Sometimes

Sometimes when a bird cries out,

or the wind sweeps through a tree,

or a dog howls in a far-off farm,

I hold still and listen a long time.
My world turns and goes back to the place

where, a thousand forgotten years ago,

the bird and the blowing wind

were like me, and were my brothers.
My soul turns into a tree,
and an animal, and a cloud bank.

Then changed and odd it came home

and asks me questions. What should I reply?
  
 -- Herman Hesse, Swiss poet and novelist

The Hour of New Clarity

Kiawah Island continues to be a safe and stimulating crucible for thought, creation and co-creation.  Today dawns sunny and chilly ... another gift of timeless time in the ongoing web of creation we call life.

"You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

What Do We Believe?

If you really believe something, you will act in accordance with that belief — always. If you believe in gravity, you will never attempt to defy it. If you claim to hold a belief but act incongruently, then you don’t actually believe it. You’re only kidding yourself. Casual faith isn’t.

Actions, not words, reveal beliefs. If you want to understand what you truly believe, observe your actions. This may take some courage to do, but if you follow the trail of your actions, it will lead you to a more congruent belief system. And once there you can begin consciously moving towards new beliefs that empower you, while your actions and beliefs remain congruent along the way.

from StevePavlina.com, blog entry 

God Seed

“The secret of success lies in this,” Robert Collier wrote many years ago in his book Riches Within Your Reach.

“There is inside you a seed of God capable of drawing to you any element you need, to bring to fruition whatever of good you desire. But like all other seeds, its shell must be broken before the kernel inside can use its attractive power. And that shell is thicker, harder, than the shell of any seed on earth. Only one thing can break it--HEAT FROM WITHIN--a desire so strong, a determination so intense that you carefully throw everything you have into the scale to win what you want.”

Being a Sorcerer

"In the universe, there is an unmeasureable and indescribable force which those who live "of the source" (sorcerer) call intention. And that absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.  Sorcerers are not only concerned with understanding and explaining that connecting link, but they are especially concerned with cleansing it of the numbing effects brought about by all the concerns of living at ordinary levels of consciousness.

-- Carlos Casteneda,  Fire from Within

Star Dust

I am in South Carolina with a friend re-creating our lives so for the next week or so I may just share some quotes for thought.

"The stuff of life comes out of stars, every single atom, every single carbon atom, oxygen atom, and hydrogen atom. Your body elements were in a star probably more than four-and-a-half thousand million years ago. They were actually synthesized from hydrogen and helium in a star that length of time ago. If anybody tells you anything different, they’re mad."
-- Sir Harry Kroto, Professor of Chemistry, Florida State University, winner Nobel Prize for Chemistry

There Is No Speed Limit

Maureen at Writing without Paper always finds the coolest stuff. This morning she turned me on to musician Derek Sivers and his eye-opening 2-minute TED video. She also said he blogged so I check him out and ran across this life lesson: There Is No Speed Limit. The story behind it is that Sivers as a 17-year-old kid, called a recording industry guru and was invited to come by. Unlike most of the kids who had been told the same thing, Sivers showed up and was then given 5 lessons that allowed him to test out of six classes in college and graduate a year and a half early.

It's a great story and Sivers emphasizes the lesson he learned by stating, "This article wasn't meant to be about me as much as the life-changing power of a great teacher and raised expectations."

What if we knew that there were no speed limits in our own lives ... what expectations would we change? What would we do differently?

About the image: This is one of a growing series of "intention art" images that I have been doing over the past few weeks.