Devadana Sanctuary

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...

What quantum physics teaches us is that everything we thought was physical is not physical.

~ Bruce H. Lipton

Alaskan Aurora Borealis - photop by Romko, bigstockphoto.com

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Sunset, Pebble Beach, CA - photo by Jen Silacci

In reality there is a single integral community of the Earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human. In this community every being has its own role to fulfill, its own dignity, its inner spontaneity.

~ Thomas Berry

Jaguar - photo by Anolis, bigstockphoto.com

The kindest people are not born that way, they are made. They are the ones that have experienced so much at the hands of life, they are the ones who have dug themselves out of the dark, who have fought to turn every loss into a lesson. The kindest people do not just exist – they choose to soften where circumstance has tried to harden them, they choose to believe in goodness, because they have seen firsthand why compassion is so necessary. They have seen firsthand why tenderness is so important in this world.

~ Bianca Sparacino

Palo Santo Tree, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador - photo by Terra Tirapelli

I have come to trust that I am part of something so wondrous and mysterious and enormous. It’s not me who is taking care of it. My job is to become in harmony with this and let my love, my voice, my connection, my vision come out of that.

~ Jack Kornfield

Sequoia Forest - photo by volare2004, bigstockphoto.com

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.

~ Harriet Tubman

Icelandic Sunset - photo by Ragnhilur Jonsdottir

As Wind carries our prayers for Earth and All Life,
may respect and love light our way.
May our hearts be filled with compassion for others and for ourselves.
May peace increase on Earth.
May it begin with me.

~ Tibetan prayer flag is 'Lung ta', meaning 'Wind Horse'

Cho La Pass, Nepal, Himalayas - photo by Zzvet, bigstockphoto.com

The power of mass intention may ultimately be the force that shifts the tide toward repair and renewal of the planet.

~ Lynne McTaggart

California Coastal Sunset - pphoto by Virrange Images, bigstockphoto.com

The world we are experiencing today is the result of our collective consciousness, and if we want a new world, each of us must take responsibility for helping create it.

~ Rosemary Fillmore

Grand Teton National Park - photo by Terra Tirapelli

Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there's a big disappointment, we don't know if that's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We don't know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don't know.

~ Pema Chodron

Morning Light, Garden of the Gods, Colorado - photo by pilgrims49, bigstockphoto.com

We all have encounters with the sacred, we just have to cultivate the eye that can perceive them. We have to see what’s already here, interwoven with what we claim is human and mundane. We have to take inventory of the magic that conspires to love us in and through our ordinary lives.

~ Meggan Watterson

Lotus Blossom - photo by Ange DiBenedetto

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love.

~ Washington Irving

Mountain River Stream, in Tropical Rainforest - photo by Bigc Studio, bigstockphoto.com

We are all connected with the deep ecology of the universe and each of us has the ability to extend our consciousness far beyond the range of our physical senses.

~ Duane Elgin

Elf Garden, Iceland - photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir

All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other…

~ From Manifesto of the Fifth Sacred Thing, Starhawk

The Beauty of the Autumn Sun Shining Through Golden Beech Trees Leaves - photo by Smileus, bigstockphoto.com

Physicists now believe that entanglement between particles exists everywhere, all the time, and have recently found shocking evidence that it affects the wider, ‘macroscopic’ world that we inhabit.

~ Dean Radin

Monterey, CA - photo by Jen Silacci

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

~ Chief Seattle

Storm Clouds, Sedona, AZ - photo by ftlaudgirl, bigstockphoto.com

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

~ Howard Zinn

Lotus Flower - photo by pakpoom17, bigstockphoto.com

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

~ John O'Donohue

Gold Autumn Forest - photo by Smileus, bigstockphoto.com

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

~ Howard Zinn

Sunset, Pebble Beach, CA - photo by Jen Silacci

The most fundamental law is to recognize that we share the planet with other beings, and that we have a duty to care for our common home.

~ Vandana Shiva

Diablo Lake, North Cascades National Park, WA - photo by Anna Abramskaya, bigstockphoto.com

Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.

