Yogini In The City

[aspiritualwarrior]

“You should go home to your hermitage; it is inside you. Close the doors, light the fire, and make it cozy again. That is what I call ‘taking refuge in the island of self.’ If you don’t go home to yourself, you continue to lose yourself. You destroy yourself and you destroy people around you, even if you have goodwill and want to do something to help. That is why the practice of going home to the island of self is so important. No one can take your true home away.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

[thedailyzen]

When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

[dharmarainbow]

The sun is the perfect example of acting without desire. When the sun rises does the idea enter its mind to say, ‘I shall banish the darkness, I shall urge the birds to fly, and I will set people working’? No, the sun always stays still, and yet its stillness makes the world go around. If we were to thank the sun by saying, 'Your help is infinite, you have dispelled so much darkness’ that would be absurd. The sun might say 'What are you talking about? Does darkness exist? Bring a little of it to show me, then I will know whether I have dispelled it.  Then I shall accept that I am the doer; the maker of light.’ The sun is totally neutral and detached. It does not control or dictate. It just is. In the light of the sun, one person may read a fulfilling book and another a trivial one. One may help a neighbor, another may commit murder. The sun is not  responsible for the good or the evil of these acts; therefore, the sun does not accumulate any consequences. The sun would say, 'Light is my nature. For me, to be is to shine.’ Even when we have night, the sun acts and shines on the other side of the Earth. The sun shines all the time, and yet no one notices that it is working. The sun sets everyone to act. It makes cows graze, birds sing, merchants open their shops, farmers plow their fields, and yet if someone does not wake up and draw the curtains, the sun will not force them to do so. It is enough that it exists. The sun is the perfect state of being rather than doing. The sun does not have light; it is light. The sun does not do good; it is good.

Vinoba Bhave ~ (Gandhi’s spiritual successor in India)

[shaktipeeth-deactivated20180724]

Prayer to Mother Kundalini.

Wake up Mother Kundalini. Thou whose nature is Bliss Eternal—The Bliss of Brahman. Thou dwelling like a serpent asleep at the lotus of Muladhara, Sore, affected and distressed am I in body and mind, Do thou bless me and leave thy place at the basic lotus. Consort of Siva the Self-caused Lord of Universe, Do thou take thy upward course through the central canal. Leaving behind Svadhishthana, Manipuraka, Anahata, Vishuddha, and Ajna. Be thou united with Siva, thy Lord the God. At Sahasrara—the thousand-petalled-lotus in the brain. Sport there freely, O Mother, Giver of Bliss Supreme. Mother, who is Existence, Knowledge, Bliss Absolute. Wake up, Mother Kundalini! Wake up.

[dharmarainbow]

Another common thing in spiritual circles, when you have some deep realization - when there’s true awakening, you’re sort of waking up not only from your personal stuff, your personal illusion, but if there’s real awakening you’ve penetrated through collective illusions, the collective consciousness of humanity. And when you get beyond the collective consciousness of humanity, there’s not a lot of company out there. (laughs) There’s really not a lot of company out there. All the company you know is back in that illusion, one’s personal illusions, and then the collective illusions we agree upon as human beings. The way we see the world and ourselves, and others. And there’s a tremendous sense of aloneness, which isn’t the same as loneliness. Loneliness is only something a separate person can come up with. But aloneness is something different. Aloneness can be, initially, a bit disturbing as well. It’s why a lot of people when they have some glimpse, they run back to the dream state, cause there’s company there. It’s familiar, people understand you there, you know? … It’s sort of like you’re an alcoholic and you stop drinking, but you live the rest of your life in a bar. You’re in the bar, but you don’t really fit in because you’re not drinking anymore. (laughs) Awakening is a bit like that, like sobering up but spending the rest of your life in a bar where everybody’s drinking, and rather drunk, loaded, and acting weird because of it and wondering why you’re not partaking. And thinking you’re a bit strange, you know?

Adyashanti  (via dharmarainbow)

[shaktipeeth-deactivated20180724]

Beautiful Like the Moon.

चन्द्रां प्रभासां यशसा ज्वलन्तीं श्रियं लोके देवजुष्टामुदाराम् । तां पद्मिनीमीं शरणमहं प्रपद्येऽलक्ष्मीर्मे नश्यतां त्वां वृणे ॥

For shelter in this world, I resort to that Lakshmi who is beautiful like the moon, who shines bright, who is blazing with renown, who is adored by the gods, who is highly magnanimous, and grand like the lotus. May my misfortunes perish.

Śrī Sūkta Verse 5, Ṛkveda.

[yoginiinthecity]

Krishna Shloka

vancha-kalpatarubhyash cha kripa-sindhubhya eva cha patitanam pavanebhyo vaishnavebhyo namo namaha hey Krishna karuna sindhu, dinabandhu jagatpatey, gopeswar, gopikakanta, radhakanta namastute harer näma harer näma  harer nämaiva kevalam  kalau nästya eva nästya eva  nästya eva gatir anyathä

[yoginiinthecity]

Intuition is loving guidance.

Wayne Dyer

[dharmarainbow]

Be present as the watcher of your mind—of your thoughts and emotions as well as you reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don’t judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction. Don’t make a personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher.

Eckhart Tolle, “The Power of Now” (via dharmarainbow)

[purplebuddhaproject]

I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.

Gandhi (via purplebuddhaproject)

[purplebuddhaproject]

[yoginiinthecity]

So the two most important things about writing are: bird by bird and really god-awful first drafts. If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours, and you get to tell it. If people wanted you to write more warmly about them, they should've behaved better.

Anne Lamott

[yoginiinthecity]

...the gulf that exists between us as people is that when we look at each other we might see faces, skin colour, gender, race, or attitudes, but we don’t see, we can’t see, the stories. And once we hear each other’s stories we realise that the things we see as dividing us are, all too often, illusions, falsehoods: that the walls between us are in truth no thicker than scenery.

Neil Gaiman

[yoginiinthecity]

Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.

Gabriel García Márquez

[quietlotus]

We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.

Henri Matisse (via quietlotus)

[purplebuddhaproject]

Billions of years ago you were a big bang. But now you’re a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off. And don’t feel that we’re still the big bang. But you are.

Alan Watts. Philosopher (via purplebuddhaproject)

[yoginiinthecity]

James Baldwin on William Shakespeare

The greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people. He could have done this only through love — by knowing, which is not the same thing as understanding, that whatever was happening to anyone was happening to him. It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it — no time can be easy if one is living through it. I think it is simply that he walked his streets and saw them, and tried not to lie about what he saw: his public streets and his private streets, which are always so mysteriously and inexorably connected; but he trusted that connection. And, though I, and many of us, have bitterly bewailed (and will again) the lot of an American writer — to be part of a people who have ears to hear and hear not, who have eyes to see and see not — I am sure that Shakespeare did the same. Only, he saw, as I think we must, that the people who produce the poet are not responsible to him: he is responsible to them. That is why he is called a poet. And his responsibility, which is also his joy and his strength and his life, is to defeat all labels and complicate all battles by insisting on the human riddle, to bear witness, as long as breath is in him, to that mighty, unnameable, transfiguring force which lives in the soul of man, and to aspire to do his work so well that when the breath has left him, the people — all people! — who search in the rubble for a sign or a witness will be able to find him there.