Quotes from Sunbeams

Henry David Thoreau Quote on Keeping Your Spirit Up By Dealing With Brute Nature

“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snow in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”
Henry David Thoreau, Sunbeams (Page 8)

Beyond the Quote (Day 377)

For when you are warm, satiated, and fresh again—you can truly be thankful. Hard to be truly thankful for warmth until you’ve felt cold. Hard to appreciate the satisfaction of a full stomach if your stomach never empties. Hard to understand the blessing of feeling fresh when sleeping in and lack of responsibility are your everyday norms. If you would like to keep your spirits up, it helps to remind your spirit of what’s below.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
A Course In Miracles, Sunbeams (Page 7)

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Sunbeams (Page 7)

“Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest, which co-mingle their roots in the darkness underground.”
William James, Sunbeams (Page 5)

“You try being alone, without any form of distraction, and you will see how quickly you want to get away from yourself and forget what you are. That is why this enormous structure of professional amusement, of automated distraction, is so prominent a part of what we call civilization. If you observe, you will see that people the world over are becoming more and more distracted, increasingly sophisticated and worldly. The multiplication of pleasures, the innumerable books that are being published, the newspaper pages filled with sporting events—surely, all these indicate that we constantly want to be amused. Because we are inwardly empty, dull, mediocre, we use our relationships and our social reforms as a means of escaping from ourselves. I wonder if you have noticed how lonely most people are? And to escape from loneliness we run to temples, churches, or mosques, we dress up and attend social functions, we watch television, listen to the radio, read, and so on… If you inquire a little into boredom you will find that the cause of it is loneliness. It is in order to escape from loneliness that we want to be together, we want to be entertained, to have distractions of every kind: gurus, religious ceremonies, prayers, or the latest novel. Being inwardly lonely we become mere spectators in life; and we can be the players only when we understand loneliness and go beyond it… because beyond it lies the real treasure.”
J. Krishnamurti, Think On These Things, via Sunbeams (Page 3)

Chögyam Trungpa Quote on Managing Desire and Being Able To Afford To Relax

“When there is no desire to satisfy yourself, there is no aggression or speed… Because there is no rush to achieve, you can afford to relax. Because you can afford to relax, you can afford to keep company with yourself, you can afford to make love with yourself, to be friends with yourself.”
Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, via Sunbeams (Page 3)

Beyond the Quote (Day 372)

If you feel like you can’t afford to relax, you should reevaluate what it is exactly that you’re trying to afford. Hustle culture has us working from the minute we get up until the minute we go to bed—and leaves many of us feeling like we STILL didn’t do enough. We stress about the things we didn’t finish, the things we have yet to start, and how we’re going to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be—so that we can finally… relax.

“Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.”
Desiderius Erasmus, Sunbeams (Page 1)