Reading Archives (Author)

Arrivals and Departures

Cab Driver

A cab driver describing his 'view': And this (pointing to the windshield)...this is like my little window to the world, and every minute is a different show. Now I may not understand it, I may no...

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5K reads

Living at the Right Speed

Carl Honore

Fast and Slow do more than just describe a rate of change. They are shorthand for ways of being, or philosophies of life. Fast is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superfi...

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10K reads, 11 comments

Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The ag...

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219K reads, 39 comments

No One is Better Off

Carlos Castaneda

All human beings are at the same level. At the beginning of my apprenticeship with Don Juan Matus, he tried to make me see how common man's situation is. I, as a South American, was very involved, i...

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4K reads

Use Our Whole Selves

Carly Fiorina

I can see now that I started my professional journey on the day at age 4 when I declared to my parents and to the world, \"Mom, Dad, I want to be a fireman\". Now this was not some precocious instinct...

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3K reads

Practice of Being Real

Carol Carnes

The practice of being real is something highly underrated. We have been taught to appear in certain ways to get the approval of others. We may have fallen prey to the image makers who tell us how to d...

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97K reads, 22 comments

Reveal Your Own Wholeness

Carol Carnes

All mental healing is based on the awareness of the presence of pure Life, or wholeness, at the center of the patient. It is a calling forth, if you will, of that wholeness into visibility. It is not ...

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33K reads, 12 comments

Stepping into the Present Is a Gift

Carolyn Hobbs

Most of us have heard of ego and let ego run our lives without realizing it. But few of us know how deeply our ego—the small, less mature, defensive part of us that reacts personally to every li...

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15K reads, 8 comments

The Posture of Presence

Carrie Gray

For years I have been searching for an education that is meaningful -- an education that doesn't press me into predetermined categories or ask me just to satisfy outer requirements, but one that I res...

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10K reads, 4 comments

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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15K reads, 19 comments

As Way Opens

Carrie Newcomer

Lately I’ve been thinking about the traditional Quaker phrase, “Proceed as way opens.” Proceed as way opens or As way opens, is an encouragement to live with a kind of i...

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14K reads, 17 comments

Send Love -- It Matters

Carrie Newcomer

Somewhere someone needs help. Send love. It matters. If you can't get there yourself, Then take a deep breath. Breathe in the weight of their troubles, Breathe out and send all those burde...

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13K reads, 20 comments

We Contain Multitudes

Chad Dickerson

Walt Whitman once wrote, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" It’s possible to be a person with all of a multi...

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15K reads, 8 comments

The New And Ancient Story Of Interbeing

Charles Eisenstein

Why does the sun shine? A random result of coalescing gases igniting nuclear fusion? Or is it in order to give its light and warmth to Life? Why does the rain fall? Is it the senseless product of blin...

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29K reads, 9 comments

Storyteller Consciousness

Charles Eisenstein

For words to truly be powerful, we must align them with our creative intention. Only then can we create the stories of our lives. Unconscious lying sabotages our credibility to ourselves and others...

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26K reads, 3 comments

Three Questions For A Better World

Charles Gibbs

My friends have helped me see the deadly consequences of the growing gap between rich and poor.  A wise African religious leader named Jose Chipenda challenged me with a stark perspective on this...

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8K reads, 11 comments

The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor.  That's not my business.  I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.     I should like to help everyone if possible. We all want to help...

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87K reads, 12 comments

We Practice Forever

Charlotte Beck

Charlotte Joko Beck's rules to help her students with their practice (ironically, or perhaps not, all these rules are directly applicable to life situations as well) ... Don't begin a sitting peri...

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6K reads

Life is Relationship

Charlotte Joko Beck

Every moment of our life is relationship. There is nothing except relationship. At this moment my relationship is to the rug, to the room, to my own body, to the sound of my voice. There is nothi...

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6K reads

A Bigger Container

Charlotte Joko Beck

We can talk about “oneness” until the cows come home. But how do we actually separate ourselves from others? How? The pride out of which anger is born is what separates us. And the solutio...

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20K reads, 15 comments

Willing to Experience our Suffering

Charlotte Joko Beck

 A few weeks ago someone gave me an interesting article on suffering, and the first part of it was on the meaning of the word – “suffering”. I’m interested in these meanin...

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18K reads, 13 comments

Walking the Razor's Edge

Charlotte Joko Beck

When we aren’t into our personal mischief, life is a seamless whole in which we are so embedded that there is no problem. But we don’t always feel embedded because – while life is ju...

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19K reads, 8 comments

Our Practice Is To Close The Gap

Charlotte Joko Beck

Our whole life consists of this little subject looking outside itself for an object. But if you take something that is limited, like body and mind, and look for something outside it, that something be...

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9K reads, 18 comments

We Are All Beggars

Chaz Howard

A lived theology of the bottom does not see the world through good and evil lenses.  This is not a denial of the existence of evil, rather it is believing that evil is something that is done by p...

