On Diversity

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things,

For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stiple on trout that swim;

Fresh fire-coal chestnut-falls; finches wings;

Landscape plotted and pierced - fold, fallow and plough;

And all trades, their gear, tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who know how?)

With swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

On Connection

Ah, not to be cut off

Ah, not to be cut off, 

not throught the slightest partition,

shut out from the law of the stars.

The inner, what is it?

If not intensified sky,

hurled through with birds and deep

with the winds of homecoming.

Rainer Maria Rilke

On Living the Questions

I would like to beg you

to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Art: Justyna Kopania

Togetherness

Come sit down beside me,

I said to myself.

And although it didn't make sense,

I held my own hand

As a small sign of trust

And together I sat on the fence.

On Answers...

On Awareness

Self Awareness 

is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.

Robert Heinlein

On Moving Past Limitations

On Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not an emotion,

It's a decision.

Tear up the IOU

Grandfather Great Spirit

  Grandfather Great Spirit

All over the world the faces
of living ones are alike.

With tenderness they have
come up out of the ground.

Look upon your children
that they may face the winds
And walk the good road to the Day of Quiet.

Grandfather Great Spirit
Fill us with the Light.
Give us the strength to understand,
And the eyes to see.

Teach us to walk the soft Earth
as relatives to all that live.

On Understanding

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, 

and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever 

explaining things to them.”  

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Artwork by Mattijn-Franssen

Laundry Day

On Time

And the rest...

We

True Budo

I felt the universe suddenly quake, and that a golden spirit sprang up from the ground, veiled my body, and changed my body into a golden one. At the same time my body became light. I was able to understand the whispering of the birds, and was clearly aware of the mind of God, the creator of the universe.
At that moment I was enlightened: the source of Budo is God's love — the spirit of loving protection for all beings... Budo is not the felling of an opponent by force; nor is it a tool to lead the world to destruction with arms. True Budo is to accept the spirit of the universe, keep the peace of the world, correctly produce, protect and cultivate all beings in nature. 

Morihei Ueshiba

On Teaching

On the Tao

It's always between you and the Tao...
And
Never between you and them...

Dr W. Dyer cd audio On Living the Wisdom of Lao Tzu

The Way We Talk

The way we talk to our children

Becomes their Inner Voice

On New Life

The Price of Things

On Detachment

On Time and Space

There is No Shame in Healing

On Communication

On Life Changes

Once, in a little pond, in the muddy water under the lily pads, there lived a little water beetle in a community of water beetles.  They lived a simple and comfortable life in the pond with few disturbances and interruptions.

Once in a while, sadness would come to the community when one of their fellow beetles would climb the stem of a lily pad and would never be seen again.

Then, one day, one little water beetle felt an irresistible urge to climb up a stem.  However, he was determined that he would not leave forever.  He would come back and tell his friends what he had found at the top.

When he reached the top and climbed out of the water onto the surface of the lily pad, he was so tired, and the sun felt so warm, that he felt he must take a nap.  As he slept, his body changed and when he woke up, he had turned into a beautiful dragonfly with broad wings and a slender body designed for flying.

Fly he did!  And, as he soared he saw the beauty of a whole new world and way of life to what he had never known existed.

Then he remembered his beetle friends and how they were thinking by now he was dead.  He wanted to go back to tell them, and explain to them that he was now more alive than he had ever been before.  His life had been fulfilled rather than ended.

But, his new body would not go down into the water.  He could not get back to tell his friends the good news. Then he understood that they, too, would know what he now knew.  So, he raised his wings and flew into his joyous new life!

On Complaining

 

Once every six months or once a year, if you want to complain, sit down and complain for about an hour and then forget about it. But don't do it every day. Do not ask that you do good things all the time. 

 Life is a combination of everything, sometimes fighting, anger and joy. Life must have multiple colors, so you should have all the colors of life, it is not necessary to be monochromatic. 

However, you should be able to let go of all the hubbub of the mind, and the knowledge will help you. Wake up each morning and say, "Shivoham, I am consciousness, pure and beautiful."

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Photo:  Some serious drumming going on with our drummer.

 

Between Earth and Sky

Live in the placeless world you come from, 

Even though you have an address here.

Rumi

Photo: Iguazu Falls, South Amercica, by Francesco Fillipo Pellegrini, National Geographic 

People of the Forest

It is said that we are strong shamans. We are the Ka'aguygua, the "People of the Forest."

The forest is not simply the place where we live.  We are the forest.  It is our life.

Our greatest gift is voicing the spirit of the forest: The sounding of the word souls.

Someone dreamed that more and more people are talking about shamans:  saying we ascend and descend into the Vision, saying we have helpers of spirit, saying we seek power, saying that the rattle, independent of any God, is sufficient, saying it finds lost souls, saying all kinds of things.

Know this:
 
We, among the strongest who see spirit and experience its power, say that many who talk about such things have not seen, heard, or been touched by what is most essential.
 
