Dream: a number seven fell from a blue blue sky. The sun was shinning beautifully and I was wearing a light comfy cotton dress, feeling the white soft sand under my feet.

When do we talk to God?
Perhaps when the mind is confused and the chest so tight... but we see something and realize we have eyes. They are always there but we hardly notice it, only absorbing what it catches, not with the perception that it's here, blinking, keeping its moisture, bringing the world inside. All you see is you, an entity, quite separated from all else. And if you don't have eyes that can see, you have the sounds, if not that either, the smells and the touch. You have your skin, sending you out, bringing outside in, not separating, but reminding you there's no separation, there is only movement. Just listen, Maya, open up some space for the silence. What a mess.

Nick Brandt

Nick Brandt's photos.




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Breathe and feel the breeze, watch the leaves shaking outside and forget for a moment the world is falling apart (one world, a few worlds, millions of worlds?). Accept for a moment things won't be the way you would like them to be, not even on the lowest tolerable level, not always and maybe not ever for a sufficient amount of time. There must be a reason. One day you might understand, perhaps it will take 800 lives. It is never an isolated issue; millions of others go trough very similar situations moment by moment. There must be a meaning for all this. Treasure your tears, when they are true. Look for the truth on everything. Suffering seems to be an unquestionable truth. The rules are never clear. Some things just don't stop, no matter how much you try, no matter how far you reach. Just breathe and look outside for a moment, be here, now and keep asking God for you to accept the things you cannot change, courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Compassion alone is never sufficient.

OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA
Peter Dixon Woolley
Joyce Marjorie Evelyn Pereira da Fonseca
Proceed. Proceed beyond. Thoroughly proceed beyond. Until you reach enlightenment.

When there is all this love inside, it's all love and it's all about love. When I breathe: love. When I cry: love. All around and on everything. But it's not goodness, no. It's something beyond that, that includes everything and makes everything like nothing, so light and spontaneous. You breathe, and that's all.
Sometimes; compensation. And curiosity still rules.




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The Basket of Fresh Bread

"If you want to learn theory,
talk with theoreticians. That way is oral.

When you learn craft, practice it.
That learning comes through the hands.

If you want dervishhood, spiritual poverty
and emptiness, you must be friends with a teacher.

Talking about it, reading books, and doing practices
don't help. Soul receives from soul that knowing.

The mystery of absence
may be living in your pilgrim heart,
and yet the knowing of it may not yet be yours.

Wait for the illuminated openness,
as though your chest were filled with light,
as when God said,
Did we not expand you? (Qur'an 57:4)

Don't look for it outside yourself.
You are the source of milk. Don't milk others!

There is a fountain inside you.
Don't walk around with an empty bucket.

You have a channel into the ocean,
yet you ask for water from a little pool.

Beg for the love expansion. Meditate only
on THAT. The Qur'an says,
And he is with you. (57:4)

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,
yet you go door to door asking for crusts.

Knock on the inner door, no other.
Sloshing knee deep in fresh river water,
yet you keep asking for other people's waterbags.

Water is everywhere around you, but you see
only barriers that keep you from water.

The horse is beneath the riders thighs,
and still you ask, "Where is my horse?"
Right there,
under you!
Yes, this is a horse, but where's the horse?
Can't you see?
Yes, I can see, but whoever saw
such a horse?

Mad with thirst, you can't drink from the stream
running close by your face. You are like a pearl
on the deep bottom wondering inside the shell,
Where's the ocean?
Those mental questionings
from the barrier.
Stay bewildered inside God,
and only that.

When you are with everyone but me,
you're not with no one.
When you are with no one but me,
you're with everyone.
Instead of being so bound up with everyone,
be everyone.
When you become that many, you're nothing.
Empty."

Rumi - The Book of Love

Meu muro preferido, na Ilhabela.

Obrigada Christian.

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Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl is a book that makes me want to change all the questions and to finally be able to stop looking for a meaning. To face that the questions come from life itself, every moment, asking things of you. Well, then this famous quote "When you find the answers, the questions change..." would have to be rearranged as to say; the question is always the same; the answer, never.
It's comforting.




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foto de Leticia






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I've met an interesting person yesterday. When I asked about his activities, he said he takes people's anger and dissolves it in his chest. That's what being a "macho" is all about, he said. He said some other interesting things, but I had to go to the bathroom and the conversation terminated. To me he looked disturbed, as if living, day to day, was a constant battle within, like I also feel from time to time. I'm sorry to see people taking refugee on drugs and am ever sorrier when the person is talented. Let's have some courage to face it, to ask for help. How long do you have? Happy new year.





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You think back, things that happened in your life. Some you wish never ended, some you wish never happened. And it feels that now is just a brief something, quite unreal and uncertain, and the future seems big, sometimes bright, sometimes dark. Now is the only existing moment. No other day can be so real. And what are you? You are now, nothing else. You might think that you are now a consequence of yesterday and a preparation for tomorrow. But now, only now, you are free to be whatever you want. Maybe that is free will. Maybe that is what meditation is all about, to train your mind to be here and now, and with that, to gain freedom to the mind, to dissolve vicious connections. We are not our minds or our bodies but everything; we are the creators and receptors. Let’s make magic.




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I keep being called at my dreams, sometimes softly and close, sometimes a far away scream: ''MAYA!". I wake up sometimes answering "what?", sometimes just listening to my heart pound in my chest and listening to the deep silence of the night. What is that??





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Offerning Good

I wonder why us, humans, are so proud of our indignations. Why do we feel good about expressing how something makes us angry? Do we expect to change what we dislike in the world by spreading our anger? Can we change anything, profoundly, with this method?