~ Maya Angelou

Lotuses - photo by Ange DiBenedetto

In the universe there are things that are known and things that are unknown, and in between there are doors.

~ William Blake

Milky Way Above Mountain Range - photo by paulista, bigstockphoto.com

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language... It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.'

~ Desmond Tutu

Acacia Tree at Sunrise, Amboseli National Park, Kenya - photo by ajn, bigstockphoto.com

The great unspoken tragedy of the present time is that we have forgotten about the spiritual body of the earth. We have forgotten about the inner worlds. We have been censored. We live in a culture that has very, very efficiently told us that the outer physical world is all that exists. And even when we do spiritual practice and we discover our own spiritual self, there is often a blinker that stops us from then saying 'this spiritual self must be part of the whole and what is the relationship I have to the whole?' Once we make a relationship with the spiritual intelligence within creation—with the soul of the world—then we begin the groundwork, we begin the deeper healing.

~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Autumn Tree - photo by Ian 2010, bigstockphoto.com

When they hate, I will love. When they curse, I will bless. When they hurt, I will heal. I am a servant of the light. I am not afraid of darkness. I will carry on with my work as a steward of this Earth and of all her children. When they divide, I will unite. When they rage, I will calm. When they deny, I will affirm. I will simply be who I am: for that is what Spirit created me to be.

~ Steven Charleston

Golden Autumn Leaves - photo by dplett, bigstockphoto.com

The world is not a problem to be solved, it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation, lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.

~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Lotus Blossom - photo by Ange DiBenedetto

Many indigenous peoples share the understanding that we are each endowed with a particular gift, a unique ability…It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility. If the bird’s gift is song, then it has a responsibility to greet the day with music. It is the duty of birds to sing and the rest of us receive the song as a gift.

Asking what is our responsibility is perhaps also to ask, What is our gift? And how shall we use it?

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

oto by mbridger, bigstockphoto.com

There was a time when the distances between our world and those we considered “imaginary” were no further than a bend in the road. Each cavern and hollow tree was a doorway to another world. Humans recognized life in all things. The streams sang and the winds whispered ancient words into the ears of whomever would listen. Every blade of grass and flower had a tale to tell…There was life and purpose in all things and there was loving interaction between the worlds.

~ Ted Andrews

Elf Garden, Iceland - photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir

And there, in its grand celestial dance
the sun took a step back,
the leaves lulled themselves to sleep,
and the magnificent glory that is Autumn
was awakened once again.

~ Raphael Franciscus

Autumn in Central Park - photo by Devadana Sanctuary

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

~ Jane Goodall

Bold Coast Trail - photo by Terésa Stern

We are all one. Only egos, beliefs, and fears separate us.

~ Nikola Tesla

Northern Lights, Alaska - photo by JCB5754, bigstockphoto.com

The Navajo teach their children that every morning when the sun comes up, it’s a brand-new sun. It’s born each morning, it lives for the duration of one day, and in the evening it passes on, never to return again. As soon as the children are old enough to understand, the adults take them out at dawn and they say, ‘The sun has only one day. You must live this day in a good way, so that the sun won’t have wasted precious time.’ Acknowledging the preciousness of each day is a good way to live, a good way to reconnect with our basic joy.

~ Pema Chödrön

Sunrise, Monument Valley - photo by lucky-photographer, bigstockphoto.com

The most subversive thing we can do is love. If we do not like the way things are going, if we would like to see radical change: love is the way to create it. Anger and blame can release emotions of the moment, but they cannot sustain long term change. Only hope can do that. And love gives life hope in abundance. So join the revolution: love extravagantly.

~ Steven Charleston

Lotus - photo by Ange DiBenedetto

I do believe in an everyday sort of magic -- the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we're alone.

~ Charles de Lint

Pacific Grove, CA - photo by Jen Silacci

The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whispering of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.

~ Terry Tempest Williams

Autumn Leaves - Photo by Indira Darst

Look around you. This very breath you take isn't yours alone, it's a shared symphony with the trees, the wind, the creatures unseen.

~ Deon Emmons

Giant Sequoias during Sunset - photo by Virrage Images, bigstockphoto.com

Earth is not a platform for human life. It’s a living being. We’re not on it but part of it. Its health is our health.

