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
Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia – photo by flocu, bigstockphoto.com
Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film.
~ Ansel Adams
Grand Canyon in Summer – photo by fotoping, bigstockphoto.com
We live in a world where everything is connected. We can no longer think in terms of us and them when it comes to the consequences of the way we live. Today it’s all about WE.
~ Gregg Braden
One of the WE – Our Beautiful Flower Earth-Kin – photo by Ange DiBenedetto
Gratefulness is a setting of the heart, one that I can choose like a wavelength on the radio.
~ Susan Mazrolle
Sun Rays Breaking Through Storm Clouds – photo by Serge 777, bigstockphoto.com
It’s almost impossible to be ‘healthy’ if you define it as a relationship with yourself without acknowledging that you’re part of a larger ‘culture’ including both the human and nonhuman.
~ Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Green Hermit, Costa Rica- photo by JinHreicek, bigstockphotocom
Our natural state of being is in relationship, a tango, a constant state of one influencing the other. Just as the subatomic particles that compose us cannot be separated from the space and particles surrounding them, so living beings cannot be isolated from each other…By the act of observation and intention, we have the ability to extend a kind of super-radiance to the world.
~ Lynne McTaggart
Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona – photo by vichie81, bigstockphoto.com
In a real sense all life is inter-related. All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mountain Sunrise – photo by Kotenko, bigstockphoto.com
For some people, opening themselves to compassionate responses initially creates its own kind of pain. When we recognize that all people—actually, all beings—are capable of suffering, our relationship to others changes. As the ripples of compassion move out beyond the circumference of our own suffering or that of our loved ones and friends, we may find it increasingly impossible to ignore the plight of people we’ve never met…Their situation and their capacity to suffer become piercingly real.
~ Nancy Napier, “Sacred Practices for Conscious Living, 2nd Edition”
Lotus Blossoms – photo by Ange DiBenedetto
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
~ Margaret Atwood
Dursey Island, County Cork, Ireland – photo by Bjoern Alberts, bigstockphoto.com
Biologists say that trees are social beings. They can count, learn, and remember. They nurse sick members, warn each other of danger by sending electrical signals across a fungal network and, for reasons unknown, keep the ancient stumps of long felled companions alive for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots.
~ The Talking Tree Sisterhood FB Page
Tall Sequoias, Sequoia National Park – photo by travelview, bigstockphoto.com
In the Circle we are all equal. When in the Circle, no one is in front of you. No one is behind you. No one is above you. No one is below you. The Sacred Circle is designed to create unity. On this hoop there is a place for every species, every race, every tree, and every plant. It is this completeness of Life that must be respected in order to bring about health on this planet.
~ Dave Yakima Chief
Monument Valley, AZ – photo by Virrage Images, bigstockphoto.com
Enchantment…has nothing to do with fantasy, or escapism, or magical thinking: it is founded on a vivid sense of belongingness to a rich and many-layered world; a profound and whole-hearted participation in the adventure of life.
~ Sharon Blackie
Icelandic Sunset and Waterfall – photo by rasica, bigstockphoto.com
A hundred years from now, I will no longer walk this Earth,
and my time here will be but a brief memory,
and so I do not have a second to waste feeling angry
when my life here is so precious and fleeting.
And so, for every person who I encounter on my path,
I will whisper to myself: “I wish for this person to be happy.”
~ Tahlia Hunter
Lotus Blossom, photo by Ange DiBenedetto
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, water knows you. You should get to know water, too.
~ Wabinoquay Otsoquaykwhan
Mountain Forest River – photo by Ale-ks, bigstockphoto.com
In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
~ John Fowles
Lush Norwegian Forest – photo by Mr. Smith, bigstockphoto.com
