If we all want peace....

....and understanding, how come we all spend so much time arguing and failing to comprehend why the other people in our world can be so utterly unreasonable and inconsiderate? Serenity is not something we can buy from a supermarket; it is something we have to develop within ourselves.

There are no shops that give out 'tolerance tokens' for us to cash in at times of great need. We create our own... or we live without it and suffer the stress.


If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.    (Mother Teresa)

Imagine eating one meal....

....and then never needing to eat again for the rest of your life. Or getting one good night's sleep and then staying awake forever and a day because you have now fulfilled your need to slip into unconsciousness. There are some things that we just have to keep on doing over and over again.

By and large, though, only the pleasurable activities need to be repeated. If a positive pattern is playing itself out in your life now, enjoy it. If, though, there's a sense of 'uh-oh, here we go again', break the habit.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them  (James A Baldwin)

There's love and there's love...

....Relationships, by and large, involve conditional love. No matter how much one person loves another, they can usually bring themselves to stop if the other person behaves badly enough. A particularly tolerant soul may forgive more... but the kind of love that flows between two people, wonderful though it may be, is not the kind of love that makes the world go round.

That's love for life itself.

Great relationships aren't built in a day.  Great relationships are built daily.

I was made aware of this quite recently....

.....In some cultural traditions, buildings are deliberately left unfinished. Even if the entire structure is an intricate work of art, one little section is kept incomplete. This is a spiritual gesture, an acknowledgement of the idea that there's always room for improvement!

   

Nothing is ever as good as it can get. When we claim to have it all or pretend that we have solved all our problems, we are kidding ourselves. To be human is to wrestle with incompatible urges. Something in your world may be far from complete. Yet that doesn't mean it isn't still perfect in its own way.

Be as you wish to seem.   (Socrates)

Loving someone or....

..... knowing that they love you is not a licence to abuse or antagonise them. It is never okay to hurt someone's feelings, just because you suspect that you will be 'safe', even if you do.

 

We all need to learn to show each other more respect and to treat the people we are closest to with the same degree of deference and civility that we might show to a stranger.

Love isn't a decision, it's a feeling.  If we decided who to love, life may be simpler but far less magical.

Do you know how many books....

......offer to test your personality or measure your IQ?  (Personally, I've absolutely no idea.) None, though, offers you the opportunity to assess your sanity. Now, why might this be? Because such publications would not sell? Or because, despite the claims of erudite professionals, there is absolutely no reliable way to make such a judgement. One person's sanity is another's madness - and vice versa.

So who can say what's crazy now? If you are happy with what's happening, enjoy it. If not, change it.

All actions result from thought, so it is thought that matters   (Sai Baba)

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sai_baba.html#aGi02bmyqrgKe8h0.99

Before, during and after....

....the 2nd World War there was an entertainer called George Formby.  When he sang, he was the master of euphemisms. He was forever going on about his little stick of Blackpool rock. Or his granddad's flannelette night-shirt. Or his Auntie Maggie's remedy. In each instance, what he was really alluding to was his... 

Well, expert opinion differs. Freudian analysts feel sure he was referring to a part of his own anatomy. Those who are inclined to focus on Jung would insist he was simply describing an innate spiritual philosophy.   (Think I'll stop here - some might begin to think I'm educated...!!!)

There's rarely a need to look for hidden meanings. The obvious is all you need to see.

Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.    (Paramahansa Yogananda)