We are thereby called to speak our simple truth:  A shaman is someone who prays to their God.

Prayer is the instrument, the link. All other paths only pretend.  It is prayer, prayer, and more prayer.

You will know a shaman by the sound of their prayer.  They carry the word souls.

No song, no shaman.  Songs of prayer come from a serving heart.

There is no other way of the shaman than prayer and song.  It is the way we know God.  It is the way we become the forest.  It is the truest way. 

Ava Tupa Rayvi, Guarani Shaman

Love

Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived, Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all others, including Love. One day it was announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all constructed boats and left. Except for Love.

Love was the only one who stayed. Love wanted to hold out until the last possible moment. When the island had almost sunk, Love decided to ask for help. 

Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat.  Love said, “Richness, can you take me with you?” Richness answered, “No, I can’t. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is no place here for you.”

Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel. “Vanity, please help me!” “I can’t help you, Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat,” Vanity answered.

Sadness was close by so Love asked, “Sadness, let me go with you.” “Oh, Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself!” 

Happiness passed by Love, too, but she was so happy that she did not even hear when Love called her.

Suddenly, there was a voice, “Come, Love, I will take you.” It was an elder. So blessed and overjoyed, Love even forgot to ask the elder where they were going. When they arrived at dry land, the elder went his own way. Realizing how much was owed the elder, Love asked Knowledge, another elder, “Who Helped me?”

“It was Time,” Knowledge answered.

“Time?” asked Love. “But why did Time help me?” 

Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and answered, “Because only Time is capable of understanding how valuable Love is.”

On Balance

One thing you learn when you have lived as long as I have, 

people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad.

We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives.

Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.

Neal Shusterman

Photo:  Rainbow Eucalyptus tree

On Doing

On Obstacles

When obstacles arise, 

you change your direction to reach your goal, 

you do not change your decision to get there. 

Zig Ziglar

Where to Find Me

I will be found somewhere within sight of the tree of poetry,
that is, eternity wearing the green leaves of time.
 

R. S. Thomas

 

Did You Know?

 Pando is located in the Fishlake National Forest, near Fish Lake at the western edge of the Colorado Plateau in south-central Utah.

On Guidance

I am open to the guidance of synchronicity,

and do not let expectations hinder my path.

Dalai Lama

My Personal Philosophy

My personal Coaching philosophy,

Do you want guidance to find you own?

Contact me.

Let No One Enter Unless

On Balance

Give

yet be aware of being used,

Love

without harming your heart,

Trust 

yet do not be disingenious,

 Listen

yet never lose your own voice...

Artwork by the great

M. C. Escher

On Possibilities

In the instant of our first breath, we are infused with the single greatest force in the universe, the power to translate the possibilities of our minds into the reality of our world. To fully awaken to our power, however, requires a subtle change in the way we think of ourselves in life, a shift in belief.

Just the way sound creates visible waves as it travels through a droplet of water, our "belief waves" ripple through the quantum fabric of the universe to become our bodies and the healing, abundance, and peace - or disease, lack, and suffering - that we experience in life. And just the way we can tune a sound to change its patterns, we can tune our beliefs to preserve or destroy all that we cherish, including life itself.

In a malleable world where everything from atoms to cells is changing to match our beliefs, we're limited only by the way we think of ourselves in that world...dedicated to our acceptance of such an awesome power and our knowing that we are never more than a belief away from our greatest love, deepest healing, and most profound miracles.


Gregg Braden 

Compassion

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.  It’s a relationship between equals.  Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

Pema Chödrön

On Meditation

I do not know if you have ever noticed that when 

you give total attention there is complete silence. 

And in that attention there is no frontier, 

there is no centre as the "me" who is aware or attentive. 

That attention, that silence, is a state of meditation.
J Krishnamurti

Lucky

 

How lucky I am to have something
that makes saying goodbye so hard.

WINNIE THE POOH, A.A. Milne

Comet McNaught 2007

Photographer Miloslav Druckmuller 

When it's cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.

The inner secret,
that which was never born,

You are that freshness,
and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings, or the comings. 

You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.

Rumi

I Am Here

The wind upon your face, it is me.
The sun upon you which feeds the flower, it is me.
The whistling sound of the wind through the leaves 
in the trees, it is me.
Hear the bird song in the morning light, it is my voice.
When the water gently laps against the shore, 
it is my heartbeat.
In the stars, you see my eyes.
In the blue sky, you see my body.
Feel the air that surrounds you, I am here.
Feel the love in your heart, I am here.

On Change

Everything is changing, including you.
That is an actual fact you can see.
This is not something you will know after reading many books.
So if you have a lot of suffering in your everyday life,
you will actually feel the most important teaching of Buddhism:
that everything changes, and there is nothing to stick to.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

On Fear

Chakras

The Seven Wonders 
of the World 
are within you,
Heal your chakras
and they will communicate with you.
            

Love

Love is a practice. 

Love is truly a practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Love and Appreciation 

Photo by Dr. Masaru Emoto

Freedom

Healing