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Archive for the category “attitude”

26 Jan 2016

fall down 7 times, get up 8

There is a path we all walk in life. All the places we go when the path gets too rocky and exhausting and brutal and beautiful are dead-end detours. If you take these detours you are not bad, but you are wasting your time and energy.

The path looks like this:
Come back to the path.

There’s no other way.

You will never find your perfect life “balance” on the path for the same reason you will never find a unicorn on the path – because these things don’t exist. Forget unicorns and balance. If you were perfectly balanced, you’d never have to take anyone’s hand to steady yourself, and that would be a tragedy.

There is no solid ground on the path — so don’t hold your breath till you find it. Breathe deeply and keep moving forward awkwardly. You can make it down the whole path imbalanced and flailing. When you fall, give thanks for the opportunity to rest. While you’re down, send love to every other path walker who’s down with you at that moment.

Then get back up.

Or crawl. Crawling is encouraged and respected. Path running is fine, but crawling is much better. Crawlers travel with their eyes close to the ground — so they never miss an inch of the beautiful, rocky path. Crawlers get less glory but learn the most about the path’s terrain.

And know your fellow travelers are both your teachers and students. Your relationships with them will be the hardest part of path walking. To avoid humbling oneself into the role of student and having the courage to position oneself into the role of teacher — many try to walk the path alone.

But the path was not designed for solo treks.

The path was designed to teach Love. Whenever you introduce your true self to a fellow path traveler and listen and speak and learn and stay with her for a while – that is called Love. Walking with and staying with messy fellow path travelers for any length of time is Love. Love is the most brutal and beautiful part of path traveling. Participate. Learn from and teach every path traveler you encounter. Exchanging love with fellow path travelers is how we gather the wisdom and strength we’ll need to overcome the next obstacle on our path.

Note: You do not teach by teaching — you teach by loving. Be humble and courageous.

You always have enough strength.

And courage and wisdom. You always have exactly what you need for your daily trek. Sometimes you won’t believe this, because you will encounter stretches of the path that are treacherous and terrifying, but if you give up in the middle of those stretches — if you sit down permanently in them — then you have to live there. Don’t live in the dark, scary parts. Trust and keep moving. There will be a clearing soon and you will feel the warm sun again.

The One who created your path is outside of time, so your life is an epic movie that has already been scripted. So don’t plan or worry — your job is to trust your path and participate fully and notice as much as you possibly can and keep on moving.

But don’t become proud or ashamed.

Don’t become proud that you are further along than many travelers or ashamed that you are far behind others. Your position on the path relative to other travelers has nothing to do with your strength or stamina or wisdom or cunning. We are all in different places because we all have different entry points to the path.

Where you are and where everyone else is along the path is none of your concern or business.

Let that go.

You are exactly where you are supposed to be, always, and so is everyone else. The portion of the path you wake up to today was written for you.
Everyone is exactly where he or she is supposed to be. You are not your own or anyone else’s path-planner. You are just a traveler. You just keep moving. Trust the Path. Follow in the footsteps of a billion other mighty travelers who have walked and run and crawled the path before you.

Fear not. And carry on, warrior.

🛤

you’re on by Glennon Doyle Melton

on Donald Miller StoryLine Blog http://storylineblog.com/2016/01/26/make-the-most-of-the-path-youre-on/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=Donald%20Miller&utm_content=Make%20the%20Most%20of%20the%20Path%20You’re%20On

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com

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25 Jan 2016

loving the oh-so not-so ordinary

This day is not ordinary. This day may be one of quiet or chaos, challenge or rest. But no moment is ordinary. It may be familiar. It may be predictable. It may make you frustrated and angry, discouraged and sad. It may be one where you see hope, hope all around. It may be the day you see deeper, go further, pursue a new place you’ve never traveled before.

I hold you in what you see as ordinary. I look ahead and stay here with you, in this moment.

Let me unfold it for you.

There is a point where you can no longer see. There is a point where there are obstacles and there is nothing to do but wait on Me, look to Me, desire for Me to take hold of all control and guide you.
Where I guide you, where I am with you, is not the place of ordinary.

There are the regular tasks to get done, the job to do, the responsibilities to complete. It may involve doing the same thing day after day, for a while, and another while.
But still, where I am is not ordinary.

Here—here I am, with you. The intake of your breath, the shape of your skin, the ideas taking place in your mind, the beat of your heart. You are a wonder, a beauty, and this day, with all I’ve made, can never be an ordinary day.

Let Me give you new eyes to see so you don’t miss the possibilities around you that I see. Let Me give you new eyes to see so you don’t get discouraged and mistake wonder for ordinary. Let me show you how what you think is mundane may be an opportunity to be with Me in a new way.
I am always new and always the same. You can always count on Me. But I never stop wanting you to see the hidden wonder in this not-so-ordinary day.

