“[Rich] has a theory: When we travel, we actually take three trips. There’s the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There’s the trip you’re actually on. And then, there’s the trip you remember. ‘The key is to try to keep all three as separate as possible,’ he says. ‘The key is to be present wherever you are right now.'”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 303)
“All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.”
Nisargadatta Maharaj, via Sunbeams (Page 138)
“It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest—by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.”
Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 250)
The War General Who Slept Peacefully Every Night—A Short Story About Conquering Moments
Excerpt: How was this General able to sleep peacefully knowing he was in the midst of war? It has everything to do with conquering moments…
Read More »The War General Who Slept Peacefully Every Night—A Short Story About Conquering Moments
“Eternity is not the hereafter. Eternity has nothing to do with time… This is it. If you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here’s the place to have the experience.”
Joseph Campbell, via Sunbeams (Page 114)
“How much better this world would be if more of us would cultivate the sacred in our daily lives. Our busyness is often our enemy, making it hard for us to slow down long enough to breathe in the ethers of the spiritual planes.”
Marianne Williamson, The Shadow Effect (Page 155)
“Contemplating a flower for three seconds can be a captivating solitary journey back to original geometry, which is always revitalizing.”
Henry Skolimowski, via Sunbeams (Page 112)
“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
John Muir, via Sunbeams (Page 99)
“I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement. It takes place every day.”
Albert Camus, The Fall, via Sunbeams (Page 95)
“Though no two centuries are very much like each other, some hours perhaps are; moments are; critical moments nearly always are. Emotions are the same. We are the same. The man, not the day, is the lasting phenomenon.”
Eudora Welty, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
Henry Miller, via Sunbeams (Page 78)
“The most beautiful music of all is the music of what happens.”
Irish Proverb, via Sunbeams (Page 70)
“Were you to live three thousand years, or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living, and no one ever lives a life other than the one they are losing. The longest and the shortest life, then, amount to the same, for the present moment lasts the same for all and is all anyone possesses. No one can lose either the past or the future, for how can someone be deprived of what’s not theirs?”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 85)