Morning Trip (210)

“The ability to be spontaneous is granted when we touch something deeply important: a moment of clarity in which we see an eternal truth. We give our truest reactions and utterances when we stand at the moment in question, all previously prepared words and actions suddenly voided in the face of the moment. A spontaneous response results, if only we can trust it. Spontaneity requires us to let go of fear and of continual self observation, to let pass the deeper truths that we have perceived or that have touched a cord in our soul.

Spontaneity is a great gift, and it grows stronger in us the more we attend to the present moment rather than living forever in the past or in the future: both memory and expectation can get in its way and expunge the up flowing revelation. Spontaneity occurs when all our senses are attuned to the present moment, when we see through the veil that usually separates us from the other-world and see its bridging connections coming through to our side of reality.

Spontaneity lifts the ordinary dull rote of existence into life of another order; it is a sparkling touch of revelation that responds to whatever is true, beautiful, and harmonious, giving energy to the living moment.

Meditate upon the dull and unyielding areas of your life. Now temporarily remove the rules, limits, and proscriptions that surround these areas. Allow truthful realizations about the connection between your controlling or limiting behavior and the flow of your life to spontaneously arise, even though these realizations might initially seem frivolous or irrelevant.”
–unknown

Morning Trip (209)

“Awareness, or the practice of being in communion with this moment and my present environment, is the key.”
–Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.

Morning Trip (208)

“The Heart Remembers Everything It Loved
Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed,
cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub
of watery fingers along its edge.

The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe,
remembers being a veil over the face of the sun,
gathering itself together for the fall.

The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under
its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down
the sand under the beaks of savage birds.

The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years
of drought, the floods, the way things came
walking slowly towards it long ago.

And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches
where it was broken. The feet remember the dance,
and the arms remember lifting up the child.

The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.”
– Joyce Sutphen

Morning Trip (207)

“Doubt is a state of the suspension of both belief and disbelief: many people assume that thinking has only two positions, positive and negative, and if you doubt something you are disputing its validity or positing the contradictory position. This is disputation, not doubt. Doubt per se questions the form or content of what has been asserted but it itself is a freeform state of wondering what the general parameters of the issue are and how it most rationally ought to be framed.”
–Kenneth Smith

Morning Trip (206)

“Between where you are now and where you’d like to be there’s a sort of barrier, or a chasm, and sometimes it’s a good idea to imagine that you’re already at the other side of that chasm, so that you can start on the unknown side.”
–David Bohm