~*~
~*~
Barry's Favorite Quotations
“BE the change
you wish to see!”
- M. K. "Mahatma" Gandhi
"If you don't see, don't blame your eyes;
your imagination may be blind."
(paraphrased from Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those
who falsely believe that they are free."
- Goethe
"It is no measure of health to be well
adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
- Krishnamurti
"Our deepest fear is not
that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel
insecure around you.
We were all meant to shine as children do.
It's not just in some of us – it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission
to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates
others."
– Marianne Williamson from A Return to Love
"Be careful
of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your actions.
Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character.
Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny."
- author unknown
“We must use time creatively, and
forever realize
that the time is always ripe to do right.”
- Nelson Mandela
Do you
think you are not powerful?
You are creating the World right now with your thoughts and attitudes.
Every judgment or fear takes you to its manifestation in reality,
just as every true contrition, forgiveness and compassion are the Law of the
Universe!
- my teachers
Magic is the default nature
of everything.
It all reverts to being magical as soon as we stop defining it as UNmagical.
- my teachers
Each challenge
engenders its own exact remedy.
Therefore, there exists nothing that cannot be overcome.
- my teachers
Our mind keeps finding shortcuts:
We forget that this was a word or a symbol or a picture of something,
And then we say that the picture or symbol IS the thing.
But a picture of a man or a diagram of an engine is still only a flat piece
of paper,
Or even just some words or ideas,
Without soul, meaning or ability to function, except as a reminder to someone
who knew them.
A master uses this propensity to manifest thought into actuality:
S/he takes the symbol and breathes life into it, gives it depth and purpose,
Until it shines with beauty and intent and love.
- my teachers
You
give God (Spirit) way too little credit,
Even as you seek to glorify your own version of God:
You make God have to be on one side of a squabble;
You make God be accountable for your own greed and hatefulness.
But God is and must be the unconditional love of ALL,
Not merely the horrors you attribute to Him.
You think you can somehow represent God
Or earn His favor by doing something, often very misguided.
But the real Miracle is unseen by us, because Spirit rewrites our history;
Our memories and excuses always adapt to explain away any differences,
But somehow, underneath, we do know that something has changed.
- my teachers
People are often unreasonable, illogical,
and self-centered,
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse
you of selfish, ulterior motives,
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will
win some false friends and some true enemies,
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people
may cheat you,
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight,
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous,
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people
will often forget tomorrow,
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough,
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis,
it is between you and God,
It never was between you and them anyway.
—Mother Theresa
"Each of
us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide
the future of humankind.
Did you think you were put here for something less?"
-Chief Arvol Looking Horse
"The things that will destroy us are:
Politics without principle;
Pleasure without conscience;
Wealth without work;
Knowledge without character;
Business without morality;
Science without humanity,
and Worship without sacrifice."
- Mahatma Gandhi
"Only those who can see the invisible, can do the impossible."
"If you wish
to experience peace, provide peace for another.
If you wish to know that you are safe,
cause another to know that they are safe.
If you wish to better understand
seemingly incomprehensible things,
help another to better understand.
If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger,
seek to heal the sadness or anger of another.
Those others are waiting for you now.
They are looking to you for guidance,
for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding,
and for assurance at this hour.
Most of all, they are looking to you for love.
My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness."
- Dalai Lama,
9/11/01
"The ultimate
weakness of violence is that it is a descending
spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of
diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may
murder the hater, but you do not murder the hate. In fact,
violence merely increases hate...Returning violence for violence
merely increases hate...Returning violence for violence multiplies
violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that"
- Martin Luther King
"Man must not
allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact
that each moment of life is a miracle and a mystery."
- H.G. Wells
"People who are willing to give up freedom
for the sake of short-term security
deserve neither freedom nor security."
–Benjamin Franklin
"When
the people fear the government you have tyranny...
when the government fears the people you have liberty."
– Thomas Jefferson
"Never
doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens
can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
– Margaret Mead
A vision without
a task is but a dream.
A task without a vision is drudgery.
