Empowering Quotes Contemplation

Josh Reeves presents the following meditation. It is a contemplation on empowering quotes in 3 sections: Quotes for Spiritual healing, quotes for spiritual growth, and quotes for everyday life. Take a breath, get comfortable and ease into this simple spiritual practice.

Featuring Michelle Medrano, Masando Hiraoka, Zemirah Jazwierska, and Roger Teel. Music by Bobby Dartt.

Transcript

The following meditation is a contemplation on empowering quotes in three sections.

Quotes for spiritual healing.

Quotes for spiritual growth.

Quotes for everyday life.

Take a breath,

Get comfortable,

And ease into this simple spiritual practice.

Quotes for spiritual healing.

Whatever you have forgotten,

You can remember.

Whatever you have buried,

You can unearth.

If you are willing to look deep into your own nature,

If you are willing to peel away the layers of not-self you have adopted in making your way through the tribulations of life,

You will find that your true self is not as far removed as you think.

Meredith Jordan There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Nelson Mandela Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage you can't practice any other virtues consistently.

You can't be consistently fair or kind or generous or forgiving,

Any of these,

Without courage.

Maya Angelou I not only have my secrets,

I am my secrets,

And you are your secrets.

Our secrets are human secrets,

And our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it means to be human.

Frederick Buckner When we live superficially,

When we are always outside ourselves,

Never quite with ourselves,

Always divided and pulled in many directions by conflicting plans and projects,

We find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do.

Saying things we do not really mean,

Needing things we do not really need,

Exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.

Thomas Merton We arrive in this world undivided,

Integral,

Whole,

But sooner or later we erect a wall between our inner and outer lives trying to protect what is within us or to deceive the people around us.

Only when the pain of our dividedness becomes more than we can bear do most of us embark on an inner journey toward living divided no more.

Parker Palmer Quotes for Spiritual Growth Knowledge has entertained me,

And it has shaped me,

And it has failed me.

Something in me still starves.

In what is probably the most serious inquiry of my life,

I have begun to look past reason,

Past the provable,

In other directions.

Now I think there is only one subject worth my attention,

And that is the precognition of the spiritual side of the world,

And,

Within this recognition,

The condition of my own spiritual state.

Mary Oliver Nature loves courage.

You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles.

Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under,

It will lift you up.

This is the trick.

This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted,

Who really touched the alchemical gold,

This is what they understood.

This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall.

This is how magic is done,

By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.

Lawrence McKenna If you will take the time daily to sense the presence of life within you,

To believe in it,

To accept it,

It will not be long before the life which you have known will gradually disappear and something new will be born,

A bigger,

Better,

And more perfect you.

You will pass from death into life,

From lack and want into greater freedom,

From fear into faith,

From a sense of being alone you will pass into a realization of oneness with everything and you will rejoice in this oneness.

Earnest Homes It is an important moment in your life when you discover for yourself the great truth that many things may happen around you and things may happen to you but the only things which really count are the things that happen in you.

– Eric Butterworth Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them,

But life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

– Gabrielle Marquis While you are continuing this practice week after week,

Year after year,

Your experience will become deeper and deeper and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life.

The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas,

All dualistic ideas.

Then eventually you will resume your own true nature.

That is to say,

Your own true nature resumes itself.

– Shunru Suzuki The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas,

All dualistic ideas,

All dualistic ideas,

All dualistic ideas.

– Shunru Suzuki Whatever may be the tensions and stresses of a particular day,

There is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.

– Howard Thurman Little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events,

That our painful labors are unnecessary and altogether fruitless,

That only in our easy,

Simple,

Spontaneous action are we strong,

And by contenting ourselves with obedience,

We become divine.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson God is contained even in a drop of the ocean and yet not even the seven seas can compass God.

– Mahanda Skandhi I have just three things to teach – simplicity,

Patience,

Compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in actions and in thoughts,

You return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

You accord with the way things are.

And compassionate toward yourself,

You reconcile all beings in the world.

– Lao Tzu Quotes for Everyday Life Your time is limited,

So don't waste it living someone else's life.

Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important,

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Everything else is secondary – Steve Jobs Love the moment,

And the energy of the moment will spread beyond all boundaries – Corita Kent AdVenture isn't hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain.

AdVenture is an attitude that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life – facing new challenges,

Seizing new opportunities,

Testing our resources against the unknown,

And in the process,

Discovering our own unique potential.

– Jon Amat Love should come first.

It should be the beginning of,

And the reason for,

Everything – Gerald May Love the moment,

And the energy of the moment will spread beyond all boundaries – Steve Jobs Love the moment,

And the energy of the moment will spread beyond all boundaries – Gerald May Love the moment,

And the energy of the moment will spread beyond all boundaries – Steve Jobs Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin,

And a single courageous step would carry us clear through them – Brendan Francis Behan You can believe that you are neither a slave to inspiration nor its master,

But something far more interesting – its partner – and that the two of you are working together towards something intriguing and worthwhile – Elizabeth Gilbert What is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would,

If it were shared or expressed,

Speak most deeply to others – Carl Rogers We settle in the sheep turds because that's where the fruit trees grow,

And with a little work,

The fruit tastes pretty damn good.

Some people settle with a field or a flock,

Some with a stick or a shovel,

And some on a bench,

Chair,

Or cushion.

Once you learn to settle the mind,

You can settle anywhere and begin to cultivate the scenery.

Then you might realize that the ground of your mind is the very ground of this earth,

Where your feet find the path and the future appears in plain sight.

It dawns like the faint glow of an early morning,

Even before you open your eyes,

You know it's the sun – Karen Miller What is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which attends to nourishing the garden of your becoming – Jean Houston We move an idea up the ladder of greater believing by taking it to the core of ourselves and actually becoming it – Roger Teal 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 – The Dowed I Ching My hope is that this spiritual practice blesses you and that you can carry some of this wisdom forward in your life.