~ Thomas Moore

Maui, Hawaii - photo by maximkabb, bigstockphoto.com

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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. Knos

Lotus Flower, photo by kenny001, bigstockphoto.com

The answers we seek lie in nature—nature is always sharing her teachings with us. The answers also lie in our own inner wisdom. We must shift the focus of our energy from our heads to our hearts, where we can listen to this wisdom.

~ Sandra Ingerman

Pancake Rocks, Punakaiki, New Zealand - photo by Rawpixel.com, bigstockphoto.com

Our personal attempts to live humanely in this world are never wasted. Choosing to cultivate love rather than anger just might be what it takes to save the planet from extinction.

~ Pema Chödrön

Sunset Sky - photo by Fahroni, bigstockphoto.com

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.

~ Paulo Coelho

Night Sky with Stars above Monument Valley, AZ - photo by lucky-photographer, bigstockphoto.com

The way we see the world affects the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity—then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.

~ David Suzuki

Waterfall, Mount Field National Park, Tasmania, Australia - photo by TK Kurikawa, bigstockphoto.com

I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves—we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other's destiny.

~ Mary Oliver

Saguaro Cactus and the Milky Way, AZ - photo by raphoto, bigstockphoto.com

The mountains are my bones,
The rivers are my veins.

The forests are my thoughts,
And the stars are my dreams.

The ocean is my heart,
The pounding is my pulse.

The songs of the earth
Write the music of my soul.

~ Pachamama Alliance

Mount Rainier National Park, WA - photo by Andrushko Galyna, bigstockphoto.com

Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything. It lives here, profoundly, at One Square Inch in the Hoh Rain Forest. It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. Silence can be lost and also recovered. But silence cannot be imagined, although most people think so. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it.

~ Gordon Hempton

Sun's Rays in the Deep Forest - photo by Virrange Images, bigstockphoto.com

Whether you are aware of them or not, whether you recognize them as spiritual or not, you probably have had the experiences of silence, or transcendence, or the Divine—a few seconds, a few minutes that seem out of time; a moment when the ordinary looks beautiful, glowing; a deep sense of being at peace, feeling happy for no reason. When these experiences come, believe in them. They reflect your true nature.

~ Ravi Shankar

Autumn in Golden Beech Trees - photo by Smileus, bigstockphoto.com

There is an ancient conversation going on between mosses and rocks, poetry to be sure…The material and the spiritual live together here.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Mushrooms and Moss - photo by danil_1972, bigstockphoto.com

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.

~ Rumi

Lone Cypress, Pebble Beach, CA - photo by Jen Silacci

Maybe at times we need to crumble to the ground at the magnificence of it all, awestruck at the bounty laid out before us. To fall apart. To fail. To get back up. To be humbled again. To start over. To be a beginner. An amateur at the ways of love. To make this journey with our kindred travelers and the sun, moon, and stars. And to realize together how little we know in the face of it all.

~ Matt Licata 

Milky Way, Stars, and Trees, Crimea - photo by denbelitsky, bigstockphoto.com

Plants, it turns out, really are highly conscious, intelligent and yes, they do have a brain. It’s just that no one ever looked in the right place.

Depth analysis of plant consciousness since the turn of the (new) millennium is finding that their brain capacity is much larger than previously supposed, that their neural systems are highly developed—in many instances as much as that of humans, and that they make and utilize neurotransmitters identical to our own. It is beginning to seem that plants are highly intelligent, feeling beings—perhaps as much or even more so than humans in some instances. (They can even perform sophisticated mathematical computations and make future plans based on extrapolations of current conditions. The mayapple, for instance, plans its growth two years in advance based on weather patterns.)

~ Stephen Harrod Buhner

Forest at Dawn - photo by Labunskiy K. bigstockphoto.com

If everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light.

~ Rumi

Iceland Sunset - photo by rasica, bigstockphoto.com

Modern peoples...have mainly forgotten that we live in relationship as brothers and sisters with all the beings and forces of the natural world. Our scientific redefinitions of the "unseen" as the "unreal" have caused us to forget that we are all luminous strands in a giant web of belonging.

