So much of our journey is learning about and removing the barriers between us and our soul. Part of the mystery and magic, part of the reason I’m here, is to try to stumble through and hear what the soul has to say about what it needs at each moment. Ultimately, for most of us, the journey comes down to the same issue: learning to love freely. First ourselves, then other people. I’ve learned that my life has cycles and seasons, just as nature does, and that I can’t get too comfortable in any one season, because it isn’t forever. I used to think that change is part of life; everyone says that. Now I believe more deeply than that. Evolution is part of life, and we’re always evolving into a new cycle, learning something, going into the next time. Sometimes it seems much easier for me to go on automatic pilot, to give in to fear and limitations. Whether we are aware of it or not, though, we are all on- and part of – and incredible journey. Something about consciously moving into it makes it a magical experience……Melody Beattie

mystical prophets & daydreams…..one & the same….

Beware of philosophies that put spiritual concerns into a framework of growth or evolution, which I believe are the great modern idols. Both are important phenomena of eternity’s time theater, but as paradigms, they’re old hat, hangovers from the age of empire-building and the work ethic. A truly mystical paradigm has to be post-evolutionary, a paradigm of lila, divine play for its own sake, where any purposes along the line of time, great or small, are subordinate to the divine satisfaction that is always present in each eternal instant. Mystical gnosis is knowing the instant-by-instant delight of Infinite Aliveness in all manifestation, irrespective of whether, from the purely human standpoint, the manifestation is creative or destructive, growing or withering, evolving towards some noetic Omega or fading out……John Wren-Lewis

nothing left to honor the healing process when the prayers are empty…sit and wait….know that this open wound is the ceremony of the soul…..sifting, sneaking, sulking…..and there, beyond a place without measure, we lift up to the wind, exclaim our profound reluctance….and let go into exhaustion……this is where we begin…..

The angels around us, the ones

I’ve seen when too tired to think,

the one who twitches in my dog

when she sleeps, the one who rides

the sun through the fork in the oak,

the one who weighs the angry hand

open, the one who like a breeze lifts

the curtain of my eyes, the one who

flits like a dragonfly in the back of

my throat telling me it’s ok to cry-

they don’t come to help us out of

here. They quietly wait for the

storms of paradise to crack, for

the dreams we lean on to topple.

They soak up light and wait like

dew on grass for us to notice.

They slip in through our

smallest sigh.

…..Mark Nepo