"The real secret is surrender, letting go to what is...

If we just let go and surrender we can attune to
the flow back to higher levels of unity and oneness.
Like a surfer riding the wave, we don't dictate
the way the wave goes we just ride it
and enjoy the ride!"

Chris Bourne (from 'Gateways of Light' documentary film)

"Inside the Great Mystery that is,
we don't really own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
before we go, one at a time,
through the same gate?"

Mevlana Rumi

The great man does not think beforehand of his words
that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute-he simply speaks and does what is right.

Mencius (c.372 - c.289 BC)

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Martin Luther King

"If you knew who walks beside you on this path
that you have chosen, fear would be impossible."

A Course in Miracles

"The living are soft and yielding;
the dead are rigid and stiff.
Living plants are flexible and tender;
the dead are brittle and dry.

Those who are stiff and rigid
are the disciple of death.
Those who are soft and yielding
are the disciples of life.

The rigid and stiff will be broken.
The soft and yielding will overcome."

Lao Tzu

"The miracle is not to walk on water, but to walk with love on earth, as if your feet are kissing the ground.
We must remember that our presence alone is a miracle.
We must learn to say 'Yes' to the miracles of life."

Thich Nhat Hanh

"Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love.

Rumi

"Man's main task in life is...
to give birth to himself."

Erich Fromm

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom."

Viktor Frankl (1905 - 1997)

"The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove."

Dr. Samuel Johnson

"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

Carl Jung

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

Albert Einstein

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

Romans 12:2 (New International Version)

"If the angel deigns to come
it will be because you have convinced
her, not by tears,
but by your humble
resolve to be always beginning;
to be a beginner.

Rainer Maria Rilke

"Dive into yourself and
in your soul you will discover
The stairs by which to ascend."

Saint Isaac of Nineveh

And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all.

T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding"

"There is nothing to save,
now all is lost,
but a tiny core of stillness in the heart."

D.H. Lawrence

When I read this I feel that this is the answer to the meaning of life.

A great metaphor.........

"The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains."
Li Po

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."

Lao Tzu

'Gently eliminating all obstacles to his own understanding,
he constantly maintains his unconditional sincerity.
His humility, perseverance and adaptability evoke the response of the universe and fill him with divine light.'

Lao Ltz, Hua Hu Ching

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.

Galileo

"A leader is most effective when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, his troops will feel they did it themselves.

Lao Tzu

"Right now, and in every now-moment, you are either closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting for something - more money, security, affection - or you are living from your deep heart, opening as the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give, without waiting."

David Deida

"What you WANT is irrelevant, what you've CHOSEN is at hand."

Spock (Star Trek)

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance.

Buddha

"A leader is most effective when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, his troops will feel they did it themselves.

Lao Tzu

That's what I think Nature (God,Universe) does..

I love the Lao Tzu quote Someone. Thanks.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

Marcel Proust

"The small man builds cages for everyone he knows.
While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long
for the beautiful rowdy prisoners."

Hafiz

"While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness".

Gilda Radner

"From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I could not lie anymore so I started to call my dog "God."
First he looked
confused,

then he started smiling, then he even
danced.

I kept at it: now he doesn't even
bite.

I am wondering if this
might work on
people?"

- Tukaram

"The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns;
the pessimist stares at the thorns,
oblivious of the rose.

Kahlil Gibran

They say to me in their awakening,

"You and the world you live in are but a grain of sand upon the infinite shore of an infinite sea."

And in my dream I say to them,
"I am the infinite sea, and all worlds are but grains of sand upon my shore."

Kahlil Gibran

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense."

Rumi

You lack a foot to travel?
Then journey into yourself
And like a mine of rubies
receive the sunbeams print

Out of yourself such a journey
will lead you to your self,
It leads to transformation
of dust into pure gold!

RUMI

"the scenery is always the same;
but if one has the love of great
emptinesses, and of the play of
light on long stretches of parched
earth and rock, the sameness is
part of the enchantment."

- Edith Wharton

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life,
it is often no louder than the beating of your heart,
and it is very easy to miss it"

Boris Pasterak

I've ran into an interview with Bruce Lee and decided to paste here some of his quotes, which I feel resonating with:

*All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”

*Simplicity is the key to brilliance”

*Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water..

*Running water never grows stale. So you just have to 'keep on flowing.

*Let the spirit out - Discard all thoughts of reward, all hopes of praise and fears of blame, all awareness of one's bodily self. And, finally closing the avenues of sense perception, let the spirit out, as it will.”

*Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not you go out and look for a successfull personality an duplicate it.”

*Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against. The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease.

*I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged.

*If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow - you are not understanding yourself.”

*Obey the principles without being bound by them

*What IS is more important than WHAT SHOULD BE

*Life is never stagnation. It is constant movement, unrhythmic movement, as we as constant change. Things live by moving and gain strength as they go.

