[fromtheinsideout16]

The Invitation

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to 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 like a fool for love, for your dream, 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 centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, 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 disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the 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 the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre 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.“

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

[aspiritualwarrior]

Please Call Me By My True Names

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow — even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

[aspiritualwarrior]

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

— Lao Tzu

[naturaekos]

You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.

Thich Nhat Hanh (via naturaekos)

[unbearablevision]

Ritual in Transfigured Time (Maya Deren, 1946)

[unreadable]

[loueale]

[ceciliaiacopetti-deactivated202]

Riccardo Guasco, Siamo soli

[vinemoss]

Angelina Jolie getting a traditional tattoo in Thailand

[havvasena]

[cobotis]

“If you conquer the primordial nature by distinguishing mind from awareness, the view of the absolute will naturally become clear… One day, as your confidence in awareness grows, mind will appear as witless as a child, and awareness as wise as a venerable old sage. Awareness will not run after mind, but eclipse it… In a relaxed, serene state, rest with ease…”

— Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

[9710144]

Artist: Raili Liaho - Year:  1979

[themaninthegreenshirt]

From 1977 to 2001, photographer Richard Sandler regularly walked the streets of New York and Boston, capturing all that the streets had to offer

[haverst]

source

[aepex]

[yesilrengy]

[9710144]