life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Change”

just for today

  
It took me some years to understand that many of us are more afraid of happiness than misery. Because misery and martyrdom have an inherent safety about them- one is never particularly vulnerable, nor at risk of disappointment. Unhappiness becomes a security blanket, a way to armor ourselves against deep feeling. On the other hand, happiness has an intrinsically risky quality. When we open our hearts to life, we are always vulnerable to loss, to shattering, to having it all fall away. But it can also expand and deepen, joyfully permeating every element of our life. I can often sense when someone has made unhappiness their shield, their perpetual life stance. And it saddens me. Because locking ourselves into only one way of being is a self-fulfilling prophecy: misery begets misery. Because only through risking something can we arrive at a new perspective. And most significantly, because the rhythms and tides of one’s life can shift in the blink of an eye. All it takes is one sunny day and the whole damn thing can come back to light.

    – Jeff Brown

 

   

  

Happy New Year!!!   

 

    


  

    

   

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

  

you gettin’ excited?

 
  If you want to know the past, to know what has caused you, look at yourself in the PRESENT, for that is the past’s effect. If you want to know your future, then look at yourself in the PRESENT, for that is the cause of the future.

🍾

      – Majjhima Nikaya   

Holy One,

as a new year approaches

I seek to become not a new person

but more myself,

more aware of what is infinitely good in me,

more attentive to you in me,

who you become in me to be.
I am grateful for your presence,

in awe of your glory,

open to your grace

in me.
Unfold your light in me

and I will become you. 

Unbind your compassion in me

and I will shine with you.

Be in me;

I will be in you.

__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

  
Weather Report
Light

today and ‪tomorrow‬,

emanating from within.

Visibility will be mixed

as some hide the light and others glow.

An atmosphere of glory will prevail

as God moves through us all.

__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

  
  
http://www.pinterest.com

ready? clean. close. begin.  

 

 CLOSING 2015
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened.
You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister.

Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.
Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.
That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home.
Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.
Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.

Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood.
Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.”
Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back.

Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need.

This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life.
Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.
Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

🎭

Paulo Coelho

 

The devil loves unspoken secrets, especially those that fester in a man’s soul. 

       – Melville

 

  the path keeps winding
I keep walking

always into surprises

always into adventures

today an unexpected ‘wow’ on the path

love always wins

grace always changes us

I keep seeing it

as I practice this truth named love

as I let go into the the flow

as I clear out the old

leave

return

let go

keep letting go

making space for now

the work of living in now

this freedom thing is a worthwhile challenge 

this mystery just keeps expanding

this love thing is truly

the only thing

that could possibly 

change this world….

or anyone…

mainly..

namely.

someone 

like 

me. 

begin again

trust the new beginning. 

🌎

AL

 

the beds we make: predicted 

 

how much of our lives do we predict through our words

which come from our thoughts 

our actions following that form 

belief systems so deep seeded are seated 

within us deeper than deep

most times we do things 

from an unconscious place

of familial familiarity 

patterns so old

we can trace them into generations past passing

the torturous torch

ever forward 

how do we stop this bitter flower flowering?

how do we dam the damning history if our history?

remember to remember 

thoughts become things

words are power

actions speak louder than shouting 

we can do hard things

we get to choose

that’s what free will is all about

all we need is love

love wins every time

put that truth in your peace pipe and smoke it!

I’ll take all that into all the upcoming 

brand spanking, 

sparkling 

new years 

year after year –

I choose a life of love

🍾

AL  

 So, you get to choose – are you going to suffer, or be happy for the next seven years? 
I’m going to suffer. 

  

  
HEALING: is moving forward even when nothing is working out, and understanding that one day, it will all work together to create an even better today than yesterday. 

   – Soul Pancake 

Let us move into the New Year with a great sense of the thrill of living.     –Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

 

  Lean forward into your life… catch the best bits and the finest wind. Just tip your feathers in flight a wee bit and see how dramatically that small lean can change your life. 

🔹

— Mary Anne Radmacher  

 

   

gift

 

 Longest night.

Darkness falls like snow,

falls and falls, 

deepening.

Older than the universe,

here before it,

and will be after.

Wraps an arm around us

as if we’re old friends.

We are.

Darkness lives in us,

radiates from us.

We speak it.

Darkness is the velvet cloth

where you cherish the gem

of your presence among us,

darkness the womb,

darkness the manger

that cradles your light,

this holy being

that becomes us,

births us.

In the darkness

you do not come to us,

we come from you.

Because you are with and not apart,

even the darkness

is you.

Because you shine in it

the dark is our dark,

none of it unchanged.

Your being our light,

your hereness our life,

shining in the longest night.

__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

 

 To go into the darkness with a light 
is to know the light. 

To know the dark, go dark. 

Go without light and find that the dark too, blooms and sings 

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. 

– Wendell Berry 

  
Black. out. black. 

Black. on. black. 

Dark. on dark. on dark. 

I was simply looking for home. 

Not knowing the current alley would lead 

to where the sidewalk ended 

I stepped off the edge 

out of the world of light 

waking into morning night 

a banished sun 

no stars 

or moon 

or streetlights 

or fireflies 

or lighters 

in pitch darkness 

I lay, unable to move, 

senses adjusting 

to what is my new reality 

hearing the life 

that lives here 

wondering if I’ll make friends 

while I’m here 

learning this new space. 

🌌

AL

 

 Gift suggestions: 
To your enemy –  forgiveness. 

 To an opponent – tolerance. 

   To a friend – your heart. 

     To a customer – service. 