~ don Oscar Miro-Quesada, "Lessons in Courage"

Elf Garden, Iceland, July 2013 - photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir

Integrity is remembering that as individuals we are indivisible from the whole process in which we are participating — the integral evolution of life and consciousness. Integrity is about embracing the paradox that while most of us live our lives in a state of consciousness that separates subject and objects, self and world, even humanity and nature, there is a deeper ground of being and becoming — a quantum-entangled, implicate order of fundamental interconnectedness and co-creative reciprocity. We are individual nodes of consciousness.

~ Daniel Christian Wahl

Lotus - photo by Martha Paradis

All LIFE co-exists and co-creates as ONE. Mother Earth is our shared home, an evolving self-regenerating landscape that connects, nurtures and sustains all of us together. She recycles water and air, atoms and molecules. Sharing equally with ALL. Nature, our mother (who some call Gaia) is in truth more like a planetary cell or cosmic womb than a lonely rock spinning through space. ALL LIFE is Sacred. We are ONE Earth Community. Her life is our life..

~ Christopher Chase

Sunset, Iceland - photo by Ragnhildur Jonsdottir

[The] future can exist only when we understand the universe as composed of subjects to be communed with, not as objects to be exploited. “Use” as our primary relationship with the planet must be abandoned…

~ Thomas Berry

Keel Billed Toucan, Belize - photo by wollertz, bigstockphoto.com

In the forest the deer raise their heads. The eagle and the hawk glide above, piercing the thin air with their sharp cries. The buffalo gather in a circle. The wind in the trees falls silent. Something sacred comes this way. The Spirit comes this way. The unity of creation is not an idea, but a feeling. It is kinship. Open your heart and it will be there.

~ Steven Charleston

Red Deer Stag in Autumn Forest - photo by Veneratio, bigstockphoto.com

It’s in that convergence of spiritual people becoming active and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity now rests.

~ Van Jones

Beautiful Lotus - photo by Peggy Braun

We are slowed-down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.

~ Albert Einstein

Waterfall and Lagoon, Mt. Tomah, Australia - photo by lovlerah, bigstockphoto.com

Extend the circle of “us” to include as much of the world as you possibly can.

~ Rick Hanson

Japanese Maple Leaf - photo by landio, bigstockphoto.com

Being "for" expands your heart. Being "against" contracts it. Feel this.

The energy you radiate from your chest is a thousand times more powerful than the opinion you hold in your head…

~ Fred LaMotte

Sunset, Garda Lake, Italy - photo by Alberto SevenOnSeven, bigstockphoto.com

No matter what problem you look at, every ecological problem comes from this illusion that we are separate from nature.

~ Vandana Shiva

Glacier National Park, Montana - photo by Andrushko Galyna, bigstockphoto.com

Practice guerrilla compassion — silently blessing people on-line at the bank, at the supermarket, in the cars next to us in traffic. Each blessing a tiny Sabbath, a secret sanctuary offered to a hurried and unsuspecting world.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Autumn Leaf - photo by Marjan Cermelj, bigstockphoto.com

Earth Mother teach me of my kin,
of Hawk, and Dove, and flower,
of blinding sunlight, shady knoll,
desert wind and morning showers.
Teach me every language of
the creatures that sing to me,
that I may count the cadence of
infinite lessons in harmony.

~ Jamie Sams

Desert and Mountains Near Phoenix, AZ - photo by Jeni Foto, bigstockphoto.com

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Raja Ampat, Papua, New Guinea, Indonesia - photo by attiamdt, 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

Red Squirrel Feeding on Juniper Berries - photo by stefanholm, bigstockphoto.com

All human beings are descendants of tribal people who were spiritually alive, intimately in love with the natural world, children of Mother Earth.

When we were tribal people, we knew who we were, we knew where we were, and we knew our purpose.

This sacred perception of reality remains alive and well in our genetic memory. We carry it inside of us, usually in a dusty box in the mind’s attic, but it is accessible.

