Bloom

::: WELCOME HERE :::

~In Your Presence~

~ Realizations ~

"When I picked up the leaf, I saw that the leaf was pretending to be born in the spring time and pretending to die at the end of autumn. We too appear, manifest to help living beings including ourselves, and then disappear. We have within us a miraculous power, and if we live our daily lives in mindfulness, if we take steps mindfully, with love and care, we can produce the miracle and transform our world into a miraculous place to live. Taking steps slowly, in mindfulness, is an act of liberation. You walk and you free yourself of all worries, anxieties, projects, and attachments. One step like this has the power to liberate you from all afflictions. Just being there, you transform yourself, and your compassion will bear witness."
- Thich Nhat Hanh

"Live for the moment because there is only one result in life"
-Fortune Cookie

"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and never will be again."
~ Pablo Casals

A little girl was standing with her grandfather by an old-fashioned open well. They had just lowered a bucket to draw some water to drink. "Grandfather," asked the little girl, "where does God live?"
The old man picked up the little girl and held her over the open well."Look down into the water," he said, "and tell me what you see." "I see myself," said the little girl.
"That's where God lives," said the old man. "He lives in you."
-Mark Link in Challenge

~ Witness ~

"Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes."
~ Walt Whitman

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes from within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the centre of the universe, dwells the Great Spirit, and that this centre is really everywhere,
it is within each of us."
- Black Elk

"Through the practice of sitting still and following your breath as it goes out and dissolves, you are connecting with your heart. By simply letting yourself be, as you are, you develop genuine sympathy towards yourself.
By simply being on the spot, your life can become workable and even wonderful. You realize that you are capable of sitting like a king or queen on a throne. The regalness of that situation shows you the dignity that comes from being still and simple."
~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

"If we penetrate deeply into all aspects and all areas of life, we will find that hidden behind everything is love. We will discover that love is the force, the power and inspiration behind every word and every action. This applies to all people, irrespective of race, caste, creed, sect, religion or of what work people do."
- Amma

"When we have preconceived ideas about the way life should be, they interfere with the opportunity to enjoy or learn from the present moment. This prevents us from honoring what we are going through, which may be an opportunity for great awakening."
~ Richard Carlson

Stephen Colbert:
“I started off as an improviser, and when you improvise, I was always taught at least, that the idea is about listening and responding to what the other person is doing. And being willing to surrender what your plan was for the discovery of the moment ...... and to jump down the rabbit hole; Alice didn’t intend to go there ....."
Charlie Rose:
“If you see a rabbit hole jump in it?”
Stephen Colbert:
“Exactly, don’t step over the crack in the sidewalk, jump down the crack in the sidewalk, you know, there are no mistakes only discoveries .....”

“When we separate ourselves from the world and imagine that “me” has to conquer it, we are paupers who think that there is something to subjugate, own, or manipulate. Because we are objectifying the world, we see it as a threat and defend ourselves against it. With the virtue of knowing selflessness, we are pulling the rug out from under the world’s ability to terrorize and confuse us. Truly ruling our world is seeing the world for what it is—constantly shifting appearances that we attempt to freeze with assumptions and expectations. It is moving waves and particles that, like the illusion of “me”, we take as real and solid.
The selflessness of the dragon understands that the world is appearing, but that, at its heart, those appearances are empty. In reality, there is no world to rule. We are ruling a dream, and we are all sharing the same dream.”
- Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

"Everybody is searching for paradise. You can give it different names - nirvana, enlightenment, samadhi, the Kingdom of God, ultimate truth - and you can go on giving it different names, but you will still be missing it - missing not because you have been thrown out of the Garden of Eden, but missing because you are in the garden and you have fallen into a deep dreamlike state. The dream consists of your desire to be somewhere else, to reach the peaks."
~ Osho

"How does the meadow flower, its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold."
- William Wordsworth

"How plain does it appear that there is not another condition of life so well suited for philosophizing as this in which you now happen to be."
~ Marcus Aurelius

"The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men."
- Albert Einstein

"Thinking back over my life, it seems to me that there are different ways of looking out and trying to understand the world around us. There's a very clear scientific window. And it does enable us to understand an awful lot about what's out there. There's another window, it's the window through which the wise men, the holy men, the masters, of the different and great religions look as they try to understand the meaning in the world.
My own preference is the window of the mystic."
~ Jane Goodall

"The closer we come to death, or rather, the more vividly we remember it (and to remember it means to remember our true life, that is, a life independent of death), the more important becomes this single indispensable thing called life..."
~
"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
- Leo Tolstoy

"There is no separation between you and that; it’s only a thought that makes it seem so."
~
"True freedom comes when every speck of the known collapses into the unknown, not just for a moment but continually"
~ Adyashanti

"All the old separations between 'holy' and 'wordly' are not real. Everything is divine. Everything. All this is God.
There is only one love and one energy. When you are feeling it, you are beginning to understand it."
- Mother Meera

“You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.”
~ Alan Watts

"You don't awaken to Truth by analysing the dream - Find out who the dreamer is."
- Mooji

"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from."
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis
all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."
- Frederick Buechner

"You stick to naturalness too much. When you stick to it, it is not natural any more."
~
"Our way is to practice one step at a time, one breath at a time, with no gaining idea."
~ Shunryu Suzuki

"The whole practical business of life, is shifting trust, from what you look like, to what you are. From what you’ve been advertised to be, to what you really, really, really are."
- Elysha

"The only true companions you have on the spiritual path are love, trust and innocence. Everything else will betray you."
- David Spero

“There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality, though in fact we are reality.”
~ Ramana Maharshi