Inspiration

Rules For Being Human  

#1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

#2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.

#3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately "works".

#4. A lesson is repeated until it is learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. Then you can go on to the next lesson.

#5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

#6. "There" is no better than "here". When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that again, looks better that "here".

#7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate aobut yourself.

#8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need; what you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

#9. The answers lie inside you. The answers to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.

The Invitation 

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

© Mountaindreaming, from the book The Invitation published by HarperSanFrancisco, 1999 All rights reserved
 

The following poem was written by the poet after his wife died. It expresses his transcendent experience of God and the Angels.

I Am There
By James Dillet Freeman

   Do you need Me?
   I am there.
   You cannot see Me, yet I am the light you see by.
   You cannot hear Me, yet I speak through your voice.
   You cannot feel Me, yet I am the power at work in your hands.
   I am at work, though you do not understand My ways.
   I am at work, though you do not recognize My works.
   I am not strange visions. I am not mysteries.
   Only in absolute stillness, beyond self, can you know Me as I am,
          and then but as a feeling and a faith.
   Yet I am there. Yet I hear. Yet I answer.
   When you need Me, I am there.
   Even if you deny Me, I am there.
   Even when you feel most alone, I am there.