what their lives are meant to be.
Thus the world grows rich, grows wild, and you too, grow rich, grow sweetly wild, as you too were born to be.
~ Mary Oliver
Red Deer Stag in Foggy Forest - photo by Veneratio, bigstockphoto.com
People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.
~ Richard Rohr
Ocean Sunrise - photo by Smileus, bigstockphoto.com
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
~ Marian Wright Edelman
Water Lilies - photo by Mesori, bigstockphoto.com
Every tree, every plant, has a spirit. People may say that the plant has no mind. I tell them that the plant is alive & conscious. A plant may not talk, but there is a spirit in it that is conscious, that sees everything, which is the soul of the plant, its essence, what makes it alive. The channels through which the water & sap move are the veins of the spirit.
~ Pablo Amaringo
Old Linden Tree, Estonia - photo by Artenex, bigstockphoto.com
Your unity and connection with LIFE and the Universe is a deep spiritual and scientific truth. Reality exists as a beautiful mosaic of interconnection and inter-being. Everything exists in circles of creative interdependence, mutual attraction and sharing.
~ Christopher Chase
Red Rock Cliffs, Zion National Park, UT - photo by eric1513, bigstockphoto.com
...a truly planetary perspective means we see ourselves first and foremost not just as members of the human family but as earthlings in interdependent relationship with all the human and nonhuman members of the Earth community.
~ David Nicol
Hot Springs, Caldeira Velha, Azores, Portugal - photo by Pav-Pro-Photography Ltd.
You have heard of collateral damage. Now hear of collateral renewal. Every time we act in kindness, in mercy, in love: the impact of our actions radiates out to touch many more lives than the ones in our immediate vicinity. Others we do not know will be affected. The reverberations of our compassion will circle the world. Collateral renewal – healing rippling out, never ending.
~ Steven Charleston
Pine Forest Sunrise - photo by valio84sl, bigstockphoto.com
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
~ R. Buckminster Fuller
Early Cherry Blossoms, NY Central Park - photo by Devadana Sanctuary
Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.
~ Lewis Thomas
Black Lava Rock Shoreline, Hawaii - photo by Steven Gaertner, bigstockphoto.com
The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.
~ John O’Donohue
Lotus Blossom - photo by Ange DiBenedetto
The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. To understand the true nature of the universe, one must think it terms of energy, frequency and vibration.
~ Nikola Tesla
Desert Sunset, Saguaro Cactus - photo by jasony00, bigstockphoto.com
Participatory consciousness emerges in relationship with an animate world, an ensouled universe with both a past and an unfolding future. Rivers and mountains, galaxies and microbes are physical and psychic presences with their own stories and longings...
~ Geneen Marie Haugen
Smoky Mountain Stream - photo by digitalphotonut, bigstockphoto.com
We cannot do the work of transforming the world unless we are in interdependent relationships—the work is too vast and complex for any one of us…Let’s reach toward each other.
~ Akaya Windwood
Sunset, Lake Te Anau, New Zealand - photo by magann, bigstockphoto.com
Quantum science suggests the existence of many possible futures for each moment of our lives. Each future lies in a state of rest until it is awakened by choices made in the present.
~ Gregg Braden
Lotus - photo by Peggy Braun
People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is—just be a little kinder.
~ Aldous Huxley
Iceland Sunset - photo by Raghildur Jonsdottir
Sacredness is the radiant expansion of the heart, the devotion to life that rises in contemplation of the inexhaustible mystery that is unity in diversity, the One manifesting through the whole of creation.
~ Eleanor O’Hanlon
Spring Daffodils - photo by Devadana Sanctuary
The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members, a heart of grace, and a soul generated by love.
~ Coretta Scott King
Kawaguchi Lake, Japan at Mt Fuji - photo by SeanPavonePhoto, bigstockphoto.com
We like things to manifest right away, and they may not. Many times, we're just planting a seed and we don't know exactly how it is going to come to fruition. It's hard for us to realize that what we see in front of us might not be the end of the story.
~ Sharon Salzberg
Redwood Forest, Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, CA - photo by TNPhoto, bigstockphoto.com
Anything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity, can cause to be set in motion…mend the part of the world that is within your reach.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Plumeria-Fragipani Flowers - photo by KaziytaFahnizeer, bigstockphoto.com
…Gregory Matloff’s ideas are shocking. The veteran physicist at New York City College of Technology recently published a paper arguing that humans may be like the rest of the universe in substance and in spirit. A “proto-consciousness field” could extend through all of space, he argues. Stars may be thinking entities that deliberately control their paths. Put more bluntly, the entire cosmos may be self-aware.
