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164e665
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One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people.
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understanding
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John O'Donohue |
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06dfe32
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Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of your affection. You lose the attraction and the magic. Your sense of each other darkens and your presence is sore. If you can come through this time, it can purify with your love, and falsity and need will fall away. It will bring you onto new ground where affection can grow again.
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love
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John O'Donohue |
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266c644
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If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.
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love
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John O'Donohue |
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f7787ec
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There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering.
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suffering
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John O'Donohue |
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e3d843c
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Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.
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soul
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John O'Donohue |
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23c0c8b
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Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the distance toward your life. Their arrival seemed so accidental and contingent. Now your life is unimaginable without them. Similarly, your identity and vision are composed of a certain constellation of ideas and feelings that surfaced from the depths of the distance within you. To lose these now would be to lose yourself.
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love
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John O'Donohue |
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a8707a8
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For Equilibrium, a Blessing
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inspirational
equilibrium
prayers
blessings
peace
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John O'Donohue |
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d42bdfa
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For Equilibrium, a Blessing: Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore, May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul. As the wind loves to call things to dance, May your gravity by lightened by grace. Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth, May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect. As water takes whatever shape it is in, So free may you be about who you become. As silence smiles on the other side of what's sa..
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inspirational
equilibrium
prayers
peace
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John O'Donohue |
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edbb27a
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No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest.
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perception
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John O'Donohue |
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f49fd35
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Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.
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potential
soul
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John O'Donohue |
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9fb7c79
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Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition.
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love
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John O'Donohue |
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When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you. Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, now there is courage; where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirt..
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John O'Donohue |
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Beauty is the illumination of your soul.
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soul
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John O'Donohue |
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e82aea1
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Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul.
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understanding
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John O'Donohue |
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5f02bf2
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We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.
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John O'Donohue |
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If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortions; your own light and beauty will become blurred, awkward, and ugly. Your sense of inner beauty has to remain a very private thing.
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John O'Donohue |
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253fdfa
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We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home.
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eternity
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John O'Donohue |
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dc54184
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Beannacht / Blessin
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inspirational
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John O'Donohue |
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468c138
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Beannacht / Blessing On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And when your eyes freeze behind the grey window and the ghost of loss gets in to you, may a flock of colours, indigo, red, green, and azure blue come to awaken in you a meadow of delight. When the canvas frays in the currach of thought and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a pat..
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John O'Donohue |
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499b7ea
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The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.
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identity
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John O'Donohue |
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26c87a4
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Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness. Such friendship is creative and critical; it is willing to negotiate awkward and uneven territories of contradiction and woundedness.
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John O'Donohue |
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It could be a meeting on the street, or a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is a flash of recognition and the embers of kinship glow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing.
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John O'Donohue |
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e81e8aa
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All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow. Possibility is the secret heart of time.
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possibility
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John O'Donohue |
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b4763d6
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If you try to avoid or remove the awkward quality, it will pursue you. The only effective way to still its unease is to transfigure it, to let it become something creative and positive that contributes to who you are. Nietzche said that one of the best days in his life was the day when he rebaptized all his negative qualities as his best qualities. Rather than banishing what is at first glimpse unwelcome, you bring it home to unity with you..
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John O'Donohue |
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a4911c4
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One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own.
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John O'Donohue |
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f5e4eca
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The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self. When you learn to love and let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered.
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John O'Donohue |
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beb9cbe
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Inspiration is always a surprising visitor.
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John O'Donohue |
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231a0c7
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It is lovely to meet an old person whose face is deeply lined, a face that has been deeply inhabited, to look in the eyes and find light there.
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life
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John O'Donohue |
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7515b72
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You have traveled too fast over false ground; Now your soul has come to take you back. Take refuge in your senses, open up To all the small miracles you rushed through. Become inclined to watch the way of rain When it falls slow and free. Imitate the habit of twilight, Taking time to open the well of color That fostered the brightness of day.
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John O'Donohue |
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7a3303a
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Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved.
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inspirational-quotes
love
intimacy
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John O'Donohue |
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fe20b08
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You are like nobody since I love you" -Pablo Neruda This art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person. Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person's individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin; it can decipher identity and destiny"
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John O'Donohue |
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b0a69a3
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Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.
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integrity
originality
awareness
creativity
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John O'Donohue |
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3ac7390
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Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.
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John O'Donohue |
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84aa163
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You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthfulness in you that no one will be able to take away from you.
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John O'Donohue |
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08e8e87
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May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.
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John O'Donohue |
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3a7f3ca
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All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and contours. You feel the inspiration of its possibilities and the wonder of its mysteries.
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John O'Donohue |
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aa911f4
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For Someone Awakening To The Trauma of His or Her Past: For everything under the sun there is a time. This is the season of your awkward harvesting, When the pain takes you where you would rather not go, Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place You had forgotten you knew from the inside out; And a time when that bitter tree was planted That has grown always invisibly beside you And whose branches your awakened hands Now long to di..
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memories
past-trauma
trauma
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John O'Donohue |
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90f70b1
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When time is reduced to linear progress, it is emptied of presence.
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John O'Donohue |
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Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it anymore. An interesting question to ask yourself at night is, What did I really see this day?
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John O'Donohue |
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c68128b
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Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day the blueprint of your life would begin to glow on earth, illuminating all the faces and voices that would arrive to invite your soul to growth. Praised be your father and mother, who loved you before you were, and trusted to call you here with no idea who you would be. Blessed be those who have loved you into becoming who you were meant to be, blessed be those who have crossed your life ..
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John O'Donohue |
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876d5c1
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May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.
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John O'Donohue |
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ecefe27
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What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation. When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beaut..
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nature
reverence
patience
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John O'Donohue |
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b27628a
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Human skin is porous; the world flows through you. Your senses are large pores that let the world in. By being attuned to the wisdom of your senses, you will never become an exile in your own life, an outsider lost in an external spiritual place that your will and intellect, have constructed.
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John O'Donohue |
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08596e2
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Nature is the direct expression of the divine imagination.
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John O'Donohue |