🎭

Loop

http://loop.gatherministries.com/loop-1/?utm_source=Loop+Devotional&utm_campaign=cee6d83e4e-Loop_85_This_Not_So_Ordinary_Day12_16_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a7b9cec9e0-cee6d83e4e-100590649

Rama Ink blog!! ❤️ click title below to visit!!!

https://ramaink.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/cross-roads/#like-2971

photos found at http://www.pinteret.com 

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Choice, determination, Faith, find art at pinterest, grace, inspiration, intimacy, Letting Go, Life, Love, music, mystery, Passion, Patience, Peace, People, Reality | Leave a comment

24 Jan 2016

shiver me timbers

The most living moment comes

when those who love each other

meet each other’s eyes and

in what flows between them.

❤️

~ Rumi

What if love never feels safe? What if it was never meant to provide you with consistent feelings of comfort, certainty, and security? What if it comes spinning out of the stars offering something much more radical, creative, and transformative than ‘safety’ could ever deliver?
Perhaps it wasn’t safety you were seeking after all, but wholeness and an untamed, erupting sort of aliveness?
No matter how many profound insights you have, how many amazingly powerful awakening experiences you collect, or how convinced you become that you have it all together, you will always be at risk for the beloved to step in and pull the rug out from underneath you. He or she will do whatever it takes to reveal your true nature as open, naked, and outside the realm of the conceptual altogether.
No, it will likely never turn out quite like you thought it would. You can be grateful for that. Perhaps the creative and destructive activity of love will never ask that you ‘transcend’ your vulnerability, cover over your sensitivity, ‘heal’ your tenderness, or wiggle into some pre-conditioned, second-hand ‘state’ of ‘high’ vibration. But rather to give everything in service of the most radical vow of all: to remain embodied to and intimate with the full-spectrum explosion of what it means to be an alive human being in a world that has forgotten.
Perhaps love will always seed your world with the emissaries of reorganizing deflation, come to scatter its sacred nectar and fragrances throughout the four directions. Before you turn from this activity and abandon it as an ‘obstacle’ to your path, renew your vow to stay close and to no longer abandon the wildness within you. For this deflation is holy, unbearably creative, and is forming the crystalline substance of the path in every moment.
When you are totally unclothed – of all of your spiritual concepts and certain, safe knowing – love will show you what you are. When the known crumbles away, all that remains is your burning heart. There is nothing more alive than that. There is nothing more sacred than that.

❤️

– Matt Kicata

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, commitment, connection, courage, find art at pinterest, Letting Go, Life, Love, Relationships, soul and spirit, Trust, truth, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

22 Jan 2016

everyday hero

Quote of the Day: Virtue
Next to the seven deadly sins, the seven cardinal virtues are apt to look pale and unenterprising, but appearances are notoriously untrustworthy.
Prudence and temperance, taken separately, may not be apt to get you to your feet cheering, but when they go together, as they almost always do, that’s a different matter. The chain smoker or the junkie, for instance, who exemplifies both by managing to kick the habit, can very well have you throwing your hat in the air, especially if it happens to be somebody whom for personal reasons you’d like to have around a few years longer. And the courage involved isn’t likely to leave you cold either. Often it’s the habit kicker’s variety that seems the most courageous.
If you think of justice as sitting blindfolded with a scale in her hand, you may have to stifle a yawn, but if you think of a black judge acquitting a white racist of a false murder charge, it can give you gooseflesh.
The faith of a child taking your hand in the night is as moving as the faith of Mother Teresa among the untouchables, or Bernadette facing the skeptics at Lourdes, or Abraham, age seventy-five, packing up his bags for the Promised Land. And hope is the glimmer on the horizon that keeps faith plugging forward, of course, the wings that keep it more or less in the air.
Maybe it’s only love that turns things around and makes the seven deadly sins be the ones to look pale and unenterprising for a change. Greed, gluttony, lust, envy, and pride are no more than sad efforts to fill the empty place where love belongs, and anger and sloth just two things that may happen when you find that not even all seven of them at their deadliest ever can.

⚜

~ Frederick Bruechner originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com 

Posted in action, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, commitment, connection, determination, Dreams, find art at pinterest, forgiveness, Freedom, Growth, Habits, Happiness, healing, Hope, Imagine, Impossible, inspiration, Joy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, Passion, Patience, Peace, power | Leave a comment

20 Jan 2016

break away

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

🕊

-Kurt Vonnegut

how little I understand
about life

how small is my vision

how tiny my wings

my experience negligible

my brain so under developed

my travels so limited

even as I attempt to smash the box of my learning

as I fight to open to all good things

as the mystery,

the dream,

gets bigger

my desire to see,

touch,

taste,

handle,

hear,

experience

burns me to the ground

carries me to the sky

fills me with longing

empties me of myself

allows me to be a part of the whole miracle producing she-bang

calls me to be courageous-

a brilliant dancer, even

in spite of my fear,

my limiting inheritance

my illusion of having two left feet

stop thinking so much

just be

just dance

just fly

🕊

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.

🎪

― Jiddu Krishnamurtio

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, big, Change, Choice, connection, courage, Dancing, find art at pinterest, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, Reality | Leave a comment

17 Jan 2016

honored silence

If you have seen the snow
under the lamppost

piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table

or somewhere slowly falling

into the brook

to be swallowed by water,

then you have seen beauty

and know it for its transience.

