The spiritual path is not a solo endeavor. In fact, the very notion of a self who is trying to free her/himself is a delusion. We are in it together and the company of spiritual friends helps us realize our interconnectedness.
Devadana Sanctuary
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Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.
I am not from the East nor the West, not out of the ocean nor up from the ground, not natural nor ethereal, not composed … My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body nor soul. I belong to the beloved.
When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness you become still yourself. You connect with it at a very deep level. You feel a oneness with whatever
Nature is such a great teacher for us of how to live in harmony with the cycles of life. It does not matter whether you live in an urban environment or in the country. Nature is everywhere. All of life changes during the shifts of seasons. We are connected to the web of life and we are changing too.
Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind. Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger? Know that you yourself are essential to this world.
We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As ocean ‘waves’, the universe ‘peoples’. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
Today, we’d like to share with you a Lakota prayer that we occasionally use when we gather:
For Indigenous peoples, land cannot be owned, bought, or sold. She does not belong to us, we belong to her. We are born out of this land; we spend our lives on this land as her guests; and after death we go back to that same land. . . . Although Indigenous peoples around the world vary widely in their customs, traditions, rituals, languages, and so on, land is considered by all as the center of their universe, a parent, a giver of life, the core of our cultures, rituals, and traditions.
The sky is an infinite movie to me. I never get tired of looking at what’s happening up there.
Oneness is very simple: everything is included and allowed to live according to its true nature. This is the secret that is being revealed, the opportunity that is offered. How we make use of this opportunity depends upon the degree of our participation, how much we are prepared to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done, to the freedom that needs to be lived.
Ecology and spiritually are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness.
Death is nature’s way of making things continually interesting. Death is the possibility of change. Every individual gets its allotted lifespan, its chance to try something new on the world. But time is called and the molecules which make up leaf and limb, heart and eye are disassembled and redistributed to other tenants.
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.
We inter-breathe with the rain forests, we drink from the oceans. They are part of our own body.
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