When you have succeeded in letting go of a trivial preoccupation or two, your awareness will begin to expand into the deeper sources of stress in your life, the bigger uncontrollable things that you have been at pains to control.
If you see oppression, violence, injustice and evil deeds, unzip your silence and uncaring indifference, do something and act against all these unethical instances." ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from my novel, If I Could Tell You
At the moment of enlightenment, everything is dropped—body, mind, all states, all things—everything. At that moment, there is no separate entity that can become enlightened, because there is no I that can experience it.
By opening the door to my life, it is my hope and mission to shed light on the hidden wounds of abuse, to end the stigma and shame associated with abuse, and to show survivors true courage, strength, inspiration, and determination.
Spirit does not belong to any particular religion because It has nothing to do with any religion and humanity cannot claim any exclusivity to It because we and our planet is nothing but a drop in the ocean of this endless Universe.
Sure all life's highways at some point must end, so I plan to ride it in style and plummet in a swan dive when the pavement runs out...And hopefully leave behind artistically that which may make other roads an even better ride...
Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below the radar.
Miracles... seem to me to rest not so much upon... healing power coming suddenly near us from afar but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that, for a moment, our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there around us always.
This is a bad story.”“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”“No, you should,” I say.“But—”“I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
Our experiences and our memories are within us, and the key is to be aware of the lens or the filter, to realise that we can also change the angle, especially when we are feeling agitated or stuck in life, that we can change the record.
How can I know for sure if it's my son speaking and not you?""You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think.
Games where someone wants to touch your body where your swimsuit covers or they ask you to touch their body where their swimsuit covers. Those body parts are private. No one is allowed to touch you there, or ask you to touch them there.
You know you are truly alive, when you care for every living thing. One day soon, it will be the norm to view others not as competition, but gifts to share this gorgeous planet with, and we will not be able to imagine the loss of but one.
...each of the painful "problems" in our lives contains valuable healing lessons. They teach us awareness and hopefully convince us to let go of our blind spots, prejudices, and tendencies to ignore our intuition and other growth lessons.
