Moonlight

Moonlight is sculpture.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Reflections

The perceiver is reflected in what is perceived.
Amrit Desai

Laughter

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.

Mary Oliver

Now I Can See the Moon

Barn’s burnt down —
Now I can see the moon.
Masahide (17th-century Japanese poet)

I discovered a great site where you can make your own books. It's not a self-publishing company; it's a company that lets you use their software to create and maintain ownership over your own projects. The photo above is on the cover of my book I've titled Receive Inspiration. In it I have my photographs matched with quotes, just like on this blog. I ordered a couple in hardback with a dust jacket and the quality is amazing.

Anyway, have fun making your own books. And here is the link where you can find mine. If you click on the cover, you will be able to preview the first fifteen pages. Here is the link.
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/category/Self-Improvement

Inner Peace

You may have heard of Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained brain scientist. She became especially well known when her lecture about the stroke she suffered in 1996 was posted on the internet. I just finished reading her amazing account in her book, My Stroke of Insight. What particularly struck me was how she described the feeling of deep inner peace as being located in the neurological circuitry of the right brain.

I have been writing about receptivity – receiving – as being an experience of the present rather than the suffering past or fantasy future, a bonded pair that operates as a team.

Dr. Taylor describes the feeling of peace as being in the present moment rather than something we bring from the past or project into the future and as coming from an actual location in the brain.

I love this quote from her, “Step one to experiencing inner peace is the willingness to be present in the right here, right now.” If you want to experience peace, she says, “Step to the right,” meaning the right hemisphere of your brain.

There are so many ways to describe, to explain, to illustrate the freedom of peace. Check out My Stoke of Insight for a very understandable description for the layperson about how the brain “speaks” and how you can talk to your brain.

Gratitude

For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.

Dag Hammarskjold

Slow Down

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going to fast -- you also miss the sense of where you are going and why. Eddie Cantor

Attraction

You are a living magnet.

What you attract into your life is in harmony with your dominant thoughts.

Brian Tracy

A New Day

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear,
unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

Barack Obama on January 20, 2009

Happy New Year!

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Jim Rohn

Interesting quote. I saw it somewhere recently and thought about the motto I created when I moved to Arizona almost two years ago. I used this motto Match Me or Raise Me as a reminder to be mindful about who I chose to spend my time with. Match Me or Raise Me just means meet me where I am or inspire me by who you are or by your accomplishments to reach higher, to do better, to excel.

Sometimes we don't fully receive the effect that people have on us or realize the consequences of time spent with those who detract in some way instead of add to our lives.

When I began this blog last January, my first entries were mostly narrative as I wrote about various topics about receiving. (You can look back by going to the menu of months on the right). Over time I added poems and quotes. I was thinking about this blog today and what I wanted to write on this first day of the new year.

In my years of exploring different facets of and deepening my understanding of receiving, I have come to understand that when I am fully present (truly a receptive state), I make better choices. And those choices reflect in how and with whom I spend my time.

As I reflect back on the last year and make plans for the year ahead, I am very happy with my top five people! I hope you are, too.

New Year's resolutions

May my feet rest firmly on the ground
May my head touch the sky
May I see clearly
May I have the capacity to listen
May I be free to touch
May my words be true
May my heart and mind be open
May my hands be empty to fill the need
May my arms be open to others
May my gifts be revealed to me
So that I may return that which has been given.

The Terma Collective

Love

Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean,
with no beginning or end.
Rumi

Success

Just as the tumultuous chaos of a thunderstorm brings a nurturing rain that allows life to flourish, so too in human affairs times of advancement are preceded by times of disorder.
Success comes to those who can weather the storm.
The I Ching

Cheerfulness

Resistance drains energy
Acceptance saves energy
Cheerfulness sustains energy
Amrit Desai

For more Amrit Desai quotes go to www.yogisays.com and click on the little yogi.

Letting Go

If you let it go,

it will let you go.

Amrit Desai

The Night Sky

You'll have to click on the photo to read the quote.

The recent Moon, Venus, Jupiter conjunction is shown here. Actually, I took this photograph in the evening of December 1st when the Moon had passed Venus and Jupiter.

Mystery

Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. Albert Einstein

Time

Time on my side, a stowaway in the slipstream...

Jackson Browne

I have a dream

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quiet

Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world. Hans Margolius

Hummingbird

From scarlet to powdered gold,

to blazing yellow,to the rare

ashen emerald,

to the orange and black velvet

of your shimmering corselet,

out to the tip

that like

an amber thorn

begins you,

small, superlative being,

you are a miracle,

and you blaze

From Ode to the Hummingbird

Pablo Neruda

Hummingbirds are everywhere here. I see them flitting outside among the butterflies all day long out in the patio garden. I took this photo though at the Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, and now that I am learning how to use Photoshop from Kristina, I am having fun working with my photographs. Check out her photos. She is a great teacher and an amazing photographer. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kristinabrendel/

Stillness

Wherever you go in the midst of movement and activity, carry your stillness within you. Then the chaotic movement around you will never overshadow your access to the reservoir of creativity, the field of pure potentiality. Deepak Chopra

Sedona

You cannot manifest that which you cannot conceive.
Dattatreya Siva Baba

I am finally learning something about photoshop. This is one of my first attempts.

The Journey

It took me years to see

That I was but the river’s bend

The current flowing over me.
Bob Smith

I am still learning that...

Grasping brings less; letting go brings more.

Parker Palmer

Sky words

Words and clouds from Carefree, Arizona

Patience

A waiting person is a patient person.

The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the fullest in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.
Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there.
Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing within her.

from Watch for the Light

Spacious Skies

The desert sometimes issues its own invitation. ‘Come! Enter into my silence, my uncluttered solitude, my stark beauty, and I will show you the depths of your own soul you never knew you had. Elizabeth J. Canham

Silence

Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. Pico Iyer

Endings and Beginings

I created a collage, or vision board as they are called these days. This is a photo of a section of it. Below is another. (BTW you can click on photos to see larger image). I have been so interested in the visual arts these days and I just signed up for a workshop at a multi-media art conference that takes place in Phoenix each year called Art Unraveled. Here's the link: www.artunraveled.com

Summer in the east

These are a few photos from my recent trip east and below them is one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets. Enjoy!

The Summer Day

Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver