Thoughts for Living (1975)

Each day I reaffirm my Love. For true love is the key that unlocks all life’s mysteries. The only road to happiness and joy starts with the first step, love. It guides me through the day and lightens every task, illuminates the night, sweetens my dreams, refreshes my deep sleep. When I am tired, it transports me effortlessly. When I am discouraged, it unveils all kinds of secret passages.Each morning I awake and reaffirm my love. I love the dawn because its light shows me the difference in everything. I love the dusk because its darkness shows me that all things are One.

Each day I reaffirm my love. I am surrounded by the people that I love. Often they love me in return, but if they don’t, I don’t withhold my love. For love cannot be bought, it can only be shared.

Each night, as I retire, I reaffirm my love. As I reflect I see love as the flower of freedom, the very essence of our being. There is no problem, no matter how complex, love cannot solve. There is no pain, no matter how severe, that love cannot put right.

Each night, as I drift off to sleep, I reaffirm my love. And most of all I reaffirm my love for self. By loving my own self I’m free to love another and be worthy of their love in turn. And in this way I start a flow of all abiding love, that’s indiscriminate and unconditional. And if I have no other staff in life, I have enough for only love can bind, embrace and spread until, indeed, one day, it will unite the world.

Pieces (1978)

Yin/Yang

Perhaps if we re-evaluate the message of the syzygy, we will come to the inevitable conclusion that all things opposite are simply two different views of the same thing, not two different things. If we can see heaven and earth as one place with two exposures, man and woman as one being with two different appearances, and right and wrong as one facet with two judgments, we will be coming closer to the message of balance the syzygy was meant to convey.

We would do well to also remember that balance is not a spot equidistant from both ends, but a smooth and easy, almost unnoticed, movement from one to the other, also an appreciation and acceptance of both. The majority of our lives are spent in moving from black to white and back again. It would seem that there is a lesson in not getting stuck in any extreme, aware that each thing has another side, an opposite, and a paradox. Then we truly can relax in our trip through life without labeling black or white, but enjoying gliding adroitly through glittering shades of gray.

It is helpful to remember: aversions are not different from addictions, only the other side of the coin.

Beyond the Words (1979)

Love

LOVE ONE ANOTHER. There has never been a religion or prophet that has ever advised us otherwise. These three words are the basis of all great teachings throughout history. When we go BEYOND THE WORDS and ACTIONS we are looking deep inside ourselves. And what is there not to LOVE?

When we look at someone without a single thing we feel we must manipulate or change we may have truly seen them. When we have truly seen them we have felt LOVE. When we have felt LOVE we have discovered God. When we have discovered God we have found ourselves and all communication and communion is complete.

When we recognize that we are a process and not an entity, we will be closer to discovering who we really are.

Let Go & Live (1989)

Denial and Coping

The most sinister four letter word in the English language today is the word COPE. It means forcing yourself to do something that you truly do not want to do and then having to pretend that you enjoy doing it. Coping is the ultimate invalidation of the human spirit and one of the greatest causes of deterioration of the human body. Still, it is widely suggested as a blanket cure – all for an ailing society.

To be a whole, spiritual human being, you must feel. All people need to feel. Experiencing feelings is how you know you are alive and is one of the reasons that you are alive. Remember the phrase, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” To think with your heart is to feel. If you do not feel, you ARE not alive. You may be existing and your body may be moving, but you are not truly alive.

Let Go & Love
Remember that in everything you do, you’ll fail, succeed, and fail again. You’ll rise and fall and rise again. Do not despair. Forgive me – Do despair, for despair is part of life. Be fearful, helpless, angry, and forlorn.

All these gifts that only living things can experience. Once you embrace these gifts and ALL gifts of life, you will be able to experience, to give, and to receive the greatest gift of all – love. Once that has happened, there will be no need for further questions, for you will have found the answer.

Dictionary for the New Age Dropout (1988; revised 1996)

Words are images of the mind that we need to freeze in case the mind forgets. Images of the heart cannot be frozen, nor does the heart forget.

ABUNDANCE:
Having what we enjoy.

ACCEPTANCE:
An activity that encourages movement.

RESISTANCE:
An activity that stops movement.

ADDICTION:
1. Something that we refuse to give up, not because of our love for it, but because of our aversion to how we feel about it.
2. What we have when we believe that something or someone will protect us from a belief we dislike.
3. The consolation prize we receive for refusing to let go.

ANGER:
1. A method of punishing ourselves for something someone else has done.
2. Along, with fear, a guard dog at the temple of consciousness, to keep out all that we cannot love.

AWARENESS:
1. Knowing how to get out of our own way.
2. Seeing the forest while others are still counting the trees.

Game Master and the Game of Living (1993)

This is a series of short stories featuring the characters of Game Master and little Julie exploring insights into life.

Julie looked forward to their meetings, or “sessions”, as Game Master called them. He spelled session “sesshin”, which Julie thought rather strange, but she never bothered to inquire about it. These sessions were so provocative and absorbing for her, she didn’t want anything as mundane as spelling to distract from the fascinating concepts.

They had been meeting for almost 3 years now — ever since Julie was seven. They met quite by accident, or so it seemed, though Game Master assured her that there were no coincidences in life.

Julie asked him, at their very first meeting, how he could accomplish so many things with so little show of effort. She remembered his response clearly, “It’s all play, you know. This process that we call ‘life’ is simply one huge game. It’s amusement. It’s entertainment. It’s a celebration. The effort I spend is in the pleasure of living, not in trying to manipulate life into being what pleases me. That would be exhausting. It is also futile.”

The Road to Nirvana Is Paved with Fortune Cookies (1993)

You will know you have found true peace when you are able to be comfortable being subservient to a fool… or finding the humor in having to send a copy of a bill to Medicare, when the only way they could have know to request it, is to have already been in possession of it.

True freedom comes from not needing to protect what we have, or even what we believe… or realizing that you no longer have to defend your belief in reincarnation to your scientific minded cousin. She didn’t believe you in her last life, and probably won’t accept it the next one either.

One of the reasons people ask so many foolish questions is that they don’t really want to hear the answers to the important ones.

No Bad Feelings (2002)

In Defense of Feelings

Sometimes we forget that as humans, we are subject to nature’s cycles. We have not only our entrances and exits, as Shakespeare noted, but our expansions and contractions, as well. We breathe in and out without thinking they are two activities. Stop exhaling or inhaling for a few minutes, and you’ll get the point. Feelings are no exception. Having ups and downs is not only natural, but also essential to our well-being.

This acceptance of “ups and downs as natural” can rock the foundations of those who currently believe that “up is good and down is terrible.” This new idea gives us permission to experience all of life and to keep moving through it. Instead of the emotional paralysis of being “down” and needing anti-depressants to bear the feelings, we are exploring the process of embracing ups and downs, which allows us to move through without getting stuck.

It takes great courage to be responsible for our own emotions.

Do You Know Who I Am? Unmasking the Game of Identity (2007)

The Impermanence of Thoughts

If we’re busy worrying about the next moment, we’re not in this one. And if we’re not in this moment, what makes us think we could appreciate the next one anyway?

What is it that’s standing in the way of our enjoyment? Guess! By convincing our selves that boredom is permanent, we have literally thought ourselves into a big black hole. The only way to get out is realize that few things in life are permanent. That includes our pleasure as well as our pain.

So, identifying with any thought or any moment or any feeling is a rather tenuous procedure. Look at the reputation of historical figures and how they have changed over the years. Consider the painters who died penniless but whose paintings are worth millions today because their work has come to be respected and valued. So, for any long-term satisfaction, it might be well to remember: “And this too shall pass.”

Searching vainly for a thread of permanence, we clutch at one called “me.”