Awakin Readings

Remembering the Sacred

Every week, we post a short reading from various wisdom traditions that points to the sacred. Each excerpt is also accompanied by an audio recording, an illustration and translations. Subscribe Here.

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Good Bones, Pushing Water

Carrie Newcomer

We had a small water crisis at our home this week.  The break happened within a wall, and so we didn’t realize at first that a pipe had begun to leak until morning when my husband noticed w...

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13K reads, 19 comments

On Love

Justin Faerman

I see so many people talking about the world's problems but so few talking about the solution to them: Love. It really is that simple despite how complicated we often try to make it. Pretty ...

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9K reads, 22 comments

How Much Silence Is Too Much?

Gal Beckerman

Ours is a noisy country. We’ve been rebellious, insolent shouters since the beginning. We invent freak shows and circuses and casinos. Talk too loud. Our public spaces honk and whistle at us. We...

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9K reads, 16 comments

Why I Stopped Fighting

Indigo Ocean

When I was a teenage girl, I had a fight with an older boy who had at least fifty pounds on me. It was a pre-announced fight, so many other students had gathered around to watch. I recall having the u...

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8K reads, 9 comments

Two Stonemasons

Simon Senek

Consider the story of two stonemasons. you walk up to the first stonemason and ask, ‘Do you like your job?’ He looks up at you and replies, ‘I’ve been building this wall for as...

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8K reads, 30 comments

Hopium

Margaret Wheatley

The problem with hope is that it’s bipolar.  Every time we rely on hope, we always bring in fear. Wisdom teaches that hope and fear are two sides of the same dynamic. You already know ...

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8K reads, 23 comments

A Flower's Job Is To Bloom

Srikumar Rao

A powerful moment in My Fair Lady is when Henry Higgins's mother commiserates with a sobbing Eliza Dolittle. Eliza is distraught because Higgins did not congratulate her after an exemplary perform...

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8K reads, 20 comments

Mental Immunity

Dalai Lama

Everyone knows that physical pain is bad and tries to avoid it. We do this not only by curing diseases, but also by trying to prevent them and by trying to keep our physical immunity strong. Mental pa...

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7K reads, 17 comments

Appearance As A Gift

Isira

Our whole experience of life is a relationship. Every single moment is centered in the way we relate to what is happening. To understand this more deeply it helps us to recognize core issues that m...

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7K reads, 13 comments

Small Kindnesses

Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a lefto...

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7K reads, 19 comments

How We Wrestle Is Who We Are

Brian Doyle

I remember pacing hospital and house and hills, and thinking that his operations would either work or not and he would either live or die. There was a certain clarity there; I used to crawl into that ...

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7K reads, 11 comments

Meeting Our Own Mortality

Navin Amarasuriya

Stories have helped us make meaning of the world, from ancient times when our ancestors whispered around campfires. Inner mental models that explained the outside world shaped our perceptions, and for...

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7K reads, 8 comments

Reality Of Actual Contact With Oneself

Judith Blackstone

The reality of actual contact with oneself is, at the same time, actual contact with our environment. It is a very interesting aspect of our nature that to heal the split between body and mi...

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7K reads, 12 comments

ABOUT AWAKIN READINGS

Awakin Readings started in 1996 as a way to remind ourselves of universal truths. Soon after, it began to be utilized as a discussion topic in weekly Awakin Circles in living rooms around the globe. Different artists and photographers offer a unique image for every reading; an audio recording is offered each week; and many volunteers collaborate to translate it into various languages. Our repository has over a thousand readings.

What is perhaps noteworthy about this effort is that it is entirely volunteer-run, and non-commercial, and has stayed that way for the last 25 years. For the many dozens of volunteer who contribute every week, this website is a labor of love.

We are grateful to Somik Raha, Liz Helgesen, and Rupali Bhuva for their consistent service for more than a decade. This website wouldn't be possible without the pioneering example Dinesh and Harshida Mehta's Awakin Circle of 25 years, and the larger field of ServiceSpace. Thank you.

To get engaged, join our newsletter or join the ServiceSpace community to explore volunteering.

"Compassion is a spontaneous movement of wholeness. It is not a studied decision to help the poor, to be kind to the unfortunate. Compassion has a tremendous momentum that naturally, choicelessly moves us to worthy action. It has the force of intelligence, creativity, and the strength of love. This vast intelligence that orders the cosmos is available to all. The beauty of life, the wonder of living, is that we share creativity, intelligence, and unlimited potential with the rest of the cosmos. To realize that we are not simply physical beings on a material planet, but that we are whole beings, each a miniature cosmos, each related to all of life in intimate, profound ways, should radically transform how we perceive ourselves, our environments, our social problems. Nothing can ever be isolated from wholeness." --Vimala Thakar