A vision with a task is the hope of the world.
- Church Inscription, Sussex, England 1730
Socrates proposed a Triple Filter test for things that we want to say
about each other:
"Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?"
According to the story, he was willing to allow a communication to be told him
if it passed only ONE of those tests --
Why don't we agree to require ALL THREE before spreading gossip?
Or before believing the 'news'?
- thanks to SongbirdZZ
News report:
"Today a young man on acid realised that all matter
is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration.
That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.
There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream
and we're the imagination of ourselves"
- Bill Hicks
"They've boiled the Bill of Rights down to just one:
"YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT!"
- Swami Beyondananda
"You know the
world is going crazy when ...
the best rapper is a white guy,
the best golfer is a black guy,
the Swiss hold the America's Cup,
France is accusing the US of arrogance,
and Germany doesn't want to go to war."
- Anonymous
If
we all did what is possible for us,
we would astound ourselves!
- Thomas Edison
We
do not see things as they are,
we see them as we are.
- the Talmud
Life
is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by themoments that take our breath away.
- George Carlin
We are staring
frantically through these eyes in search of the observer.
- St. Francis of Assisi
What
we observe is not nature in itself
but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
- Heisenberg
The
greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high
and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
- Michelangelo
I
invite you to not get anything. You see what a relief it is already?
Already there is an opening. I invite you to not remember anything,
to not keep anything, to not use anything, to not accumulate
anything,
to not have anything when you walk out the door.
How about not having anything right now?
In the moment of not having anything, which is the moment of death,
there is a revelation of who you are. And who you are needs nothing.
- Gangaji
“God
doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called."
- author unknown
-- Berenice Abbott If
you are not horrified at what you find when you study yourself, - my teachers - my teachers If
you wish to know The Way, don't ask for directions. Argue. - my Jewish teachers Liberty
isn't a means to a higher political end - - author unknown It
has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.
-
Albert Einstein
When
Man desired to fly, two paths lay before him. -
from "Flight" by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, The
Essential is invisible to the eye” -
Antoine de St. Exupéry "Only
when it is dark enough are we able to see the Stars" - anonymous "When
someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. - Billy -- age 4 "When
you love, little stars come out of you."
– Karen -- age 7 One
does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, - CG Jung "What
we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; -
Albert Pike -
African traditional statement -- Dag Hammarskjold ~Helen
Keller
-- Henry Miller
- Gangaji
"A
bird doesn't sing because it has an answer -- - Joan Anglund
"Let
us knock at each other's heart, - Carol Haynes
- Renee Locks - Yogi Bhajan (passed 10/7/04)
-- Rumi
"People
cannot discover new lands until they have -- Andre Gide
-
my teachers
- my teachers
- T. S. Eliot
- Henry Ford
- my teachers
- paraphrased from - paraphrased from - Rabbi Shlomo Carlbach
- my teachers
- Drifting Current
-
George Ball
"God is both the Cause and the Result -
my teachers -
my teachers -
my teachers -
my teachers -
my teachers - my teachers - Rumi - author unknown "Our
life is like a cross between 'Pleasantville' and - an observation I made in February, 2005 "We
make our world significant by the courage of our questions - Carl Sagan
- author unknown Life is a misery for the man absorbed in himself.
Whoever
wants to understand, will understand.
- Hazrat Inayat Khan When
we understand, we are at the center of the circle, -Chuang
Tzu "We
must bless whatever we take into ourselves - Gray Antelope (Pueblo medicine man) One thing that
comes out in myths
~Joseph Campbell We
are born trusting. We trusted our mothers with our life. - His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (slightly paraphrased from
memory) True
knowledge is not in the written words. - Karlfried Durckheim "A human
being is a part of a whole. "We
must not think that our love has to be extraordinary. - Mother Teresa "The seeds of
joy and freedom are buried deep in our consciousness. - Thich Nhat Hanh "It is the artist's task to find out how much music - Itzhak Perlman, Lincoln Center, 1995 “It is
simpler to find a way to heaven than to find a way on earth.”
-Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat
Inayat Khan
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)
-Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Some
people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled
beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing
is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself."
then you are not seeing the truth!
We
give you revelations and visions,
but please don't just run away with it
when you've decided, "Oh, I've got it for sure now!"
Don't
start running around telling all your relations
that this is the Final Truth and they'd better believe it.
1. There is no final truth, but there is the Truth to live by;
2. They were better off before you told them;
3. You'll be so glad you waited to digest what we gave you
and see that it was meant for you, not them --
for YOU to change, for you to be patient,
for you to be humble and serving,
for you to be the EXAMPLE.
Wherever
you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.
Breathe
in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and
attaining enlightenment will be the least of your problems.
Drink
tea and nourish life. With the first sip, joy.
With the second, satisfaction. With the third, Danish.
Be
patient and achieve all things.
Be impatient and achieve all things faster.
Be
here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
It IS the highest political end.
To create vehicles lighter than air,
or to use the air's resistance to his advantage.
In the end, the second path proved more successful.
It turns out that when you wish to fly above, resistance is to your advantage.
In fact, it carries you higher than the angels.
rendered by Tzvi Freeman,
www.chabad.org
You know that your name is safe in their mouth."
but by making the darkness conscious.
what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."
(perhaps the only good thing he said)
"I
stand here as the final reason that my ancestors existed."
when facing insurmountable odds.
What
you must dare is to be yourself.”
"What
we have loved once, we can never lose.
All that we love deeply becomes a part of us."
"The
moment one gives close attention to anything, even
a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent world in itself."
"If
you will stop all searching right now and tell the truth to yourself,
you will know what is known in the core of your bones.
You will know it with no image of it, no concept of it, no thought of it.
You will know it as that which has eternally been here.
And you will know it as yourself."
it sings because it has a song."
glad for a chance to look within."
"Go
out on a limb - isn't that where the fruit is?"
"The
entire fiber of this universe, every molecule, is alive because of love."
"Love
is reckless; not reason. Reason seeks a profit.
Loves comes on strong, consuming herself unabashed.
Yet in the midst of suffering love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straight forward.
Having died to self-interest, she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.
Without cause, God gave us Being; without cause, give it back again.
Gambling yourself away is beyond any religion.
Religion seeks grace and favor, but those who gamble these away
are God's favorites, for they neither put God to the test
nor knock at the door of gain and loss."
the courage to lose sight of the shore"
"You
keep 'trying' to do what you think you are supposed to,
but it is very easy to tell what a man has actually been trying:
Just notice what he has made for himself!"
"To
turn a dream into a reality,
you have to keep wishing until it must be so."
"Only
those who will risk going too far
can possibly find out how far one can go!"
"Whether
you think you can or you cannot,
you are right."
"Whatever
you think God is, must necessarily be wrong;
Whatever you think the world is, that is your reality."
"In
order to know the Truth, which was never in words,
you must be real, and come out from behind the mask.
Of course, the very first step to doing that is
to admit that you do not know."
"When a Man Loves a Woman"
"If
you want to conquer the evil you see,
you must first face it, and then call it by your own name."
"Everything you require is at hand!"
The Legend of Earth-Sea
by Ursula K. LeGuin
"If
you're not drunk with God's love,
you're not really giving yurself up to God."
"Every
lie you tell, no matter how small,
makes it harder to tell the truth;
But sometimes, even 'the truth' can be a lie.
The world you live in is nothing but the collection
of lies and truths that you have told,
even if only to yourself."
"I
think in the Grand Scheme of things, evolution is ruthless...
but we have to make our smallness matter at the moment"
"For
the self-respecting woman or man,
optimism
is the onlyreasonable working hypothesis."
of everything's working out perfectly.
How does that jibe with the horrors you see,
around you and within you?
Who is responsible - you or God?
(Is there a difference?)
Think (and feel) it through --
How could the universe be anything other
than absolutely logical?
But in how many dimensions?
(hint #1: Where do you have to stand
so that zero = One = infinity?)
