Poems and Quotes

"There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading to the same place, so it doesn’t matter which path you take. The only person wasting time is the one who runs around the mountain, telling everyone that his or her path is wrong." — Hindu proverb

"You’re walking the labyrinth of life. Yes, you’re meant to move forward, but almost never in a straight line. Yes, there’s an element of achievement, of beginning and ending, but those are minor compared to the element of being here now. In the moments you stop trying to conquer the labyrinth of life and simply inhabit it, you’ll realize it was designed to hold you safe as you explore what feels dangerous. You’ll see that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, meandering along a crooked path that is meant to lead you not onward, but inward." ~Martha Beck

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” 

- Paulo Coelho

“May the sun bring you new energy every day.

May the moon softly restore you by night.

May the rain wash away your worries.

May the breeze blow new strength into your being.

May you walk gently through the world

and know its beauty all the days of your life.”

Apache prayer

"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Only by its own roots does a tree stand tall and only by its own light does the sun shine brightly and bring life to our world. So it is with you - only when you're trusting, loving and rooted in your true Self will the life that is your highest potential begin to manifest. Only when you are walking on the path of your highest potential will you ever be able to shine brightly and bring light to the darkness in others."

- Anon

“Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree, in the midst of them all.”

- Buddha

“Everything you take for granted is a blessing. Everything you fear is a friend in disguise. Everything you want is a part of you. Everything you hate you hate about yourself. Everything you own does not define you. Everything you feel is the only Truth there is to know.

Everything you wish for is already on its way to you. Everything you think creates your life. Everything you seek for you will find. Everything you resist will stick around.

Everything you let go of stays if it’s supposed to. Everything you need is right where you are.

Every time you bless another you bless yourself. Every time you blame another you lose your power. Every time you think you can, you can. Every time you fall you must get up and try again. Every time you cry you’re one tear closer to joy. Every time you ask for forgiveness, all you have to do is forgive yourself.

Everyone you see is your reflection. Everyone you know mirrors you. Everyone wants to be happy. Everyone wants to live in joy. Everyone seeks a higher purpose. Everyone breathes the same breath. Everyone needs love to survive. Everyone has a purpose to fulfill.

Everyone’s the same as everyone else. We just get caught up in labels, names, skin color and religion. Everyone’s the same as everyone else. No one wants to feel the pain. Everyone’s the same as everyone else. Everyone is dying for love to remain.”


- Jackson Kiddard





“Whatever the present moment contains, accept is as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.” 
- Eckhart Tolle

“All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.”

- Wayne Dyer

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You're playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

- Marianne Williamson

"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake."

- Francis Bacon, Sr.

"Successful relationships are built upon the foundation of bringing committed love to the table every day, communicating your feelings, receiving your partner's feelings and setting healthy boundaries to maintain a sense of independence within the relationship. This allows for love to be given and received, proper adjustments to be made if the line of communication gets fuzzy and still gives each of you the freedom to be yourself and bring forth your unique creative expression.

This combination will manifest the strongest and healthiest relationships in your life.

And remember, the purpose of relationships is to be happy, to learn and to CO-create a life together."

- Jackson Kiddard

"What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it - would you be likely to give them another? Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have."

- Ralph Marston

"If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself."

- Barbara De Angelis

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more." 

- Erica Jong, is an American author and teacher. 

The fastest way to bring more wonderful examples of abundance into your personal experience is to take constant notice of the wonderful things that are already there." 

- Esther Hicks, best-selling author and motivational speaker. 

"Happiness is a Butterfly which, when pursued is just beyond your grasp... but if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." 

- Nathaniel Hawthorne, novelist.

"You are not your mind, your emotions or the circumstances of your life. You are the peaceful observer of your mind and emotions that allows life circumstances to pass through and around you for your evolution to finally come to a place of total acceptance of all that is. Only the peaceful observer remains after all else fades away. Only the peaceful observer in total acceptance of what is can take action towards effectively changing anything. You are only this peaceful observer - everything else is as fleeting as the blink of an eye, choose happiness and don't buy into it." 

- Jackson Kiddard, author & polymath. 