And if you have gone out in the snow

for only the pleasure

of walking barely protected

from the galaxies,

the flakes settling on your parka

like the dust from just-born stars,

the cold waking you

as if from long sleeping,

then you can understand

how, more often than not,

truth is found in silence,

how the natural world comes to you

if you go out to meet it,

its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,

its vacant birdhouses, and dens

full of the sleeping.

But this is the slowed-down season

held fast by darkness

and if no one comes to keep you company

then keep watch over your own solitude.

In that stillness, you will learn

with your whole body

the significance of cold

and the night,

which is otherwise always eluding you.

❄️

Winter Grace by Patricia Fargnoli

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Glory, Happiness, Letting Go, mystery, nature, Prayer, Reality | Leave a comment

16 Jan 2016

bring us peace

Oh time,
Oh love,

Oh life,

awaken us all

to hear,

to see,

to be aware

shake our comfort zones

let us scream

let us cry

let us shout

let us waste no more of our living

help us to choose wisely

help us to live passionately

help us to love mercy, to establish justice, to inhabit grace

keep us humble

keep us growing

keep us connected

knowing our own valve, as well as the value of every other

Oh God of love

Oh God of life

Oh God of joy

shake us now with heavenly thunder,

crack open our hearts and bring us peace

❤️

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com 

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, Dreams, Growth, healing, Letting Go, Life, Love, Passion, Peace, Prayer, Reflection, soul and spirit, strength, truth, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

16 Jan 2016

let your guard down

Take me past

the guarded place

in you

where confusion

covers itself

in unrelenting confidence

then marches on

In lively steps

Take off the façade

let it fall away

into nowhere

Turn around and face me

I search the infinite depth

where beyond all entrenchments

I find your thirst

to be met

and understood

the sadness in your bones,

the want of your silent cries

to be heard

and be known—

abiding within those

unseen landscapes

is a world of precious

dreams

Let me touch where

the battle wounds

lie quietly healing—

Buried beneath

an armored sheath

rests a lifetime of love

and loneliness,

blame and triumph,

honor and defeat

Within this blended web

of scars and treasures,

glistening with honesty,

there you are—

I found you,

beneath the soldier’s plated heart

So loosen the knots around my own

see all its agony bared and mending

and in between each open space

we’ll breathe upon the frailty

All the wishful longings to be had

bring to me yours

as I meet you there with mine.

🎭

Quest by Susan Frybort

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Change, Choice, connection, Growth, healing, Letting Go, Life, mystery | Leave a comment

15 Jan 2016

You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul.~ Rumi

Oh, souls — let us try not to worry so much, OK? It’s so bad for our minds and our bodies and our spirits, and it’s so bad for everyone around us, too. And when we get all bent-up and broken-up and fragmented from worry, we make it SO DIFFICULT for the universe to help show us our destinies.
The universe is wanting to communicate something with you. It wants to take you somewhere very specific (to your ultimate destiny, which is PEACE and wisdom and wholeness) but your worrying is a kind of crazy emotional static that prevents you from hearing the messages.
Have some faith. Have some faith in yourself, and have faith in fate, as well.
What if you remembered this: Everything you have ever endured so far in life, you have survived.
And sometimes, to your own surprise, you even thrived.
Maybe the worst thing you ever endured was a crucible through which you became YOU.
Maybe you could not have become YOU through any other means except by going through that trial.
Maybe a trial will happen again. Maybe a trial is happening right now. And maybe, once again, you will survive it. (All signs point to YES. After all, you have done it before.) Maybe you will come through these troubles re-formed, re-forged. re-born. Maybe you will insist upon that. Maybe that’s the strange invitation at the bottom of all this anxiety.
You have seen your own strength. You have seen your own beauty. You have seen your own golden wings. Why do you worry?
What if your story is unfolding just as it was always planned?
Be brave, have faith. You can do this.
Onward,

LG (Elizabeth Gilbert/facebook)

The soul lives contented

by listening,

if it wants to change

into the beauty of

terrifying shapes,

it tries to speak.
That’s why

you will not sing,

afraid as you are

of who might join with you.
The voice hesitant,

and her hand trembling

in the dark for yours.
She touches your face

and says your name

in the same instant.
The one you refused to say,

over and over,

the one you refused to say.
…
The Soul Lives Contented by David Whyte

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, Trust | Leave a comment

14 Jan 2016

what a glorious mess we are

We can’t find our path without getting messy. Messy comes with the territory. We came in messy. We learn messy. We love messy. We leave messy. I never found my way to clarity without first befriending confusion, in all its chaotic forms. I never found a path that felt like home before falling into quicksand. I never established a new way of being without trying the wrong way of being on for size. I never found the light without stumbling around in the dark. I never tasted God before getting a little dirt in my mouth. In the heart of the chaos is the clay that shapes us home.
Chaotic Magnificence!

🌀

– Jeff Brown an excerpt from the book Love it Forward