Recognition and Reverence

Reverence for the life of the soul is all encompassing. To revere all of life is to recognize that soul is contained therein. All concrete life, all human interaction, all that breathes with life is holy. When I look for the life and the energy of my soul, I will look to the small events and interactions of my day-to-day life. Finding soul means recognizing soul, allowing soul to be present and not denying and suppressing its coming forth.

I recognize soul’s constant presence.

The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they
believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations
of man to man. In reality…the question is what
is his attitude to the world and all life that comes
within his reach. A man is ethical only when life…
is sacred to him…and when he devotes himself helpfully
to all life that is in need of help. Only the universal
ethic…can be founded in thought. The ethic of
Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself
everything that can be described as love, devotion, and
sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort.
Albert Schweitzer

Andrew Harvey

The Light Within

I see soul as the center of my existence. At the center of my being and in the center of my heart there is light, love and divine spirit. I know and feel that I am tapped into an infinite source of spiritual energy. It allows me to see life as more than just a collection of random circumstances. When I turn my back on this energy of light, I live in relative darkness. Life seems meaningless and uninspired. It is light that gives definition, shape and form. It allows me to see the beauty that surrounds me.

I have divine light within me.

If one considers oneself or one’s life as a wheel in which there are spokes and then there is a central hub. then in the life without the divine, the ego is that hub. and all the spokes, the relationships and the events that happen are important or unimportant insofar as they affect the ego. We’re hurt, we’re angry, In act. If one lives in the divine presence and dirplacer at the bub, his ego for God or for the Divine, then what happens to him is now related to that hub.
Rabbi Samuel Drexel

Anchoring

I will anchor my life in what cannot be seen. By going deep within myself, I will connect with the beyond and brush the hand of God. To realize deeper and deeper layers of consciousness is the work of a lifetime. It will keep me young and alive and in tune.

I am anchored from within.

Thus, self-realization is not a fashionable experiment but the highest task an individual can undertake. For himself, it means the possibility of an anchor in what is indestructible and imperishable, in the primordial nature of the objective psyche. By self-realization he returns to the eternal stream in which birth and death are only stations of passage and the meaning of life no longer resides in the ego. Towards others it raises up within him the tolerance and kindness that is only possible in those who have explored and consciously experienced their own darkest depths. Toward the collectivity, its special value is that it can offer society a fully responsible individual who knows the obligation of the particular to the general from his own most personal experience, the experience of his own psychic brutality.
J. Jacobi, The Psychology of C. G. Jung

Unity in Diversity

I recognize the soul in others. I look past the superficial qualities that seem to separate us. Though we are different on the surface, in education, looks, position and power, one thing within each of us is the same – our humanness. Some are more in touch with this than others. Those who are better humans perhaps are more fully aware of their own divine natures. When they can know this, their life means something – their humanness is an expression of the divine. These vehicles of body and mind are what we were given to search out our own lessons and to grow through life. I will be a better human today through being a better soul.

I look past the surface.

If you have lived about, you have lost that sense of the absoluteness and the sanctity of the habits of your fellow-patriots which once made you so happy in the midst of them. You have seen that there are a great many patriae in the world, and that each of these is filled with excellent people.
Henry James

This World

This world is splendid enough for me today. Everywhere I look, there is splendor and magic. Where am I when I miss this, when I walk by this deep and quiet beauty without even noticing? Today I will consciously cultivate a state of mind that sees; an openness to life. I will do what I need to do by getting enough rest, good food, quiet and exercise so that I do not have to spend my life recuperating from the day before. I will take proper care of myself so that I can see and appreciate beauty. Ignoring myself is not selfless. I am as important as anyone else.

I will look after myself.

If my soul could get away from this so-called prison, be granted all the list of attributes generally bestowed on spirits, my first ramble on spirit-wings would not be among the volcanoes of the moon. Nor should I follow the sunbeams to their sources in the sun. I should hover about the beauty of our own good star. And I should go to the very center of our globe and read the whole splendid page from the beginning.
John Muir

Being Divine

I will look within for my own soul. I will not wait to be told, sold, led or given permission to connect with my own individual soul. I will take my own opportunity to connect and that opportunity is now! Who owns the spirit? No one. Spirit and soul belong to everyone equally.

I accept my fair share of the divine.

When science and religion see themselves as separate.
they ask people to make a fundamental split within
themselves between their spiritual selves and their physical
selves. Splitting off in this way makes the world feel
senseless and meaningless. It removes us from the inner
belief that we are contained within an allied system,
part of it, one with what it is intrinsically made up of.
This point of view mortifies the flesh and glorifies the
Divine, but gives us no sense of direct access to the
Divine, that is, without an intermediary we are incapable
of finding our own souls. The tragedy of this is
that if we do not first look within ourselves for soul, we
will never find it.
Matthew Fox

A Life’s Purpose

When I bring my energies to bear on a task at hand, I am exercising my will and my strength. I am bringing more of me out of hiding and into the arena of life. My palette of colors are the situations that present themselves to me in my day. Whatever those situations are, there is where my work lies, where my potential for soul growth is the greatest. When I retreat into the stillness within me, I am nourished by the purity of my own spirit, which is one with all that is infinite. The silence within me is the quivering silence of the universe, of all that was, is and will be. It is that space from which my potential for life issues.

I will engage fully in the task at hand.

The gap is your connection to the field of pure potentiality. It is that state of pure awareness, that silent space between thoughts, that inner stillness that connects you to true power. And when you squeeze the gap, you squeeze your connection to the field of pure potentiality and infinite creativity.
Deepak Chopra

Letting Go

I will try to let go today. My fear of change keeps me from moving into further stages of living. I look around me and my life is good. But I forget that I participated in making it so. I have to constantly remind myself that I create my own experience of life, that a day will continue to present itself before me each time I wake up.

The attitude that I take toward my life is mine. No one can take it away from me unless I let them. Life takes courage; so does happiness. Often I abandon my own happiness because I am afraid that in taking a positive attitude, I am only tricking myself into feeling happy. But that is not happiness – it’s just denial. Real happiness does not depend on denying pain. Real happiness accepts life as it is and enjoys it anyway – realizing that given the choice, one may as well relax and be amused by the ride, and stand in awe of the quiet and abiding mystery.

Happiness is an inside job.

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Mark Twain

Living in an Ideal

I am surrounded by a quiet sort of beauty. A normal day has a quiet rhythm and grace. Living in an ideal is different from living in the moment. It makes me want to get the moment to conform to my idea of what it should be, and I miss the experience of what it is. What surrounds me has its own kind of meaning which I miss when I try to assign it a meaning that I wish it had or that I have decided it has to have in order for me to consider it important. What is important is what surrounds me right now, the simple pleasures that fill my mind and heart. The countless miracles that I encounter in the course of my day.

Today I will let meaning emerge as it wishes and I will just be there.

Give me a look. give me a face

That makes simplicity a grace;

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free.

Such sweet neglect more taketh me

Than all the adulteries of art;

They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

Ben Jonson