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Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything—even mountains, rivers, plants and trees—should be your teacher.
~ Morihei Ueshiba
Cascade, Hocking Hills State Park, OH – photo by Kenneth Keller, bigstockphoto.com
Inherent in the very essence of life and the multiple patterns of its arising. 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
Sunrise, Abisko, Sweden – photo by Pitlya, bigstockphoto.com
As I walk, the Universe is walking with me. In beauty it walks before me. In beauty it walks behind me. In beauty it walks above me. In beauty it walks below me. Beauty is on every side. As I walk, I walk with beauty.
~ Navajo prayer
Monument Valley, AZ – photo by Virrage Images, bigstockphoto.com
Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human’s education is to know those duties and how to perform them.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Red Fox – photo by fotosebek, bigstockphoto.com
Many people believe that trees, like humans and all living things, possess an energetic vibration and an aura. Because trees’ vibrations are slower and deeply connected to the Earth through their roots, connecting with trees can help us to feel safe, secure, and stable. Most would agree that a walk in the forest or even simply gazing at a tree provides a deep feeling of peace and serenity, and can be emotionally and psychologically healing.
~ Jocelyn Mercado
Muir Woods, CA – photo by maximkabb, bigstockphoto.com
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others…for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.
~Albert Einstein
Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island, Canada – photo by kavram, bigstockphoto.com
There are sacred moments in life when we experience in rational and very direct ways that separation, the boundary between ourselves and other people and between ourselves and Nature, is illusion.
~ Charlene Spretnak
Bryce Canyon, UT – photo by newcomer16, bigstockphoto.com
In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.
~ William Blake
Godafoss Waterfall, Iceland – photo by Leonid Tit, bigstockphoto.com
In our quest for happiness and the avoidance of suffering, we are all fundamentally the same, and therefore equal. Despite the characteristics that differentiate us—race, language, religion, gender, wealth and many others—we are all equal in terms of our basic humanity.
~ H.H. the Dalai Lama
Foggy Autumn Morning – photo by Kiya, bigstockphoto.com
If we, on our most fundamental level, are packets of quantum energy constantly exchanging information with this heaving energy sea, it means that all of us connect with each other and the world at the level of the very undercoat of our being. It also means that we have the power to access much more information about the world than we realize.
~ Lynne McTaggart
Ang Thong National Marine Park, Thailand – photo by Gladkov, bigstockphoto.com
This is the Earth, healed again, growing green and blue. I want you to remember this exactly as it is, and then go and tell the people that if enough of us hold this image in their minds, we can heal the Earth and make it like it was a long time ago.
~ Rolling Thunder
Red Rock Mountains, Coconino National Forest, AZ – photo by hpbfotos, bigstockphoto.com
We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
~ Carl Sagan
Milky Way – photo by Den Belitsky, bigstockphoto.com
The Universe is one indivisible, dynamic whole in which energy and matter are so deeply entangled it is impossible to consider them as independent elements.
~ Bruce H. Lipton
Sun, Sky, Sea, Land – photo by West Coast Scapes, bigstockphoto.com
What is missing in mainstream consciousness is an awareness of ourselves as members of the human family, the Universe and the Earth community. We tend to ignore that our cells and bodies are part of the creative history of evolution. That our atoms are part of the history of the Cosmos. Peace and gratitude arise naturally in our hearts when we take more time to reflect upon how we are each a part of a much greater whole…
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
~ Albert Einstein
Northern Lights, Alaska – photo by JCB5754, bigstockphoto.com
Grateful eyes look at each thing as if they had never seen it before and caress it as if they would never see it again.
~ Br. David Steindl-Rast
Yosemite National Park, CA – photo by CreativeEdge, bigstockphoto.com