*To realize freedom the mind has to learn to look at life, which is a vast movement, without the bondage of time

*The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.

*To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person."”

*You can never invite the wind, but you must leave the window open.

*Reality is apparent when one ceases to compare. — There is "what is" only when there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is to be peaceful.

*What you HABITUALLY THINK largely determines what you will ultimately become.

*The change is from inner to outer. — We start by dissolving our attitude not by altering outer conditions.

*Choose the positive. — You have choice — you are master of your attitude — choose the POSITIVE, the CONSTRUCTIVE. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.

*Don't fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

great moments early part of the future of our lives.
fall into wrong way in life

The fact is that those who do not see themselves
but who see others, who fail to grasp of themselves but
who grasp others, take possession of what others have but fail to possess themselves...
they are attracted to what others enjoy but fail to find enjoyment in themselves.

Chuang Tzu

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

Lao Tzu

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.

The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.


Lao Tzu

Prepare for the difficult while it is still easy.
Deal with the big while it is still small.
Difficult undertakings have always started with what's easy.
Great undertakings always started with what is small.
Therefore the sage never strives for the great,
And thereby the great is achieved.

Lao Tzu

Then Almitra spoke again and said,

‘And what of Marriage, master?’

And he answered saying:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love.

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow."

Kahlil Gibran

I really like this quote about the marriage, I think it's relevant to friendship also (in a way)...

It is often hard to put the line between yourself and people you love.. between who they are and who you want them to be...To give them the freedom from your expectations.

It is interesting, that it's the relationship with my best friend who taught me to make the difference between love and all the other stuff usually associated with it, like pleasure, dependency, fear to be alone, habit...

It was a beatiful way to give the idea.
Thank you..

Thank you for giving voice to this one Yulia. It's a profound poem. I agree entirely that is appropriate for friendship and all relationships too.

I often feel that it is fear of being whole and complete or who we truly are that makes us become lost within relationships.

We're were always meant to dance together, retaining our unique expression. Even this can become a doctrine as some people strive for such independence they deny themselves the dance with others. If we truly give of ourselves, we lose nothing - we are replenished instantaneously. It is when we are attached we become careless with energy, feeling drained (giving too much) or dependent (reliant on someone else's energy to replenish our own). The poem above describes this so well.

"If you don't go out into the woods, nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin"

from Women who run with wolves by Clarissa Pinkole Estes

Beautiful quote Fiona. Perhaps after a journey through the thick of the woods we'll find a little clearing and meet one another there

"A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are for.
John A. Shedd

Trust in dreams,
for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

Kahlil Gibran

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

"I invite you to trust that all of life rises to bless, heal and feed you in each moment. Consider the possiblilty that whoever/whatever is in front of you now is your gift from God. Consider the possibility that whatever situation you find yourself in is trying to bless you, even though it may be disguised. Consider the possibility that all is really well. Relax!"

Miranda Holden from "Boundless Love"

"Within light there is darkness, But do not try to understand that darkness.
Within darkness there is light, But do not look for that light. Light and darkness are a pair,
Like the foot before and the foot behind in walking."

Shih’tuo, a verse from the "Sandokai"

...the common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect."
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

Mark Twain

"The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp."

John Berry, Flight of White Crows

"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor;
he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me...
The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."
- George Bernard Shaw

I often marvel at the parallel between being in the 'zone' during sports and efforting with universal life energy in everyday spirituality. Athletes often talk of 'the zone' where everything else falls away. To them, there is only that moment. Miracles happen. When athletes achieve the highest of goals, many often seem to describe the experience of 'non-efforting'. Amazing!

“I thought I might get somewhere near the European record of 1:43.70, and I had no particular sensation of speed, and I think I could have run even faster. I wasn’t exhausted at all in the end.”
Sebastian Coe in Oslo 1979 after knocking 1.1 seconds off the world record, it stood for 16 years!

“I was so surprised. Then again, I was so relaxed in the water, it felt amazing.”
Pieter van den Hoogenband after winning the gold medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

“It was magnificent, it was so simple, easy, I was just jogging. I understood Einstein’s theory of relativity as time seemed to stand still. I could see everything before I did it. I felt so powerful, so in tune, in balance. It was a perfect melody, a rhythm, I was really flowing.”
Kris Akabusi in the 1990 European Championships, semi final 400m hurdles on the back straight.

"Everything can be taken from a man but...the last of the human freedoms - to choose
one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Viktor Frankl

"The fact is that in order to do any thing in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can."
Sydney Smith

"Nothing is more creative than death, since it is the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that "I" cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting go he finds it."
Alan Watts

"If you are mindful of death, it will not come as a surprise--you will not be anxious. You will feel that death is merely like changing your clothes."
Dalai Lama

"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these 'obstacles' were my life." - Alfred D. Souza

"Truth has no path. Truth is living, and therefore, changing."

Bruce Lee

"Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception."

