I am the roots
Running deeper and stronger
Firmly holding every branch
Every fruit
Every leaf together.
I am what you cannot see
Yet I am a simple truth
Infusing life in the complexities.
I am what nurtures.
I am the foundation of what you seek
I exist to create.  

-Paradox and Metaphors

We base all our judgments according to the Book of Law, even if these judgments go against our inner nature. These agreements rule our dream. Everything lives under the tyranny of this Judge. This happens many times a day, day after day, all the years of our lives.

The victim carries the blame, the guilt, the shame. And this is all based on a belief system that we never chose to believe.

We need a great deal of courage to challenge our own beliefs.

- Miguel Ruiz
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One thing above all is important: “return to the Father.”

That we might pass clean out of the midst of all that is transitory and inconclusive. This is the whole meaning and heart of all existence. Our destiny is to go on beyond everything, to leave everything, to press forward to the End and find in our End our Beginning, the ever new beginning that has no end. He is the Beginning.

- Thomas Merton

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Prayer is the only thing that changes one's character (soul).
You cannot pray without making yourself different in some degree.
The highest form of prayer is contemplation.
Interior soul -peace was known to the Mystics as serenity.
Serenity is the grand passport to the presence of God- the sea that is as smooth as glass, that is round about the Great White Throne.
Serenity- that fundamental tranquility of soul, is what Jesus refers to as “peace”.
The peace that passes all human understanding.  

- Emmett Fox

You are all- beautiful, Oh, Mary! There is no sin in you.
Stir up in all of us are renewed desire for holiness:
May our words shine with the splendor of truth,
May our works resound with the Song of Charity.
May purity and chastity dwell in our bodies and our hearts,
May all the beauty of the gospel become present in our own lives.

- Pope Francis

The Far Mosque

The place that Solomon made to worship in, called the Farm Mosque, is not built of Earth and water and stone, but of intention and wisdom and mystical conversation and compassionate action.

-Anonymous

“Why is it you never criticize the Nightingale?” – The Birds

“Because my way is different. Mid-March to Mid-June I sing. The other nine months, while you continue chirping, I'm silent.” – The Nightingale

-Rumi

We are called to enter into the hiddenness and silence of God.
Do we think we know what that means?
Words are only the threshold of the mystery and the silence of God, selecting a soul for this strange life hidden in himself is too vast and ocean to be lapped up by the human tongue.

- Thomas Merton

Only the everlasting silence in things is real.
For it is in the silence of God,
Buried in their very substance,
Singing the song which he alone can hear.

-Esther deWaal

Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, mountain and me,
Until only the mountain remains.

- Li Po

When you keep thinking about sense objects., attachment comes.
Attachment breeds desire, the lust of possession that burns to anger.
Anger clouds that judgment; You can no longer learn from past mistakes.
Losses the power to choose between what is wise and what is unwise, and your life is bitter waste.

- the Bhagavad Gita

You see a cloud rising in the West and say “It is going to rain.”
When the wind blows from the South, you say? “It's going to be a scorcher.”
So why don't you know how to interpret the times now?  

- Jesus

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Like Mary, let us never be ashamed to do humble work.
Like her, Let us always accept the cross in whatever way it comes.

- Mother Teresa

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