Merry Christmas

Magic

It's in the snowflake skies of children's wishes.
It's in the music of children's laughter.
It's in the breathlessness of children's anticipation.
It's in the faith of children's embraces.

The magic of Christmas is here...
In the childlike wonder of us all.


Splendor

Ebony eve, silvered streets.
Lavender mist and icicle tears.
Visions of velvet, crimson and jade.
Golden glints in topaz thoughts.
Color it Christmas. Give it with love.


Someday

Perhaps it begins long before the first frost -
Somewhere between memory and reality.
It touches us with compassion
and whispers to us of hope.
It tiptoes into our hearts with elation
and opens our souls to faith.

Its name is Christmas and we have yet to learn
How to keep it close for more than
this one brief, shining moment.
Someday, perhaps...with love.


Come Home For Christmas

Unlock the door of your heart -
Enter the gentleness within.
Open the window of your soul -
Breathe in the season of miracles.
No matter how far you've traveled,
It's time to come home now,
Where Christmas abounds in love.

Living Reality: A New Earth

"If the history of humanity were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived "enemies"-his own unconsciousness projected outward. Criminally insane, with a few brief lucid intervals"

"The ego is not only the unobserved mind, the voice in the head which pretends to be you, but also the unobserved emotions that are the body's reaction to what the voice in the head is saying."

Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.

If you are not in the state of acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.

"Underneath the surface appearance, everything is not only connected with everything else, but also with the Source of all life out of which it came".

An essential part of the awakening is the recognition of the unawakened you, the ego as it thinks, speaks, and acts, as well as the recognition of the collectively conditioned mental processes that perpetuate the unawakened state"

All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip on an iceberg. Underneath the surface appearance, everything is not only connected with everything else, but also with the Source of all life out of which it came" "When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life" "The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality"

The collective disease of humanity is that people are so engrossed in what happens, so hypnotized by the world of fluctuating forms, so absorbed in the content of their lives, they have forgotten the essence that which is beyond content, beyond form, beyond thought. They are so consumed by time that they have forgotten eternity, which is their origin, their home, their destiny. Eternity is the living reality of who you are.

Eckhart Tolle

A New Earth

The messengers–Buddha, Jesus, and others, not all of them known–were humanity’s early flowers. They were precursors, rare and precious beings.

To sin means to miss the point of human existence. It means to life unskillfully, blindly, and thus to suffer and cause suffering.

The human mind is highly intelligent. Yet its very intelligence is tainted by madness. Science and technology have magnified the destructive impact that the dysfunction of the human mind has upon the planet, other life-forms, and upon humans themselves.

By the end of the century, the number of people who died a violent death at the hand of their fellow humans would rise to more than one hundred million.

Driven by green, ignorant of their connectedness to the whole, humans persist in behavior that, if continued unchecked, can only result in their own destruction.

Most ancient religions and spiritual traditions share the common insight–that our “normal” state of mind is marred by a fundamental defect.

The good news of the possibility of a radical transformation of human consciousness. In Hindu teachings (and sometimes in Buddhism also), this transformation is called enlightenment. In the teachings of Jesus, it is salvation, and in Buddhism, it is the end of suffering. Liberation and awakening are other terms used to describe this transformation.

Responding to a radical crisis that threatens our very survival–this is humanity’s challenge now.

A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.

Ego is no more than this: identification with form, which primarily means thought forms. If evil has any reality–and it has a relative, not an absolute, reality–this is also its definition: complete identification with form–physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms. This results in total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with every “other” as well as with the Source.

We need to understand here that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness. This is its meaning in the teachings of Jesus.

“A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm.

Quotes: A New Earth - Ekhart Tolle

Magdalena

Echoing down through the corridors of time,
Upon the lap I hear the sweet songs and rhymes,
Hands gathered in the stroll to the glorious bed,
Her passions emerge upon sight of her stead.

They wave and shimmer in the whispering breeze,
She nurtures the colors and fragrance of tease.
Gathering their seeds as the blooms slowly fade.
She dreams of spring when rebirth is gently made.

One hundred one seasons had drifted away,
She rests now beyond time in the eternal sway.
The flowers she loved do not cling to the grave,
I wondered about and found not where she lay,

Lost to the earth but not to the heart,
I hear her sweet whispers a love that never parts.


Kuan Gung

Magdalena was my Great Grandmother that at age 3,began to teach me how to read by memorizing each word.

She loved her flowers and garden.

I spent countless hours with her when I was very young upon her lap reading and listening to her stories.

She was a compassionate and strong woman whom I loved dearly as a child.

At age 101 she passed away. I was 11 years old.

Many years later I went to find her only to learn, she was no where to be found.

Her grave was unmarked with no head stone.

She had 9 children and lost three.

The cemetery has her listed, but as to where she lays, we'll never know.

Time

Time

Time and eternity are both in your mind,
And will conflict until you perceive time
Solely as a means to regain eternity.

Now is the closest approximation of eternity
That this world offers.
It is the reality of “now”,
Without past or future,
That the beginning of the appreciation
Of eternity lies.
For only “now” is here.

Look lovingly upon the present,
For it holds the only things that are forever true.
All healing lies within it.

When you have learned to look on everyone
With no reference to all to the past,
Either his or yours as you perceive it,
You will be able to learn from what you see now.

To be born again is to let the past go,
And look without condemnation upon the present.

The present is before time was,
And will be when time is no more.
In it are all things that are eternal,
And they are one.

Fear is not of the present,
But only of the past and future,
Which do not exist.

Why wait for heaven?
It is here today.
Time is the great illusion it is past
Or in the future.

Here in the present is the world set free.
For as you let the past be lifted
And release the future from your ancient fears,
You find escape and give it to the world.

What time but now can truth be recognized?
The present is the only time there is.

The past is gone;
The future but imagined.
These concerns are but defenses
Against present change.

Unless the past is over in my mind,
The real world must escape my sight.
For I am really looking nowhere;
Seeing but what is not here

A Course in Miracles

ACIM: Miracles

Miracles are natural.

When they do not occur,

something has gone wrong.

Miracles are merely the translation

of denial into truth.

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.

The real miracle is the love that inspires them.

In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

The miracle comes quietly into the mind

that stops an instant and is still.

The miracle of life is ageless

born in time but nourished in eternity

What Will Matter

What Will Matter

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.

All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten
will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.

Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.
So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won't matter where you came from or what side of the tracks
you lived on at the end.

It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter?

How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought but what you built,
not what you got but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage,

or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew,
but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.

What will matter is not your memories but the memories
that live in those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered,
by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.

It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

Michael Josephson

http://www.josephsoninstitute.org/movie_whatwillmatter.html