       To every child – a good example. 

          To all – love. 

💞

           – Oren Arnold

  

the hardest thing 

 

 this birth of awaiting changes
this for that

tit for tat

tuxedo memories

pinstripe debonair

glamour hangs

like confetti in the air

life goes 

round and round

flinging dreams

synthetic roads

leading nowhere 

screams and laugher 

hardest when not fair

up one side now

down the other there

we hang on

we stomp our feet 

and swear

this ain’t right

this we cannot bear

life goes forward

ever on and on

wanting only

to change our point of view

we are loved

no matter what we lose

love will win

love’s always life’s sweet muse

sight or blind

the vision ours to choose

❤️

AL

 

 expectancy. awe

Anticipation of 

coming back to life

moving through the grey

into new 

love

joy

peace

light

There is no guarantee of anything in this lifetime

however there are amazing things hidden

which bring forth their fruit

in their season

Sometimes it feels like it just won’t happen,

then…

flash, boom, bang

and you got okra up to the second floor windows! 

Go ahead, live with the hope

Plan with the expectancy

of all good things

come in their time

💞

AL 

 

It rains on the just and the unjust.  

💞

On this day of your life I believe God wants you to know… 
…that yearning for a new way will not produce it.

Only ending the old way can do that.
You cannot hold onto the old all the while

declaring that you want something new.

The old will defy the new;

the old will deny the new;

the old will decry the new.

 

There is only one way to bring in the new.
You must make room for it.

 💞

   – Neale Donald Walsh

what if we knew? 

 

This world doesn’t improve by demanding perfection. It improves when we reach through our armor and touch another with tenderness. It improves when we bust through the walls of our conditioning, and try a new way of being on for size. It improves when we work through our unresolved shadow and share what little light we can find. It is the small, positive steps that we take when we are at war with ourselves that change the world. 

🌀

   – Jeff Brown 

  awe…

examination…

it keeps appearing 

again…

I delete…

again…

I delete…

haven’t I already written my poem?

haven’t I already done that one?

What is left that I haven’t taken out…

haven’t examined properly?

There are always layers

As Shrek reminded me,

I am an onion…

layers…

illusions

shadows

truth left to excavate

healing to be hard won

motivations to uncover

mystery to be discovered

always more

God keeps getting bigger

as I examine,

reduce,

open. 

help me to stay in this mode of self realization…

growth…

humble me…

my best self emerges within this process

send it again…

remind me again…

🌀

AL

 

Approaching Wholeness
The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it is long. It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to utter simplicity. The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

🌀

– Rabindranath Tagore

  

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

the fight 

 

 Step 7: Letting God 

We humbly asked [God] to remove our shortcomings.  

– Step 7 of the Twelve Steps

 

We can never engineer or guide our own transformation or conversion. If we try, our so-called conversion will be self-centered and well-controlled, with most of our preferences and addictions still fully in place but now well disguised. Any attempts at self-conversion would be like an active alcoholic trying to determine his own rules for sobriety. God has to radically change the central reference point of our lives. We do not even know where to look for another reference point because up to now it has all been about me! Too much “me” can never find “you”–or anything beyond itself.

 

So Step 7 says that we must “humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.” Don’t ever bother to go after your faults yourself because you will usually go after the wrong thing (the real thing remains denied in the unconscious). Or you might actually obstruct your “golden shadow” which is your gift. “If you try to pull out the weeds, you might pull out the wheat along with it,” as Jesus puts it (Matthew 13:29).

 

Instead you have to let God reveal your real faults to you, usually by falling many times, and by other people’s opinions of you. You must allow God to remove those faults in God’s way and in God’s time. If you go after them with an angry stick, you will soon be left with only an angry stick–and the same faults at a deeper level of disguise and denial. Thus most people at early stages in alcoholic recovery just replace one addiction with another. Now it’s nicotine, caffeine, shopping, “stinkin’ thinkin’,” or the angry stick itself, which is supposedly okay because it is a Christian angry stick.

 

Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). He was telling us to stay in the position of a beggar, a petitioner, a radical dependent. This is always our spiritual posture, if we are honest. To know that you don’t know, to know that you are always in need, keeps you situated in right relationship with Life itself. Life is a gift, totally given to you without cost. A daily and chosen “attitude of gratitude” will keep your hands open to allow and receive life at ever-deeper levels of satisfaction. But don’t ever think you deserve or have earned it. Humility is foundational. Those who live with such open and humble hands receive life’s gifts in abundance and throughout their years, “full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over into their lap” (Luke 6:38).

✋🏻

  – Richard Rohr

  


Your Life begins to change when you change. Someday what seemed so difficult will not be anymore. Every step taken to find a new you brings destiny closer to your doorstep. Everything you do consistently is either bringing you closer or taking you further away from the Life you were put here to have. Castaway the demons blocking unrealized greatness stored within the chambers of your soul and never ever stop trying to reach the best version of yourself. The world that now exists will not exist tomorrow because you had the courage to change………………

☀️

 – Mm

Facebook/chasing the tides

  

Please,

give me some inspiration 

away from the lights of retail obsession 

after that quick thrill is gone

the empty thrill of addiction’s lie

what is left but emptiness?

Inspire me with true beauty

kindness

truth

the deep satisfaction of truth

replace the illusion of neon lights

plastic glamour 

with the glory of what is real

to see my true self

the weighty value of love 

the only water to quench the thirsty soul

the only inspiration which keeps us seeking more

while being full 

at the same time

☀️

AL

 
    

 

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

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