Just as one cannot awaken a person who is pretending to be asleep, one cannot show the way to one who purposefully chooses to act blind. In fooling another we fool ourselves the most.

My efforts I make, Your Grace You decide.

To a heart seeped in gratitude everything is a gift.

Nothing is as powerful, as painful, or as beautiful as life bringing to a screeching halt our breakneck race away from it. The stillness, the gravity, the silence, the surrender. A world lost, a universe found.

Religion attempts to remember God. Spirituality is unable to forget.

That which is discovered when nothing else is sought is what causes us to seek all that we search for. The one who seeks, what one seeks, and the search itself are all manifestations of the one and same. To know this is to know that there is nothing to know.

The desire to change yesterday is rooted in discontent with today. When we are content with what is, we are also at peace with what was.

Ambition devoid of compassion is as devastating as power disjointed from wisdom. May our progress not be built on the grave of another's joy or well being.

Indulgence can quench a longing only as long as the longing is not rooted in love. However, there is no longing devoid of love. Hence, no amount of indulgence ever brings complete fulfillment. All indulgence is ever tainted by a sense of dissatisfaction. Love is the only adequate and complete response to all longing.

Many are the ways in which we ignore life, as are the ways in which she seeks our embrace. Start doing more of what you keep telling yourself you will get to eventually. There is no coming back to where you are today. Life knocks. Open the doors.

It's hard to appreciate water without being familiar with thirst. 
It's difficult to accommodate people without having experienced alienation. 
It's easy to misunderstand silence without having known love.

All that we have is there for us to share. It's not ours to claim or to keep. Give abundantly, share generously, live magnanimously.

In understanding there is no forgiveness. Understanding is compassion; forgiving is judgmental. When we truly understand we cannot but accommodate, love.

Don't attempt to run away from the world or from yourself by going many places or doing endless things. Instead, wherever you are, however you are, abide in your Self. The Self is the only refuge, the only true home coming beyond all running, away from all escapes.

Today much of what is cheap for one carries a very high price tag for the many - the people, the animals, the planet. Be mindful of consuming processed foods, GMO, fancy packaging, slick marketing, farmed animals, plastics, overdosing on medicine, shortcuts to good health, and magical claims to instant gratification. We are not a point in an empty space but a link in an endless chain that relies on our integrity and intelligence to retain its strength.

Dear Universe, thank you for taking care of us. For the trials that make us strong, for the gifts that make life pleasant, and for the gratitude that makes everything beautiful heart emoticon

Life's a game of hide and seek. Sometimes we spend a lifetime seeking. At others, we hide in plain sight -waiting, hoping, praying - to be found.

Time rushing back as memory,
Memory gushing forward as time.
A moment no different from millennia,
Without memory, without time.

Jesus did not deviate from his truth even at the cost of crucification. How far are we willing to go before we decide to modify, embellish, abandon, or trade our truth for the convenience and comfort of our being? Be true. Be kind. Be yourself.

Just as the sun makes it possible to grow crops from which to make cloth that can be turned into a curtain that may screen the sunlight so ego is an expression of the Self which seemingly screens out the self. Yet, the curtain is not different from the sun; the ego is not different from the Self. The sun is always there, curtain or no curtain. The Self is always there, ego or no ego. The wise don't get distracted by the veil, remaining vigilant of the divinity beyond at all times, in all beings.

Ego is not different from the Self. Ego and Self are two expressions of the same phenomenon. Ego is to Self as ice is to water. Even though it seems as if there is only one or the other, at all times both are present - either revealed or hidden, as manifestation or as potential.

The indifferent bystander is as much a perpetrator as the perpetrator itself. Mindfully disavow all evils that lurk within and without.

Some days I feel like finding a seat by the ocean... 
Gaze in the clear blue eyes of its expanse...
Lend an ear to the rumble of its muted conversations...
Become one with the infinity of things... 
Today is one such day... heart emoticon

A relationship, like a good book, requires staying power for it to reveal its charm, its mystery, pull you in a pain you can neither bear nor let go of, to enthrall you with delights unperceived and to invite you to be part of a world hitherto unknown. But the greatest gift of a relationship, as of a good book, is a deep longing to come closer to one's own self, to somehow learn about oneself through another, and in the process become one with that which until that point was the other. It's a journey of love.