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10K reads, 13 comments

Say Wow

Chelan Harkin

Each day before our surroundings become flat with familiarity and the shapes of our lives click into place, dimensionless and average as Tetris cubes, before hunger knocks from our bellies like...

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13K reads, 19 comments

Ten Rules For Being Human

Cherie Carter-Scott

Rule One: You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth. Rule Two: You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-...

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39K reads, 20 comments

Web of Life

Chief Seattle

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experie...

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18K reads, 4 comments

Spiritual Shopping

Chogyam Trungpa

There is a general tendency to be involved with all kinds of fascinations and delusions, and nothing very much takes root in one's being. Everything in one's life experience, concerning spirituality o...

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5K reads

Want To Escape

Chogyam Trungpa

Q: Many people are aware of the truth of suffering but do not move on to the second step, awareness of the origin of suffering. Why is that? A: I think that it is largely a matter of paranoia. We w...

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4K reads

Psychological Materialism

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Even if you are against the materialism of society and you do not want to support it, refusing to work is still grasping at the wrong end of the stick. Not taking part in work and practical activity i...

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44K reads, 15 comments

Into The Chrysalis

Chris Corrigan

Chrysalises both inspire and baffle me. The thought that a caterpillar can crawl into a sac made of its own body and dissolve its form and come out as a butterfly is a cliched image of transformation,...

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18K reads, 11 comments

Mistakes: Results That Show The Truth Of Things

Chris Lombard

The biggest fears are actually the biggest opportunities. I have seen falls. I have seen blood. I have seen gashes and swelled joints and broken bones and I have seen death along with them. I have ...

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12K reads, 4 comments

Beginner's Mind Vs. Expert Mind

Christina Feldman

We collect, store, and accumulate so much weight in this life.  The thousands of thoughts, ideas, and plans we have are imprinted on our minds.  We have engaged in countless conversations an...

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8K reads, 20 comments

When My Life Is In Danger

Christina Feldman

A few years ago, an elderly monk arrived in India after fleeing from prison in Tibet. Meeting with the Dalai Lama, he recounted the years he had been imprisoned, the hardship and beatings he had endur...

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18K reads, 11 comments

Aliveness and Harmony

Christopher Alexander

A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in. [...] To be happy, and to be alive,...

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118K reads, 57 comments

The Empty Boat

Chuang Tzu

He who rules men lives in confusion; He who is ruled by men lives in sorrow. Tao therefore desired Neither to influence others Nor to be influenced by them. The way to get clear of confusion And...

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8K reads, 18 comments

Planetary Beings with Planetary Hearts

Clare Dakin

The instinct to fit in and feel safe seems stronger – to maintain the status quo – to be as comfortable and insulated as possible whilst praying like mad that someone else is going to step...

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15K reads, 4 comments

We Were Made for These Times

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. ...

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125K reads, 43 comments

You Were Made For This

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another so...

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173K reads, 65 comments

Being Human

Climbing PoeTree

I wonder if the Sun debates dawn some mornings not wanting to rise out of bed from under the down-feather horizon if the sky grows tired of being everywhere at once adapting to the mood swings...

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21K reads, 17 comments

A Flame In A Dark Cave

Colin Walsh

It was just another day of that, when it happened. I don’t know why, but the teacher suddenly broke off what he was saying and considered us for a moment. A movement like a camera shutter happen...

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8K reads, 9 comments

Who Me, Stealing?

Constance Habash

When I’m teaching the five (ethical principles of Yoga), I often feel a little stumped with conveying the practical application of (one of the principles) Asteya (pronounced “uh-stay-...

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10K reads, 11 comments

True Humility: Selfless Respect for Reality

Costica Bradatan

From the potential unique location – the site of devastation that we might become – we understand that we are no grander than the rest of the world. Indeed, we are less than most thin...

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16K reads, 9 comments

Fishing Before You Know How To Fish

Courtney Martin

Through the pines and the one maple I hear her. I shouldn’t have gone fishing if I didn’t know how to fish. I shouldn’t have gone fishing if I didn’t know how to fish. ...

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20K reads, 15 comments

Not Loneliness, But Aloneness

Craig Childs

Alone is a state of being. Not loneliness, but aloneness. It is something sought rather than avoided. You can find it in just a moment, a breath: in Central Park, or early morning on the street, sitti...

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13K reads, 10 comments

We Actually Never Experience 'It'

Culadasa

The "I" of the narrating mind is nothing more than a fictional but convenient construct used to organize all the separate conscious experiences occurring in the mind-system. Our very concept...

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10K reads, 8 comments

Heart Is Not About Emotions

Cynthia Bourgeault

"Put the mind in the heart." From page after page in the Philokalia, that hallowed collection of spiritual writings from the Christian East, this same refrain emerges. It is striking in both...

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10K reads, 5 comments