~ Corey S. Powell
Night Sky, Canyonlands National Park, UT - photo by Andriy Maygutyak, bigstockphoto.com
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
~ Martha Graham
Sunrise, Grand Teton Mountains - photo by haveseen, bigstockphoto.com
Water isn’t just for drinking or washing.
Water has its own spirit.
Water is alive.
Water has memory.
Water knows how you treat it.
You should get to know water, too.
~ Wabinoquay Otsoquaywhan, Anishinaabe Nation
Iguazu Falls - photo by saiko3p, bigstockphoto.com
Over the centuries, human beings have come to care more about collecting material things than supporting Nature’s gifts, people and living creations. There has been a loss of our sense of the Sacredness of Life. We’ve placed more emphasis on wanting, getting, measuring and comparing than on living, loving, learning and being. What we’ve forgotten is that every life is precious and unique. Every day, every moment. Every forest, meadow and stream, every tree, child, river and lake, is a sacred gift from the Universe.
~ Christopher Chase
St. Mary Lake, Glacier National Park - photo by kanonsky, bigstockphoto.com
Gratefulness draws on the best of the human spirit in all of us. It renews and refreshes us, and best of all it is contagious.
~ Amy Edelstein
Monument Valley Sunrise - photo by Dean Fikar, bigstockphoto.com
I am grateful for the magic, mystery and majesty of nature – my loyal friend and companion – always there, welcoming and waiting for me to come; to be healed.
~ Tom North
Iceland Sunset - photo by rasica, bigstockphoto.com
The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.
~ Joan Halifax
Green Forest in Misty Morning, Phuket, Thailand - photo by kovalva, bigstockphoto.com
We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.
~ Mary Dunbar
Bohey Dulang Island, Borneo - photo by Zulkiffle Mohd Kassim, bigstockphoto.com
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems.
~ Joy Harjo
Egret in Rainforest River - photo by WhitcombeRD, bigstockphoto.com
Just for a moment, drop your opinions. The world will survive without them for a little while. This is a spiritual practice, is it not? Drop your opinions and feel the freedom, the ineffable clarity, the boundless expansion. Do this not just for yourself, but for the whole entangled field of consciousness. Even a moment of inward silence is of great service to humanity.
~ Fred LaMotte
Sun Rays in Deep Forest - photo by Subbotina Anna, bigstockphoto.com
We are undergoing a species level [rite] of passage and it is time to come home into the community of life, not to exert ‘power-over’, but to enable ‘power-with’. We can co-create a world of shared abundance rather than competitive scarcity, but to do so it is time to become mature members of the community of life. We need to redesign the human presence and impact on Earth from being exploitative and degenerative to being regenerative and healing. What’s more, we need to do this within the lifetimes of those alive today.
~ Daniel Christian Wahl
Mountain Lake Sunset, Altai Mountains - photo by PrimePhoto, bigstockphoto.com
If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear, people who can open to the web of life that called us into being, and who can rest in the vitality of that larger body.
~ Joanna Macy
The Kumano Kodo Trail, Sacred Trail in Nachi, Japan - photo by SeanPavonePhoto, bigstockphoto.com
One of the greatest sovereign powers that we all wield as human beings, although often unknowingly or without awareness, is the power of choosing where to place our attention.
~ Paul Levy
Sunrise, Sulu Sea, Pacific Ocean - photo by Eugene Ga, bigstockphoto.com
Consciousness exists in everything, but manifests itself in different ways. The scientific field of neurobiology has been effective in demonstrating consciousness in plants. Plant consciousness is evidenced by the process of bio-communication in plant cells, which means that plants are sentient life forms that feel, know, and are conscious.
~ Paul Lenda
Tropical Jungle - photo by Quickshooting, bigstockphoto.com
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.
~ Rachel Carson
El Capitan, Yosemite Valley - photo by jeffbanke, bigstockphoto.com
May I live this day
Compassionate of heart,
Clear in word,
Gracious in awareness,
Courageous in thought,
Generous in love.