Fear is to love as darkness is to light. Without love, one can overcome fear no more than without light one can drive away darkness. When light is lit, darkness has no choice but to dissipate, to disappear. Transcending fear has all to do with love and nothing to do with fear itself. For fear, like darkness, has no existence of its own. It is but simply the absence of love.

A desire that refuses to leave us frustrates us no less than a desire that we choose to not let go of. Either way restlessness gnaws at one's heart.

Nothing and everything exist together at all times.

Tapas = Fire of inner strength = You easily can, you desperately want to, and ... you don't.

Our demand for freedom to pursue our self-indulgent cravings and pursuits is no freedom at all. It is the bondage of first order, the root of all misery, and a self created prison from which no other can ever free is. True freedom is free even of the demand for freedom.

Accommodating another begins with accepting oneself. We cannot stand in another what we deny in our own self. An ambitious person cannot help but despise the lazy. It is only when we are able to accept all aspects of our being that we are able to experience all shades of love.

Knowledge of the world requires becoming;
Knowledge of self, being.

The mind is endless wanting while the being is endlessly without need. Beingness is the silence amid mind's deafening clamor, an oasis in a vast desert, a harbor in turbulent waters. The want of our mind is not the need of our being.

Celebrate the absence of suffering but don't forget your courage and ability to gather all of you and celebrate in the face of suffering as well!

Our eyes do not open to that to which we close our heart.

All becoming eventually perishes under the sands of time. Becoming. Just a wave on the ocean of being.

Happy can be controlled no more than happiness can. When we seek control in our associations and relationships with another or with our own self, we only come across misery and the miserable. The expanse of our happiness is determined by the extent of our ability to let go.

May we not burden another in our attempts to unburden ourselves. May the togetherness of our being forever reside as an effervescent giggle of timeless laughter in the sacred core of our hearts.

How may I thank the rough sands that support my feet,
The light breeze that giggles as air in my hair?
How to be grateful to this dear life, its beauty, its passions, its despair?
How best to tend to this kind heart, that never does cease to care...

It slips through my fingers,
Into your awaiting hands
I could hold on to it no more,
In love, a life content.

Some hurts can be healed. 
Others, ignored. 
The pain of a longing heart,
Ever constant, life's ebb and flow.

The truths we are unable to share hurt just as much, and sometimes a whole lot more, as any lies that we tell, be it to another or to our own self.

Only in freedom from fear is there joy, is there generosity. Live heartily, share abundantly.

Love is not passivity or compliance. It is the most powerful revolutionary and transformative force in the Universe. Look deep within and investigate whether your efforts to "not rock the boat" are really love or the absence thereof?

Fear is to love as shadow is to light. As long as one seeks light, there will always be shadow. Only when one is light itself does the shadow disappear. To be love is to be free from all fear.

If nothing about our life changed from how it is today, if it continued to be just as it is in this moment for time eternal, could we be at peace with it? be alive with it? If not, know that we are already missing living our life, that we have understood neither life nor living. There is no life, no living, and no being alive to other than to the eternity of the present moment.

In essence, everything has always existed and always will; nothing had ever existed and never will. All that is there are forming and dissolving forms. All that never existed are the labels for these forms. That which exists is total emptiness - devoid of everything - of all forms, of all dissolutions, of all labels, and even absent of the one who labels and the one who observes the phenomenon of labeling and one who observes this observer observing the labeling and ad infinitum.

How wasteful to fill our days with doing more of that which does not serve us to begin with.

Do less. Be more.

The pain of truth lies in its capacity to mercilessly uproot our attachments. In it also lies inherent its power to liberate. Light can lead only at the expense of darkness.

We don't learn because we don't seek to learn from our life's lessons. What we seek is to not get hurt. Our resolve to learn from a fall is mostly limited to not get hurt again. Any surprise then that as soon as we feel safe and secure, we are back to being foolish.