Inspirational Quotes The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: If there is any reaction, both are transformed Carl Jung All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This outgrowing proves on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the horizon and through this broadening of outlook the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge. Carl Jung Page 1 of 9
In the beginning was the relationship Martin Buber All of Life is in the meeting Martin Buber In the coming world, they will not ask me: Why were you not Moses? They will ask me: Why were you not Zusya? Rabbi Zusya Hillel, our teacher, says: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And further along, he says: "And if not now, when?" When will this Now be? The Now that is now, this instant in which we are speaking, did not exist at any time since the world was created, and it will never exist again. Hillel also says: "And if I am only for myself, what am I? You are related to the whole. If you give yourself to the whole, you receive from the whole; you receive even more than you put into it. And so to your own Now, you can add something of your neighbor's Now. No other Now can make up for this Now, for every moment is concentrated in its particular light. Yitzhak Meir of Ger Page 2 of 9
The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water and earth. Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them. To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness to human ends, that they themselves become the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy. All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity. To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible. To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives. Declaration of the Four Sacred Things by Starhawk Page 3 of 9
As the renowned biologist Humberto Maturana once said: "Love, allowing the other to be a legitimate other, is the only emotion that expands intelligence. Nina Simon at low temperatures electrons come together and act like a coherent whole, flowing around obstacles without colliding with no resistance -and with very high energy. At higher temperatures they act independently with random movements and losing momentum. He said that, Dialogue is to humans like the condition that cools electrons to low temperature is to electrons. He believed that at present people create barriers between each other by their fragmentary thought. Each one operates separately. When these barriers have dissolved, then there arises one mind, where they are all one unit, but each person also retains his or her own individual awareness. That one mind will still exist when they are separate, and when they come together, it will be as if they hadn't separated... It's actually a single intelligence that works with people who are moving in relationship with one another... If you had a number of people who really pulled together and worked together in this way, it would be so remarkable. David Bohm Page 4 of 9
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the question now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Rainer Maria Rilke Page 5 of 9
Which Wolf Will Win? An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. "One is evil; he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego." "The other is good; he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth compassion, and faith." "This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every person, too." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather. "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed." A CHEROKEE STORY Page 6 of 9
Relationships come alive where there is an appreciative eye, where people are able to see the best in one another and create new visions together, with the desire for building not just new worlds but better worlds. David L. Cooperrider, Ph.D The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Marcel Proust We do not see things are they are, we see them as we are. Anais Nin, The Talmud If you want to build a ship, don t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. Antoine de Saint Exupery Page 7 of 9
Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it s the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead Let us sing a new song not with our lips, but with our lives St. Augustine Sometimes the deed creates the doer Nietzsche We don t have to stay in the same box we were shipped in Bill Turner Page 8 of 9
When we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. Wendell Berry The cooperative capacity of human systems that is necessary for organization growth and transformation is expanded when our relational spaces with each other are: focused on strengths; oriented toward a search for new understanding; inclusive of multiple stakeholder voices; always collaborative; and striving to be generative. Frank J. Barrett & Ronald E. Fry Page 9 of 9