~ John Trudell

Colorful Ocean Sunset - photo by Andrushko Galyna, bigstockphoto.com

The basic principle seems to be: Everything in nature is here for a reason. And until we understand that reason, we better not just go around destroying things.

~ Charles Eisenstein

Northwestern Forest - photo by kvd design, bigstockphoto.com

...when we place our emphasis and consciousness on the soul of the world, we’re embracing the world as something sacred, as something that has its own essence, its own purpose and destiny that might very well be different, bigger, and more mysterious than anything we suspect or anything we could understand.

~ Geneen Marie Haugen

Moon Valley in Atacama Desert, Chile at Sunset - photo by Breev Sergey, 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 for 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.

~ Teach Only Love, Facebook

Sunrise - photo by wittybear, bigstockphoto.com

I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the invocations and benedictions of Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.

~ Terry Tempest Williams

Cardinal - photo by Steve Byland, bigstockphoto.com

If we embrace the sacred within all of life, we will find that life will speak to us as it spoke to our ancestors. A veil will be lifted and this innate knowing will be present again. This is the ancient wisdom of the Earth itself, the Earth which has evolved and changed over millennia, whose wisdom we desperately need at this present time if we are to avoid an even greater ecological disaster.

~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Forest Stream, Mt. Field National Park, Tasmania - photo by Neale Cousland, bigstockphoto.com

We are all needed, more than we know. We are needed to fulfill the purpose Spirit had for us at the moment of our awakening into the world. We are needed to share our love and vision. We are needed to help others walking with us. I am needed. You are needed. We are all needed. Just as we are.

~ Steven Charleston

Blossoming Dahlia - photo by kip02, bigstockphoto.com

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.

~ H.H. the Dalai Lama

Sunrise, Phu Dradueng National Park, Thailand - photo by Boysloso, bigstockphoto.com

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

~ Leo Bascaglia

More Lotus Beauty - photo by Ange DiBenedetto

When I look into the eyes of an animal, I do not see an animal. I see a living being. I see a friend. I feel a soul.

~ A.D. Williams

Greater Egret - photo by tornado98, bigstockphoto.com

Our goal should be to live in radical amazement, [to] get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

Vernal Falls, Yosemite National Park, CA - photo by neillang, bigstockphoto.com

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

~ Mary Oliver 

Aura Reflections on Stokksnes with Vestrahorn Mountains, Iceland - photo by stroop, bigstockphoto.com

Bizarre, isn’t it, that the most intellectual creature — surely, that’s ever lived on the planet — is destroying its only home... I always believe it’s because there’s a disconnect between that clever, clever brain and human heart, love and compassion. I truly believe, only when head and heart work in harmony can we attain our true human potential.

~ Jane Goodall

Asilomar Beach, CA Sunset - photo by Jen Silacci

Every being has its own voice. Every being enters into communion with other beings. This capacity for relatedness, for presence to other beings, for spontaneity in action, is a capacity possessed by every mode of being throughout the entire universe. So too every being has rights to be recognized and revered.

~ Thomas Berry

Fuchsia Flowers - photo by Zanna Pesnina, bigstockphoto.com

It may be that you can see the other side of the river from where you are walking. You know one day you will cross over to explore that country. But first you have a vocation to complete here—distributing as many blessings as you can. Forgiveness and mercy, kindness and compassion, love and healing. You have much to share before you see what life is like across the river.

~ Steven Charleston

Morning River Landscape - photo by Alexey1976, bigstockphoto.com

We have to have a new understanding that Earth and Nature are alive, they are intelligent, they have consciousness and they sustain life. We have to embrace this new paradigm if we want to live in harmony and in reverence of Nature.

~ Satish Kumar

Forest Waterfall - photo by iPangzz, bigstockphoto.com

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Beautiful Lotus - photo by Ange DiBenedetto

To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from—is a wonder beyond words.

~ Joanna Macy

Hidden Blossoms - photo by Robbie Ross, bigstockphoto.com

Our way into the future requires new cultural forms more than older ones, but there is at least one thread of the human story that I'm confident will continue, and this is the numinous or visionary calling at the core of the mature human heart.

