Hope, Faith, Love, Belief, Beauty: The journey of one artist to be seen and heard and read

This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor… Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of distress and anxiety; If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without any pain.

From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me. There is a great secret in this for anyone who can grasp it. Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Oh soul, you worry too much. You have seen your own strength.

You have seen your own beauty. You have seen your golden wings. Of anything less, why do you worry? You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul. Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom. Joy for he who has escaped from this world of perfumes and color! For beyond these colors and these perfumes, these are other colors in the heart and the soul.

Be grateful for your life, every detail of it, and your face will come to shine like a sun, and everyone who sees it will be made glad and peaceful. The illuminated life can happen now, in the moments left. Die to your ego, and become a true human being. Travelers, it is late. During these brief days that you have strength , be quick and spare no effort of your wings.

If destiny comes to help you, love will come to meet you. Listen to the unstruck sounds, and what sifts through that music. Be a helpful friend, and you will become a green tree with always new fruit, always deeper journeys into love. Stay with friends who support you in these. Talk with them about sacred texts, and how you are doing, and how they are doing, and keep your practices together. A warm, rainy day-this is how it feels when friends get together. Friend refreshes friend then, as flowers do each others, in a spring rain.

Friendship of the wise is good; a wise enemy is better than a foolish friend. The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy. All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire. This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief. Because God sends hope in the most desperate moments. 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. Sorrow… It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

Join the community of saints and know the delight of your own soul. Enter the ruins of your heart and learn the meaning of humility. Grief can be the garden of compassion. The wound is the place where the light enters you. Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises. But listen to me.

For one moment quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. Make peace with the universe. Take joy in it. Do good to the people for the sake of God or for the peace of your own soul that you may always see what is pure and save your heart from the darkness of hate. If you could get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets would open to you.

The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your perception. It will turn to gold. Resurrection will be now. Every moment, a new beauty. A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you.

Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. A wealth you cannot imagine flows through you.

Do not consider what strangers say. Be secluded in your secret heart-house, that bowl of silence. Stop, open up, surrender the beloved blind silence. When all your desires are distilled; You will cast just two votes — to love more, and be happy. Even if all the doors are closed, a secret path will be there for you that no one knows. It is easy to thank after obtaining what you want, thank before having what you want. My dear heart, never think you are better than others.

Listen to their sorrows with compassion. Emptiness brings peace to your loving. In this world of trickery, emptiness is what your soul wants. There is one way of breathing that is shameful and constricted.

Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you. On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty. Today is such a day. The sky will bow down to your beauty, if you do. Be like the sun for grace and mercy.

Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear. Daylight, full of small dancing particles and the one great turning, our souls are dancing with you, without feet, they dance. Can you see them when I whisper in your ear? You have no need to travel anywhere — journey within yourself.

Enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendor of your own light. If you wish to shine like day, burn up the night of self-existence. Dissolve in the Being who is everything. Your heart is the size of an ocean. You simply must do things. That is my responsibility; that is my burden. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing.

Top 3 Humanity Quotes With Images

To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea. Life is about creating yourself. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said.

The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing. Unfold your own myth. It is the opposite—getting something down. Art is knowing which ones to keep. If you have one, take off. While they are deciding, make even more art. Being willing is not enough; we must do. To see them, you need only look at the work clearly — without judgment, without need or fear, without wishes or hopes.

Ask your work what it needs, not what you need. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it.

Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is life, fight for it. Just create to create. Make stuff to inspire others to make something too. Create to learn a bit more about yourself. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in — forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, or evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. I had rejection slips before I sold a story. To fail to try is to suffer the loss of what might have been. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself. Keep believing, keep pretending. Some succeed because they are determined.

You do some stuff. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else.

The trick is the doing something else. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. Making your unknown known is the important thing. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this.

We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. If you want to change the world , change yourself. There are three lessons I would write, — Three words — as with a burning pen, In tracings of eternal light Upon the hearts of men. Though clouds environ now, And gladness hides her face in scorn, Put thou the shadow from thy brow, — No night but hath its morn.

Where'er thy bark is driven, — The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth, — Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven, The habitants of earth. Not love alone for one, But men, as man, thy brothers call; And scatter, like the circling sun, Thy charities on all. Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, — Hope, Faith, and Love, — and thou shalt find Strength when life's surges rudest roll, Light when thou else wert blind. Far above the golden clouds, the darkness vibrates. The earth is blue. And everything about it is a love song.

Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free , Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be. Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne?

Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain; Earth is not spoilt for a single shower; But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn. I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew, You had grown strong as the sun or the sea. But none shall triumph a whole life through: For death is one, and the fates are three. At the door of life, by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death; Death could not sever my soul and you, As these have severed your soul from me.

You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you, Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer. But will it not one day in heaven repent you? Will they solace you wholly, the days that were? Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss, Meet mine, and see where the great love is, And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you; The gate is strait; I shall not be there. The pulse of war and passion of wonder, The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine, The stars that sing and the loves that thunder, The music burning at heart like wine, An armed archangel whose hands raise up All senses mixed in the spirit's cup Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder — These things are over, and no more mine.

These were a part of the playing I heard Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife; Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, Balm of the wound and heft of the knife. Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep Than overwatching of eyes that weep, Now time has done with his one sweet word, The wine and leaven of lovely life.

Sweet is true love though given in vain , in vain; And sweet is death who puts an end to pain: I know not which is sweeter, no, not I. Love, art thou sweet? Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me. O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die. Here her hand Grasped, made her vail her eyes: O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls, Meek maidens, from the voices crying 'shame.

I must not scorn myself: Let no one dream but that he loves me still.