~ John O’Donohue
Giant Sequoia - photo by lucky-photographer, bigstockphoto.com
We are a part of the sacred and it is a part of us—it belongs to our real nature. It is only the disconnection of our culture, its fundamental forgetfulness, that has isolated us within our own individual ego self, seemingly separate, struggling, unsupported by this basic energy and power within creation. Once we have learned to walk in a sacred manner, our feet touching the earth, we honor this connection that links our soul to the world soul, our breath to the breath of the spirit, that reveals our individual story as a part of the Earth’s story.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Mountaintop Tree at Evening Time - photo by Sanja22, bigstockphoto.com
It [realization of Oneness] means being constantly open to the possibility that we are like two flowers looking at each other from two different branches of the same tree, so that if we were to go deep enough inside to the trunk, we would realize that we are one. Just being open to this possibility will have a profound effect on your relationships and on your experience of the world.
~ Francis Lucille
Flowering Cherry Tree - photo by Saharosa, bigstockphoto.com
How you love means more than you know. When you reach out into the world in love, you create both a sign and a reality. You let others see what spiritual love can be. You offer a living alternative that others can make their own. Love is more than a sentiment: it is the heartbeat of a lifetime.
~ Steven Charleston
Orchids and Zen Basalt Stones - photo by a_lisa bigstockphoto.com
The sacred is not in heaven or far away. It is all around us, and small human rituals can connect us to its presence. And of course the greatest challenge (and gift) is to see the sacred in each other.
~ Alma Luz Villanueva
Sunrise, Yosemite National Park - photo by haveseen, bigstockphoto.com
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
~ Arundhati Roy
Redwood National Park, CA - photo by pmphoto, bigstockphoto.com
Whenever you have a choice between being right or being kind, be kind. No exceptions. Don’t confuse kindness for weakness.
~ Kevin Kelly
Pink Lotus - photo by Dilok, bigstockphoto.com
The Universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.
~ Stanley Kunitz
Spiderweb with Frost - photo by Yintan, English Wikipedia
Quantum science suggests the existence of many possible futures for each moment of our lives. Each future lies in a state of rest until it is awakened by choices made in the present.
~ Gregg Braden
Sunset, Siquijor, Philippines - photo by smithore, bigstockphoto.com
What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It's the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself alive. It is the experience of contact and communication between oneself and something that is profoundly different from oneself: a swallow, a frog, a spider weaving its web.
~ David Abram
Tropical Glass Frog, Amazon Rain Forest - photo by kikkerdirk, bigstockphoto.com
When we walk into a forest, we're not walking into a place that is full of separate interacting individuals...We're walking into a living network, a place where every creature exists only through relationships with others...Every leaf on a tree has hundreds of species of bacteria and fungi living within its leaves. Without those other species, the leaf cannot function; it gets overrun by pathogens...What is true for a tree is also true for an individual human. Our bodies are made of dozens and dozens of interacting species—not just human cells, but bacterial and fungal cells and viruses and microbial components and so forth, and without the interconnections among all those members of the community, our bodies don't function.
~ David George Haskell
Living Network of Life - photo by Smileus, bigstockphoto.com
Love is the light in which we see each thing in its true origin, nature, and destiny. If we could look at the world in a loving way, then the world would rise up before us full of invitation, possibility, and depth.
~ John O’Donohue
African Savanna Sunset - photo by Oskanov, bigstockphoto.com
I want to remind us all that the world is listening, all the time. How we are ripples out from us into the world and affects others.
~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Sunrise, Hunts Mesa, Monument Valley - photo by Bill45, bigstockphoto.com
when the world
goes mad
be wildly kind
to everyone
everyone
everyone
everyone
~ you can’t control
much
but you control how
you treat others
in these breaking news
heartbreaking times
when nothing feels
certain
let your raw kindness
be a certainty
allow your compassion
to become a North Star
stamped up in
the sky for
others to follow
back home
~ John Roedel
Cala Lilies - photo by Carmen Sorvillo, bigstockphoto.com
In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Swallowtail Butterfly in Tropical Forest - photo by Jag_cz, bigstockphoto.com
We must have the courage to live with paradox. The strength to hold the tension of not knowing the answers and the willingness to listen to our inner wisdom and the inner wisdom of the planet which begs for change.
~ Maureen Murdock
Winter Forest - photo by jenyateua, bigstockphoto.com
We can be of service by bringing some kindness, care, groundedness, and balance to those around us.
