Click thumbnail to view larger image.
…we must remember that in oneness we are connected to all of life on this earth, joined together in a web of life. This means we must live from a place of honor and respect. We are part of nature, not separate from it.
~ Sandra Ingerman
Spires and Cliffs in Monument Valley – photo by TravellingLight, bigstockphoto.com
There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.
~Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Iguazu Falls – photo by saiko3p, bigstockphoto.com
Once we step outside of the illusion of our own separate self, a radically different picture emerges. Our true nature exists in a dimension of oneness. Unlike the ego, which always looks out for its own self-interest, the Self reflects a vision of unity, in which each individual part is nourished according to its real need. A glimpse of the Self gives us a sense of an interconnected oneness in which nothing is separate: everything is an expression of a oneness that is dynamically alive. Every person, every stone, is this oneness; everything is connected and interdependent. Our individual Self is the Universal Self
and it is all a living organism of light and love.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Preparing for Sunrise – photo by EdVal, bigstockphoto.com
True love is boundless like the ocean and, swelling within one, spreads itself out and, crossing all boundaries and frontiers, envelops the whole world.
~ Mahatma Gandhi
Plum Flowers – photo by Yulia Lisitsa, bigstockphoto.com
We are organically related to everything around us. On the molecular level. On the chain of change and growth. On the spiritual dance of life. Indigenous wisdom emerges from the recognition of this complex shared relatedness. Our task is not to forge unity by fighting against diversity, but rather to discover that our unity already exists in diversity. We are a single creation, ever moving, ever evolving: a spiritual singularity in the heart of patterns so vast we cannot even comprehend them.
~ Steven Charleston
Violet Sabrewing Hummingbird – photo by LuCaAr, bigstockphoto.com
May I be loving, open, and aware in this moment; If I cannot be loving, open, and aware in this moment, may I be kind; If I cannot be kind, may I be nonjudgmental; If I cannot be nonjudgmental, may I not cause harm; If I cannot not cause harm, may I cause the least harm.
~ Larry Yang
Yellow and White Tulips – photo by Bozhena Melnyk, bigstockphoto.com
We are interdependent with the body of the Earth. The minerals of the soil make up our wheat and our bones, the storm clouds become our drinks and our blood, the oxygen from the trees and forests is the air we breathe. The more consciously we realize this shared destiny, the more compassion arises for the earth itself.
~ Jack Kornfield
Sequoia, Sequoia National Park – photo by travelview, bigstockphoto.com
Time does not exist – we invented it. Time is what the clock says. The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
~ Albert Einstein
Milky Way and Tree – photo by denbelitsky, bigstockphoto.com
The basic pattern of life is a network. Whenever you see life, you see networks. The whole planet, what we can term ‘Gaia’ is a network of processes involving feedback tubes. And the world of bacteria is critical to the details of these feedback processes, because bacteria play a crucial role in the regulation of the whole Gaian system.
~ Fritjof Capra
Banff National Park, Canada – photo by kavram, bigstockphoto.com
Imagine how the world will change when humanity realizes its interconnectedness with all life, and works together to restore the health and well being of the whole.
~ Nassim Haramein
Tropical Coral Undersea Landscape – photo by Davdeka, bigstockphoto.com
The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.
~ Terry Tempest Williams
Anasazi Ruins, Canyonlands National Park, UT – photo by rudi1976, 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
Forest Stream, Mr. Field National Park, Tasmania – photo by Neale Cousland, bigstockphoto.com
We do not need to plan or devise a “world of the future”; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of human culture that we have now; the only valid “futurology” available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at “the future of the human race”; we have the same pressing need that we have always had—to love, care for, and teach our children.
~ Wendell Berry
Avalanch Gorge, Glacier National Park, Montana – photo by bAllilAd, bigstockphoto.com
May you awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
May you respond to the call of your gift and find the courage to follow its path.
May the flame of anger free you from falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.
~ John O’Donohue
Monument Valley at Sunset – photo by alexeys, bigstockphoto.com
A woman once described a friend of hers as being such a keen listener that even the trees leaned toward her, as if they were speaking their innermost secrets into her listening ears. Over the years I’ve envisioned that woman’s silence, a hearing full and open enough that the world told her its stories. The green leaves turned toward her, whispering tales of soft breezes and the murmurs of leaf against leaf.
~ Linda Hogan
Green Embrace – photo by ponsulak, bigstockphoto.com
