“When you listen from the heart, you experience the listening as a doorway to other people’s experience; you hear what is being said from their perspective.” ~ David Pond, The Pursuit of Happiness If you truly want to understand another, there is no substitute for listening from the heart. The same goes for when you…
“There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From it springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe With every thought you think, every word you speak, every act you perform, come from your heart. And don’t worry should you ever fall from this space of…
“Ambition focuses your power and gives it something to aim at. Honorable ambition is aligning with goals that not only benefit you but spread benefit into your community. Blind ambition would be the inverse of the honorable use of power, where success is treasured at any cost.” ~ David Pond, The Pursuit of Happiness As long…
“How do you become centered? By shifting your awareness from the experience to the one who experiences. All experiences are on the circumference and they are continually changing. The one who experiences is at the center. Again and again come back to the one who experiences.” ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Think of a satellite…
“It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.” ~ Bruce Lee One comes from the heart, the other from the mind. One brings understanding, the other rationalization. One brings inner resolution, the other outer recognition. Only compassion can bring about forgiveness and restore…
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath…
“The mind weighs and measures but it is the spirit that reaches the heart of life and embraces the secret; and the seed of the spirit is deathless. “The wind may blow and then cease and the sea shall swell and then weary, but the heart of life is a sphere quiet and serene, and…
“To relate with others compassionately is a challenge. Really communicating from the heart and being there for someone else — our child, spouse, parent, client, patient, or the homeless woman on the street — means not shutting down on that person, which means, first of all, not shutting down on ourselves to feel what we…
“Your heart is like a flower. Is it still refusing to open? Is it still refusing to love? You must ask, “My heart, are you ready to open as flowers do?” You must ask it that.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, you are here Don’t be afraid, my friend. Just open the dialogue. For anything that’s…
The Dalai Lama’s response when asked at a public appearance why he didn’t fight back against the Chinese: “Well, war is obsolete, you know.” Then he paused and said, “Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back… but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and…