~ Sebene Selassie
Mountain Valley, Nepal - photo by denbelitsky, bigstockphoto.com
Perhaps it is not so much what we learn that matters in these moments of awe and wonder, but what we feel in relationship to a world beyond ourselves, even beyond our own species.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Sunrise, Dominican Republic - photo by Iakov Kalinin, bigstockphoto.com
The difficult magic of animistic perception, the utter weirdness and dark wonder that lives in any deeply place-based relation to the earth, is the felt sense of being in contact with wakeful forms of sentience that are richly different from one’s own—the experience of interaction with intelligences that are radically other from one’s own human style of intelligence.
~ David Abram
Adult Male Waterbuck, iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa - photo by bennymarty, bigstockphoto.com
The air that wraps Earth is a single entity, the matrix that holds us all. It is a global commons from which we draw a crucial element of life, sharing as we do molecules that have been breathed in and out of every living thing that has ever breathed on Earth. Molecules that pass through us have passed through brontosaurs, neolithic hunters, Roman emperors, hummingbirds, snails.
~ David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature
Sky Blessings - photo by SkyLynx, bigstockphoto.com
May you recognize in your life the presence,
power, and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone,
that your soul in its brightness and belonging
connects you intimately with the rhythm of
the universe.
May you have respect for your individuality
and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique,
that you have a special destiny here,
that behind the façade of your life,
there is something beautiful and eternal happening.
~ John O’Donohue
Lotus - photo by Ange DiBenedetto
As you walk upon the sacred earth, treat each step as a prayer.
~ Black Elk
El Capitan, Yosemite Valley - photo by jeffblanke, bigstockphoto.com
Be aware of the miracles and wonders which are happening all around you all the time. Life is never dull; it is full to overflowing with the most thrilling things.
~ Eileen Caddy
Gunung ibayak Volcano, Sumatra, Indonesia - photo by Pav-Pro-Photography Ltd, bigstockphoto.com
Lakota Instructions for Living (Passed down from White Buffalo Calf Woman)
Friend do it this way - that is,
whatever you do in life,
do the very best you can
with both your heart and mind.
And if you do it that way,
the Power Of The Universe
will come to your assistance,
if your heart and mind are in Unity.
When one sits in the Hoop Of The People,
one must be responsible because
All of Creation is related.
And the hurt of one is the hurt of all.
And the honor of one is the honor of all.
And whatever we do effects everything in the universe.
If you do it that way - that is,
if you truly join your heart and mind
as One - whatever you ask for,
that's the Way It's Going To Be.
~ Passed down from White Buffalo Calf Woman
Garden of the Gods, Colorado - ph0oto by RKimbrow, bigstockphoto.com
In times of turmoil and danger, gratitude helps to steady and ground us. It brings us into presence, and our full presence is perhaps the best offering we can make to our world.
~ Joanna Macy
Sunset, Yosemite Valley - photo by jeffbanke, bigstockphoto.com
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike. We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware.
~ Albert Einstein
Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), Chile - photo by Aliaksei Skreidzeleu, bigstockphoto.com
Please join me today, whoever you are, whatever you believe: join me in releasing love into the world. Love as mercy, love as peace, love as forgiveness, love as healing: join me in sharing love in every way that you can. And when you do, join me in believing it will make a difference. Love always makes a difference. Please join me in extending that love as far as your heart can reach.
~ Steven Charleston
Sunrise at Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, UT - photo by prochasson, bigstockphoto.com
In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.
~ Howard Thurman
Swan in morning sunlight - photo by Flynt, bigstockphoto.com
Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost.
Where you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger;
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.
Listen.
It answers.
I have made this place around you,
And if you leave it
You may come back again
Saying…
“Here.”
No two trees are the same to raven
No two ranches are the same to wren.
If what a tree or branch
Does is lost on you,
Then you are surely lost.
Stand still.
The forest knows where you are.
You must let it find you.
~ David Wagner
Pine Forest in Winter - photo by Boguslavus, bigstockphoto.com
This brainless, single-celled organism [slime mold] may lack brains but compensates with a level of intelligence that continues to stun scientists across the globe. Despite its lack of neurons, it's capable of complexities like remembering, making decisions, and recognizing itself. The slime mold also has a knack for geometry, as it swiftly mapped Tokyo's rail system in just 26 hours -- a task that took humans a hundred years! "This brainless goo has been known to beg for food, help out a friend, solve a maze better than Harvard grad students and even scheme coordinated escapes." So, next time you think of intelligence, reconsider preconceived notions, because the slime mold is here to redefine it!