Bruce Lee

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

John Ruskin

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

Viktor E. Frankl

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
Emily Dickinson

"It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us.
Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive -
to release our inner selves from the spiritual death
that comes with living behind a facade designed to
conform to external definitions of who and what we are."
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." Thich Nhat Hanh

Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
Lao Tzu

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.
Lao Tzu

“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free” Nikos Kazantzakis

Great one Fiona
How about the words of Albert Einstein...

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I love that one Trin, one of my favourites

These are two more that caught my attention...

"In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom!"
J. G. Ballard

"No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness."
Aristotle

"Wisdom, health, life and love cannot be found in trying to control the wind, but rather in harnessing the wind in the sails of receptive engagement of the present moment."

Martin Laird "Into the Silent Land"

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

~ M. Scott Peck

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men. ---- St. Francis of Assisl (1182-1226)

When you understand how utterly alone you are, it's a cause for celebration. -- Stephen Mitchell

I need your love - is that true? -- Byron Katie

If I'm wise, the only reason is that I know I don't know. -- Socrates

“And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them.” - Isaiah 11:6

God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen.

We need to find the courage to say NO to the things and people that are not serving us, if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity.
Barbara de Angelis

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.

Therefore the Master remains
serene in the midst of sorrow.
Evil cannot enter his heart.
Because he has given up helping,
he is people's greatest help.

True words seem paradoxical.

Lao Tzu (c.604 - 531 B.C.)

"You have scattered your awareness in all directions,
and your vanities are not worth a bit of cabbage.
The root of every thorn draws
the water of your attention toward itself.
How will the water of your attention reach the fruit?
Cut through the evil roots, cut them away.
Direct the Bounty of God to spirit and insight,
not to the knotted and broken world outside."

Rumi

"Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
but for the heart to conquer it."
Rabindranath Tagore

“The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it - so fine that we often are on the line and do not know it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"What if there was a place that expressed our awe for Nature? A place outside of time... An island of tranquility. A place where the Elephants watch over you... Where whales lullaby you to sleep... A place where you fall in love with Nature... A place of stillness where silence becomes autumn. A place where the mysteries of Nature are embraced... A place where there is no Why and you remember the things you thought you forgot. A place where you breathe the air of birds, where you dance on the bottom of the sea, where the animals are the story-tellers, and men their printers...A place of refuge, a place of bliss, a place of hope, a place to dream, a place to make a wish, a place that is not about possessing, but about sharing...A place that changes your heart. There is such a place......"

from "Ashes and Snow" movie

Ah Sage - I know that place so well!
It's called the Fifth Dimension!
Take a peek at this wonderful video clip...The Fifth Dimension

Chris

"People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves."

Salma Hayek

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
Anaïs Nin

„The one goeth to his neighbor
because he seeketh himself, the other one because
would he fain lose himself.“ (F. Nietzsche)

"To love another person is only a virtue if it
springs from this inner strength, but it is detestable
if it is the expression of the basic inability to be
oneself. (F. Nietzsche)"

Hey guys i don't know where else to ask this but it wouldn't hurt me if I boosted up my knowledge with some spiritual rituals or any helpful spiritual book. Can you recommend any good ones?

Highly recommended and helpful spiritual book :
http://www.openhandweb.org/five_gateways_book

Hi, Surrender,
It's funny, I feel like I demand of you to surrender just by calling you that

I can only tell which books played a role in my spiritual evolution:

General:
Hermann Hesse 'Siddhartha'
Kabbalah books (authentic sources, like Yehuda and Baruch Ashlag, but they are hard to read and understand)..

As a 'manual':
'5 gateways', of course
Elisabeth Haich 'Initiation'

I don't know what you mean by rituals, it also changes all the time, spontaneously.

I do yoga ~2 years in the mornings, in the beginning followed by relaxation, and later by openhand meditations, and a couple of other meditations from internet I found useful.

For me also slow walk in green and beautiful places works great, I often finish my day with it.

There is music I find very meditative and working for me...

Sea is wonderful.

I also find it makes a big difference for me if I read/here something about spirituality or not during a day, or communicating with other people working on it..like here.. or writing in my diary.

I don't know, I guess it's individual, but I think that spending more time in nature or green calm places won't do harm for sure. Just see where you feel more relaxed, more open to start with...

Maybe sport, maybe reading, and maybe doing nothing, just watching out of the window...

But I must say, that almost everything I do found me on its own, I didn't really plan anything of it...

Good 'luck',
Yulia

I've read that of course:) Its my bible trin, I ordered it electronically and read it in two days and ordered the book afterwards. I love it And thanks yulia its a lot of help.

Andi

Your future has nothing to do with getting somewhere
you think you need to be.
It has to do with the awareness
that getting there means being here.

Carl A. Hammerschlag

i like that Fiona:)

Thanks Andi

Here's a great quote from Lao Tzu:

"Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?"