Alnoor's Diary: July 2010

Here’s a meditation I received in my in-box that seems pertinent to today’s material living from

Daily Inspiration - Daily Quote ... Jonathan Lockwood Huie -Insights for living simply; an Inspired Life.

We turn today to one of my favorite Russian writers. Feodor Dostoyevsky, who keenly points out...

Wealth is the number of things one can do without.

I don't know about you, but as I grow older (I'm 58 years old as I write these words) I have less and less interest in all the stuff I've bought, borrowed, or inherited during my years on this ball of dirt.

I mean, seriously, I could give away just about everything I own and never miss most of it for more than a few minutes.

I don't know if that's the slumbering mystic in me trying to get out of work so I can move to a mountain top and contemplate my navel for the rest of my days or if it's a serious aberration of some sort that's causing me to reject the American habit of constantly accumulating more and more stuff.

Honestly, though, I really do yearn for a day when I can live very simply with little more than the basic needs of life.

Well, let's meditate on Dostoyevsky's observation this coming week and see where it takes us.

Breathe in your stuff... hold... then breathe it out and let it go, completely.

Really let it go........................................................................

My Favorite Quotes

Life is a sum of all your choices

- Albert Camus

Silence gives rest to the mind and this means giving rest to the body. Sometimes rest is the only medicine needed.

- Robert Foster Bennett

Surely, education has no meaning unless it helps you to understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its joys and its sorrows.

You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a very good job, but then what?

What is the point of it all if in the process, your mind becomes dull, weary, and stupid?

Krishnamurti

Expect Nothing

And you will not be disapponted

Anonymous

Why do I judge my day by how much I have "accomplished"? Hugh Prather

The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease. Thomas A. Edison

Life

It may as well be

A dance of unrehearsed steps

A random collection of movements

Some planned

Most unplanned

Alnoor Rajan Talwar

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
-Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.
-George Clooney

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own. - Henry Ford We see life through the fun-house mirrors of our own point-of-view.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way. - Mary Anne Radmacher

As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.
- Marianne Williamson

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
- St. Francis of Assisi

Know that darkness is merely the absence of light. You can be the small candle that defeats the vast darkness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The simplification of life is one of the steps to inner peace. A persistent simplification will create an inner and outer well-being that places harmony in one's life.
- Peace Pilgrim

It is of the small joys and little pleasures that the greatest of our days are built.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

He who is contented is rich. - Lao Tzu
God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference. - Reinhold Niebuhr

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Don't Complain! If it's important enough to complain about, it is important enough to take action on. Either accept it, or change it. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Steve Jobs

MEDITATION