“Your life will be transformed when you make peace with your shadow. The caterpillar will become a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly. You will no longer have to pretend to be someone you’re not. You will no longer have to prove you’re good enough. When you embrace your shadow you will no longer have to live in fear. Find the gifts of your shadow and you will finally revel in all the glory of your true self. Then you will have the freedom to create the life you have always desired.”
~ Debbie Ford
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
~ Apple Inc.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
–The Unanimous Declaration
of the 13 United States of America
Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit of Happiness.
Shall we be ever so grateful, today and always, to our founding fathers of this great nation, for granting us these rights. Let us be grateful to the divine spirit and our parents, that we were somehow fortunate enough to be born here instead of being born into a life of oppression. And if we immigrated here, to offer ourselves thanks for having the strength and resolution to seek out a better way of life for ourselves and our family.
It is such a beautiful, still morning here today. And I found such lovely words on stillness over at Gaiam.com …Stillness is what creates Love
Movement is what creates Life
To be still, Yet still moving –
That is everything.
~ Do Hyun Choe
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/topics/stillness
There are a number of passages by Eckhart Tolle. Years ago, when I first read his book, The Power of Now, it did not make a whole lot of sense to me. But back then, I did not know how to practice stillness. To be with stillness. It makes complete sense now.
Tolle Says: “When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.”
“In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is far more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”
~ Warren Buffett
Why are we humans such creatures of habit?
Last night I went out to eat with my parents, who are in town visiting for the winter. I always have to prepare myself, because usually some part of the evening will be devoted to hearing about someone’s illnesses. Last night was no exception. A good friend of theirs was recently diagnosed with an ‘unknown’ auto-immune disease. First they thought it was rheumatoid arthritis, now it’s ‘maybe’ something else. Her skin is receding.
“If they ever saw a sunrise on a mountain morning,
Watched those cotton candy clouds roll by,
Drifted to the soft lullaby of the rolling sea,
They’d know why I live beneath these Caribbean Skies.”
~ Me, Victoria Prehn (adapted from Chris LeDoux)
This morning’s clouds truly were like cotton candy …. Fluffy, dissolving, filled with the sweet promise of a new day.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentines day. I sure did! And my sweetheart surprised me with a wonderful, unexpected gift – a pair of bluetooth wireless headphones for my iPod. Now I can perform my villa chores, listening to my podcast inspiration, and not get all tangled up in wires. That was really sweet of him 🙂