(hint #2: If everything is conscious - at some level -
what is your relationship to the cells of your body?)"
"You always get the angel you deserve."
"We are always selecting 'facts' which support our preconceptions;
once we have turned off that mechanism,
all that is left is beauty."
Rumi says, "Seek the answer inside your question."
But we claim: Frame your question in positive, open terms,
utterly free of assumptions, history and blame,
and you will soon see why you could never arrive
at a useful answer the way you were approaching it.
If you can remember to STOP when you get to the question mark,
you may find that the answer is right there,
patiently waiting for you to be quiet enough to recognize it.
If there is a 'but' or a 'because' instead of a question mark,
of if your "question" begins with "Didn't" or "isn't" or "Why did you",
you'll get, at most, a defense or a distraction --
some type of disinformation, because they other person
cannot get past your prejudices and attitudes.
If, like a child, they do not know how to lie to you,
they may become deranged (like HAL-9000 in 2001)
in their futile attempt to accomodate you.
Most of all, if you will do more listening than talking,
you may very well hear everything you need to know.
We all have 'reasons' why we can't
do something meaningful,
life-changing or heroic right now.
We wait until we're caught in the middle of a disaster,
but otherwise we're sitting around waitingfor the
morticians to do for us what we neglected to do for ourselves.
"What can I do to make a difference right now?"!
If
you want to protect yourself from 'evildoers' and their 'curses',
you must sincerely BLESS them and wish them very well.
Not "far away from me" nor mutter something under your breath;
there must be no hold-backs whatsoever in your blessing on them,
otherwise you are cursing your self.
"When
you act from your soul,
you feel a river of joy moving in you!"
"Dream
higher, dream higher and higher,
And then dream higher!"
'Dark city'-- even at its best, we fail to notice
that there are no roads leading out to somewhere else,
and that we are black and white and flat.
We accept our new memories and situation without question,
and we sleep through all the transitions.
Awakening, without going mad, takes all the courage and
perspicacity that I can muster, but then the world is mine.
and the depth of our answers."
That
day which you fear as being the end of all things
is the birthday of your eternity!”
All gains, whether material, spiritual, moral or mystical,
are in answer to one's own character.
It is mistrust that misleads; sincerity always leads straight to the goal.
and there we sit while Yes and No
chase each other around
the circumference."
so that, instead of poisoning ourselves with it,
it gives us new life and sustenance."
is that, at the bottom of the abyss,
comes the voice of salvation.
The darkest moment is the moment
when the real message of transformation is going to come.
At the darkest moment comes the light.
Then we learned to fear and distrust,
and that is what we go around projecting to everyone.
Can you be surprised at what you get back?
Become a little child again, and that will complete you.
Books are always "translations."
The "original" is what IS by nature its own nature.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings
as something separated from the rest.,
a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires
and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circle of compassionto embrace
all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
But we do need to love without getting tired.
How does a lamp burn?
Through the continuous input of small drops of oil.
These drops are the small things of daily life:
faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others,
our way of being quiet,of looking, of speaking, and of acting.
They are the true drops of love that keep
our lives and relationships burning like a lively flame."
If we do not water these seeds, peace will never be obtained.
We run away from ourselves because we do not want to touch our pain,
suffering, anger, or despair.
In today's society, everything encourages usto run away from ourselves
and look outside for happiness.
So it is important for us to learn to embrace our pain, anger,and fear
in a very tender way, to accept them, and to make our peace with them.
The energy of mindfulness will help us.
When we do this, a transformation takes place
and we touch the deep peace, joy, and stability that are within us."
you can still make with what you have left."
“It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the evil to
suspect good.”
“When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth
and
love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time
they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always”
~*~
Here is a link to a beautiul website,
full of inspiring quotations, reflections, art, music and special effects:
A Joyful Noise (
http://www.putomaya.com/ecards/ )
Here is the message that it came with:
"My name is Vicki and I am the
owner of the Putomaya site.
I am a disabled, and make pages to make new friends
and to send cheer to others who may need a smile.
I would be honored if you would visit me."