Towards Intimacy

     “The evolutionary imperative of our times demands we evolve from seeing the world ‘out there,’ separate and alien from us, to directly knowing our intimacy with all things. This is the shift from a dualistic consciousness to an awake awareness that recognizes nothing is apart from anything else, or from our deeper nature. 
     If we harm someone, we harm ourselves. If we destroy and pollute, we do likewise to ourselves. If we drop bombs on other countries, we rip our a piece of our own soul. And unlike in any other time in human history, if we only look out for ‘our own’ at the expense of everyone else, we will further precipitate the catastrophe of our collective demise.”
     Kittisaro & Thanissara. "Listening to the Heart. A Contemplative Journey to Engaged Buddhism." North Atlantic Books, 2014.  

“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.” Helen Schueman

     "In essence, mindfulness - being about attention, awareness, relationality, and caring - is a universal human capacity akin to our capacity for language acquisition. It is a way of being in wise and purposeful relationship with one's experience, both inwardly and outwardly, with oneself and with others. Thus there is an intrinsic social dimension to its cultivation as well. It usually involves cultivating familiarity and intimacy with aspects of everyday experience that we often take for granted. These include our experience of the present moment, our own bodies, our thoughts and emotions, and above all, our tacit and constraining assumptions and our highly conditioned habits of mind and behaviour, both as individuals and in society at large." Jon Kabat-Zinn