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Quando estamos sozinhos, e paramos para escutar, sempre, sempre que abrimos espaço para Deus, alí Ele está, exatamente onde olharmos. É quando nos damos conta do que nos cerca. É quando a resistência se rompe entre nós e o mundo fora de nós. Se conseguimos sentir Deus, se conseguimos vê-Lo, aí então somos Deus e tudo é Deus.
De olhos fechados tudo é escuridão.




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plenitude

"A sede que temos de nos exteriorizar – a necessidade de satisfação por meio de uma ação exterior a nós e, portanto, contra o que a plenitude realmente implica – continua em nós. Todos a temos ; ela é a raiz de todas as nossas misérias. Porém ela nunca é satisfeita, a não ser que dê as costas a si mesma, volte-se para o interior – ao invés de para o exterior – e alcance a plenitude. Assim, o próprio cessar dessa ânsia por exteriorização é prova de que alcançamos a plenitude. Se a pessoa não alcançar a plenitude, essa ânsia nunca passa. Seu objetivo pode mudar, mas o fogo nunca é extinto, exceto por meio da proximidade do Sagrado que a plenitude implica. "

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The Brothers Karamazov

It's over, unfortunately. He could have written so much more I feel. It was as if he was tired, or maybe he would continue in a separate book but never had the chance for he died the year after Brothers Karamazov was finished. I really wish I knew what happened to Ivan...he filled me with even more questions but gave no answers. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was in prison in Siberia himself for several years, where he began to suffer from epilepsy. "His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a conservative and profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels." His brutal father was murdered by his serfs, strangled by vodka.




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“(...)But what's virtue then? You tell me, Alexei. We, for instance, may think that virtue is one thing while the Chinese may believe its something quite different. Isn't virtue something relative then? It's a pretty tricky question! I hope you won't laugh at me if I tell you that this question has prevented me from falling asleep for two nights in a row. You know, I'm surprised that some people can go trough life without even wondering about these things.(...)”
Fiodor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov





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Samskaras

"A idéia de que podemos melhorar a nossa vida, em profundidade, sem mudar nossa maneira de ser, é uma fantasia, somente passível de ocorrer a quem desconheça o que são os samskáras e vásanas. Mudar significa, basicamente, atingir aquele patamar superior de compreensão a partir do qual podemos discernir (viveka) quais são os vásanas negativos que, a partir do subconsciente, governam nosso comportamento. Cabe-nos transformá-los, desenvolvendo, em nosso íntimo, qualidades, hábitos e comportamentos opostos àqueles."

Anger

It took me some courage to get back to Brothers Karamazov, for I have a copy in my computer only. Well, screen reading here I go. I’m almost half way trough and loving Dostoyevsky for every word, specially the discussions on religion. Makes me feel less lonely in all my questioning...so much questioning. It is clear that anger brings no solutions, on the contrary. However, knowing does not prevent me from feeling it. What do I do with it? Is there a wise way to use it? Right now I believe God is everywhere I look, but having a tremendous hard time accepting His entire world and feeling Him. Think, think, think! Dalai Lama says. But only by thinking we wont be able to understand. The practice seems the only way for now. I want to love man kind, I want to love my neighbors as Ivan Karamazov says in the book, but, as him, I find very, very hard to do so. No, this time the mind won't be up for the job. As for now I have the option of trusting without understanding, following the path, concentrating my mind and following the doctrine, or to be always angry or sad for everything I see, within and without, that breaks my heart so badly.
God help us.




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OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA
Peter Dixon Woolley
Joyce Marjorie Evelyn Pereira da Fonseca

A cada minuto uma força que acaba e que nao existe. De onde tiramos essa força, a beleza, leveza…? Tem isso, de coisas que somem, e voltam, dependentes umas das outras…mas aonde é o começo? Some things have to be said the way they come and some thoughts sound as the words I have heard when I was born. I have questions. Muitas. Melhor sonhar um pouco, dormindo. Os sonhos de acordada me levam a lugares que provavelmente só existem aqui dentro, fazem com que me sinta sozinha e isso nao existe. Dreams, sweet ou sour, speak. I should just listen and be quiet.




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Dostoyevsky

"Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man."
Fiodor Dostoyevsky when he was 18 years old.






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"... E de novo acredito que nada do que é importante se perde verdadeiramente.
Apenas nos iludimos, julgando ser donos das coisas,
dos instantes e dos outros. Comigo caminham todos os mortos que amei, todos os amigos que se afastaram, todos os dias felizes que se apagaram. Não perdi nada, apenas a ilusão de que tudo podia ser meu para sempre."
Sousa Tavares

Tom Spanbauer

"A vida é um sonho. No fim das contas,

é um caso que contamos a nós mesmos.

As coisas são sonhos, apenas sonhos

quando não estão diante de nossos olhos.

O que está a nossa frente agora,

O que podemos alcançar e tocar,

acabará se tornando um sonho.

O que evita que flutuemos ao sabor do vento

são as histórias que contamos sobre tudo isso.

Elas nos dão um nome e nos colocam num lugar;

permitem que nos mantenhamos em contato."

Tom Spanbauer - The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon

Textiles

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My favorite Window in Öland

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White Carpet

The wonderful feeling of finishing something you just loved doing...















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Float

to feel less on the ground
to be above, just a few inches
but not to touch it
not to feel it's power
to forget.

Subconcious

not to feel the difference
between when drunk or sober
not to feel sober when drunk
but to be drunk when sober
to be full of everything I am
I'm more awake when I dream
watching...

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