~ Daily Good Weekly Newsletter
Slime Mold,several fruiting bodies of Comatricha nigra - photo by alexis_orion, wikipedia.com
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
~ Marcel Proust
Arch Formation, Bryce Canyon - photo by D.G. Hayes, bigstockphoto.com
The belief that everything in the universe is part of the same fundamental whole exists throughout many cultures and philosophical, religious, spiritual, and scientific traditions, as captured by the phrase ‘all that is.’ The Nobel winner Erwin Schrodinger once observed that quantum physics is compatible with the notion that there is indeed a basic oneness of the universe. Therefore, despite it seeming as though the world is full of many divisions, many people throughout the course of human history and even today truly believe that individual things are part of some fundamental entity.
~ Scott Barry Kaufman
Sunset, Babson Island, Maine - photo by Cynthia Stroud
The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically related to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all the atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
Starry Sky and Baobab Trees - photo by Mikhail Dudarev, bigstockphoto.com
The way you alchemize a soulless world into a sacred world is by treating everyone as if they were sacred, until the sacred in them remembers.
~ Sarah Dunham Wilson
Sunset, Iceland - photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir
Here's to the bridge-builders, the hand-holders, the light-bringers, those extraordinary souls wrapped in ordinary lives who quietly weave threads of humanity into an inhumane world. They are the unsung heroes in a world at war with itself. They are the whisperers of hope that peace is possible. Look for them in this present darkness. Light your candle with their flame. And then go. Build bridges. Hold hands. Bring light to a dark and desperate world. Be the hero you are looking for. Peace is possible. It begins with us.
~ L R Knost
Rays of Sunrise in A Foggy Forest - photo by denbelitsky, bigstockphoto.com
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.
~ Martin Luther king
African Elephants - photo by Allan Lokos
Goddess alchemy is learning to see through this dimension into the next and welcome in what you are seeking. Healers, priestesses, and brujas of African descent have used magic for access to healing, protection, and joy since time began.
~ Abiola Abrams
Elf Garden, Iceland - photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir
Let love always lead you to listen more deeply, understand more fully, connect more securely, forgive more freely, communicate more clearly, and respond more gently.
~ L.R. Knost
Lotus - photo by Ange DiBenedetto
Kindness is like snow; it beautifies everything it covers.
~ Kahlil Gibran
Winter Forest Magic - photo by Mihailo K, bigstockphoto.com
The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!
~ Rumi
Monument Valley Sunrise - photo by Kris Wiktor, bigstockphoto.com
Everyone you meet in your life—even total strangers—is already intimately connected to you. The idea that we are all separate and distinct beings is nothing but an illusion. We are all parts of a larger whole, like individual cells in a body.
~ Steve Pavlina
Sunset Light, El Matador State Beach, CA - photo by bennymarty, bigstockphoto.com
Can love, in its unaccountable weirdness, hope to overcome a culture of individualism built on denying all our millions of kinships and dependencies? That is our central drama now.
~ Richard Powers
Sunlight in Winter Forest at Sunset - photo by swkunst, bigstockphoto.com
The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we will never hear.
~ Henry Beston
Majestic Red Deer Stag - photo by Voy, bigstockphoto.com
What the idea of “thinking like a planet”…implies is that we are the planet. We are Gaia. If anything, this is what an understanding of ecology (both physical and spiritual) teaches us: that we cannot separate ourselves from the web of interconnectedness and interdependency that makes up the web of planetary life. We simply cannot affect one part of our world without affecting in some manner all other parts, including ourselves. Some of these consequences, as we are learning, can be disastrous. It is in our best interests to learn to think in terms of the whole system of which we are one part.
~ David Spangler
Twin Wailua Waterfalls, Kauai, Hawaii - photo by maximkabb, bigstockphoto.com
According to Navajo tradition, a “sacred wind” blows through the universe and brings the capacity for awareness and communication with others. Our individual consciousness is simply a local part of this larger, animating wind or life force that moves through all of nature.
~ Duane Elgin
Sunrise, Hunts Mesa, Monument Valley, AZ - photo by Bill45, bigstockphoto.com
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 soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Sun Breaking Through - photo by underworld1, bigstockphoto.com
I think it's a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. That there isn't their life and our life. Nor your life and my life. That it's just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, all of us, are entangled with it as deep as entanglement goes.
~ Kate Forster
Majestic Lion - photo by lucascpac, bigstockphoto.com
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ocean Sunrise - photo by TinasDreamworld, bigstockphoto.com