~ Bill Plotkin

Light in the Depths, Cave in Southern Belize - photo by Kevin Wells Photography, bigstockphoto.com

When we pause, we are able to observe our interdependence—from a harvest taken from the soil by a stranger’s hands to the electrician who keeps the lights and Wi-Fi on. We are surrounded by the abundance we create for each other.

~ Joe Primo

Nature's Beauty - photo by Jen Sillaci

There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen – to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.

That is at the heart of being a good person, the ultimate gift you can give to others and to yourself.

~ David Brooks, How to Know a Person

Zen Garden - photo by SergWSQ, bigstockphoto.com

“To be” is always to “inter-be.” Our body is a community, and the trillions of non-human cells in our body are even more numerous than the human cells.. There are no solitary beings. The whole planet is one giant, living, breathing cell, with all its working parts linked in symbiosis. We do not exist independently. We inter-are. Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos in order to manifest—whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Iceland Sunset - photo by Raghildur Jonsdottir

I think that responsible living in the biosphere means learning to see other species as beings like us, in that they have intentions, make decisions, and they know what they’re doing. They have points of view.

I think that responsible living in the biosphere means learning to take the interests of other species into consideration and allowing them room to live. And I think it means learning to relate to them and to think through the kinship we have with them...

~ Jeremy Narby

Elephants, Kruger National Park, South Africa - photo by javaman, bigstockphoto.com

Something precious is lost if we rush headlong into the details of life without pausing for a moment, to pay homage to the mystery of life and the gift of another day.

~ Kent Nerburn

Summer Lotus - photio by Ange DiBenedetto

This day has never come before, and it will never come again. Will you greet it with your curiosity? Will you bless it with your attention?

~ Jeff Foster

Quaking Aspen Trees, Gunnison National Forest, Colorado - photo by dndavis, bigstockphoto.com

You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all you experience to the highest advantage of others.

Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone. Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerating system. If we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success.

~ Buckminister Fuller

Mt. Rainier, Washington - photo by Andrushko Galyna, bigstockphoto.com

If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one knows, one destroys.

~ Chief Dan George

Leopard, Kruger National Park, South Africa - photo by bennymarty, bigstockphoto.com

As humans, water makes up seventy percent of our bodies. Water is who we are at our most elemental level. We must learn to respect water, as it is us.

~ J. Michael Read

Ruby Beach, Washington State - photo by Kris Wiktor, bigstockphoto.com

Even with our differences there is a place we're all connected. Each of us can find each other's light. There's so much to be thankful for.

~ Josh Groban

Pink Magenta Sunset, Lake Macquarie, NSW, Australia - photo by sunnypicsoz, bigstockphoto.com

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Majestic Deer and Forest - photo by Sergei777, bigstockphoto.com

There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition, there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.

~ John O'Donohue

Grand Canyon Sunrise - photo by JCoulter, bigstockphoto.com

Perhaps our “life's purpose” has nothing to do with what job we will find, what new thing we will manifest or attract for ourselves, or what mythical awakening journey we will complete. Perhaps the purpose of our life is to fully live, finally, to touch each here and now moment with our presence and with the gift of our one, wild heart.

And to do whatever we can to help others, to hold them when they are hurting, to listen carefully to their stories and the ways they are attempting to make sense of a world that has gone a bit mad. To speak kind words and not forget the erupting miracle of the other as it appears in front of us. Perhaps this is the most radical gift that we can all give.

~ Matt Licata

Summer Lotus - photo by Ange DiBenedetto

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

Plant Earth-Kin - photo by Marko Aliaksandr, bigstockphoto.com

“To be” is always to “inter-be.” Our body is a community, and the trillions of non-human cells in our body are even more numerous than the human cells. There are no solitary beings. The whole planet is one giant, living, breathing cell, with all its working parts linked in symbiosis. We do not exist independently. We inter-are. Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos in order to manifest—whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Rays Breaking through Storm Clouds - photo by Sergei 777, bigstokphoto.com

If we are being the very thing we would like the world to become, we will already be at peace.

~ Adyashanti

More Lotus Beauty - photo by Ange DiBenedetto