TEACH ME SOMETHING PLEASE
The Invitation
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer (A Native American Elder)
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking the fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your sorrow,
if you have been opened up by life's betrayals or
have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the
limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can betray another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
I want to know if you can be faithful
and therefore be trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty
even when it's not a pretty day,
and if you can source your life from God's presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and stand on the edge of a lake
and shout to the silver light of a full moon, "Yes!"
It doesn't interest me to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done
for the children.
It doesn't matter who you are, or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"The soul has an absolute, unforgiving need for excursions into enchantment. It requires them like the body needs food and the mind needs thought. Yet our culture often takes pride in disproving and exploding the sources of enchantment, explaining away one mystery after another and overturning precious shrines, dissolving the family farm that has housed spirits of civility for eons, or desecrating for material profit a mountain or stream sacred to native residents. We have yet to learn that we can't survive without enchantment and that the loss is killing us."
Thomas Moore
The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life
To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.
- Confucius
When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always.
- Mahatma Gandhi
The spirit down here in man and the spirit up there in the sun, in reality are only one spirit, and there is no other one.
- The Upanishads
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the law of the universe will be simpler.
- H.D. Thoreau
"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
- Albert Einstein
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become."
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
"Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
- Chief Seattle
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
- Lewis Carroll
Consciousness is the basis of all life and the field of all possibilities. Its nature is to expand and unfold its full potential. The impulse to evolve is thus inherent in the very nature of life.
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.
- Emily Dickinson
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