"If you want to succeed in your life, remember this phrase. The past does not equal The future. Because you failed yesterday; or all day today, or a moment ago, or for the last six months; the last 16 years, or the last fifty years of life doesn't mean anything...All that matters is what are you going to do, Right Now." 

- Anthony Robbins, American self-help writer and professional speaker



"This moment is all that is guaranteed - use it to express the depth of your love and to wipe your slate clean of any resentment you are holding on to. Life is too precious to carry the weight of the past with you! Let it go and start to grow!" 

- Jackson Kiddard

"It's easy to get lost in endless speculation. So today, release the need to know why things happen as they do. Instead, ask for the insight to recognize what you're meant to learn." 

- Caroline Myss

Morning Poem by Mary Oliver
from Dream Work (1986) 

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray

If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, ''Here comes number seventy-one!'' 

- Richard M. DeVos, is the billionaire owner of the Orlando Magic.



True Love is one of the rarest jewels of life, treasure it with all your heart. When you find someone who loves you just as you are, is steadfast during moments of stress, willing to grow with you and allows you to feel however you choose to feel in any moment - there is nothing more you will ever find in a person. You've found True Love when you feel fear; fear of vulnerability, fear of abandonment and fear of letting go of your own stubborn egoic patterns that keep the real you separate and safe from the other. Trust in love and go towards your fear, taking this leap of faith in every moment is the journey Love requires for its sweet reward.

- Jackson Kiddard, author & polymath. 

Magical hearts appear on the ceiling.. how lovely

Anything that annoys you is for teaching you patience.
Anyone who abandons you is for teaching you how to stand up on your own two feet.
Anything that angers you is for teaching you forgiveness and compassion.
Anything that has power over you is for teaching you how to take your power back.
Anything you hate is for teaching you unconditional love.
Anything you fear is for teaching you courage to overcome your fear.
Anything you can’t control is for teaching you how to let go and trust the Universe.”

- Jackson Kiddard

"I know of no other way to perfection but love."
— St. Therese Of Lisieux

****************************************

“I prayed for change, so I changed my mind.
I prayed for guidance and learned to trust myself.
I prayed for happiness and realized I am not my ego.
I prayed for peace and learned to accept others unconditionally.
I prayed for abundance and realized my doubt kept it out.
I prayed for wealth and realized it is my health.
I prayed for a miracle and realized I am the miracle.
I prayed for a soul mate and realized I am the One.
I prayed for love and realized it’s always knocking, but I have to let it in.”

- Jackson Kiddard, author & polymath.

"Come to the edge", he said.
They said, "We are afraid"
"Come to the edge", he said
They came.  He pushed them off and they flew.

- Apollinaire

Live each season as it passes, drink the drink, taste the fruit and resign yourself to the influences of each.
~ Henry David Thoreau

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
~ Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

A heart on my path

Today is about acknowledging where you are right now ~ whether that be avoiding, digging in or just being.  Be with it ~ all of it.  Right here. Right now.

- Stephanie Renee

Photo taken on "a dare" -
 to capture something that caught my eye at that moment

"Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows."

— John Milton

"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

 - Winne the Pooh

"In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can."
— Barbara Kingsolver (The Bean Trees)

"The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."

 

- Rumi

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli," you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing

that also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,

but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.

Teach men once again to be gardeners in peace;

all nature around us is ours

but on lease

Hilary Philip Chadwyck Healey

Love anything and your heart will be wrung out and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.  Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.  It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  To love is to be vulnerable.

C.S. Lewis

If I know a song of Africa - of the giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?

Karen von Blixen

Sudden Light

I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,--

How long ago I may not know:

But just when at that swallow’s soar

Your neck turn’d so,

Some veil did fall, -- I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?

And shall not thus time’s eddying flight

Still with our lives our love restore

In death’s despite,

And day and night yield one delight once more?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

May 1828 –April 1882

Resolved, that I will take each precious minute, and relish all the joy within it.

Kathleen Price

Life, even in the hardest times, is full of moments to savor.  They will not come this way again, not in this way.

Paula Rinehart

Love cannot survive if you give it scraps of yourself, sraps of your time, scraps of your thoughts.

Mary O'Hara