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September 2010 Design Team Gallery
Journaling Prompts
Enlightenment, Faith & Spirit: Our world is filled with myriad ways to access the life of the spirit. Which ways do you choose, in action and deed, to be connected to your source? Do you follow the route that your family laid out for you or have your charted your own course? What, if anything, is unenlightened about your religious or spiritual tradition? How do you make peace, or struggle with this? Why did you make the choice you did? Are you still struggling with faith and spirituality? What traditions/symbols and beliefs from other cultures and faiths speak to you? Do you choose not to be spiritually connected? Why?
Mindfulness & Self-Awareness: Psychologists refer to the ability to think about your thoughts and evaluate them as ‘meta-cognition’ or, more broadly as ‘mindfulness.’ How introspective are you? Are you able to step outside yourself and look at your own process, or do you often find yourself getting caught up in the moment, reactive, rather than observing? What steps do you take, or could you take, to slow down and really see your choices, your actions and your underlying beliefs?
Open-Minded: A teacher of mine once said that “you should be open minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out.” How open minded are you? Have you always been a ‘live and let live’ kind of person, or have you evolved in that way over the years? Are there specific areas on your life where you are more closed to new ideas? Where do you take a particularly enlightened approach? Do you want to change those things about yourself, or are you content? Has someone in your past been an influence on how open or closed you are – either by your following their example, or purposely moving away from it?
Illuminate the Darkness: What life experiences and growth have allowed you to shine a light on others in a dark place? When have you been able to ‘turn the light on’ for yourself after a period of loss, sadness or grief? How good are you at lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness? What is your role in lighting the way for others? Is it overstepping your bounds to speak your truth, or do you offer your gifts freely? What have others done for you to illuminate your path and provide insight?
Revelation & Disclosure: How self-revealing are you? Are you a more private, introverted person, or someone who wears their heart on their sleeve? Do you have friends or family members who differ from you in that area in a significant way? How do you negotiate privacy vs. exposure in this world of facebook statuses and online searching?
Sunshine: As we move into autumn here in the northern hemisphere, and the days become shorter, what is it about sunshine that impacts you? Do you feel a change in yourself as darkness descends? What do you love about light and sun? Does darkness and light serve as a metaphor for your inner world? Where do you find metaphorical sun or darkness?
Music
Quotes
Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment. Morihei Ueshiba
And as long as you're subject to birth and death, you'll never attain enlightenment. Bodhidharma
Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment. Dogen
Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm. Idries Shah
Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Morihei Ueshiba
History shows that our way of life is the stronger way. From it has come more wealth, more industry, more happiness, more human enlightenment than from any other way. Wendell Willkie
If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation. Johann Most
If we remove ourselves from the world, we are pretending that we can follow our own individual enlightenment and let the rest of the world go to hell, so to speak. Satish Kumar
Ignorance has always been the weapon of tyrants; enlightenment the salvation of the free. Bill Richardson
It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom. Quentin Crisp
Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment. Lao Tzu
Not creating delusions is enlightenment. Bodhidharma
The Bible and several other self help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful... or fun for that matter. Dave Mustaine
The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness. Nikos Kazantzakis
There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment. Stanislav Grof
To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him. Buddha
A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew. Herb Caen
A prudent question is one-half of wisdom. Francis Bacon
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man. Henry David Thoreau
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. Confucius
Cleverness is not wisdom. Euripides
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion? Friedrich Nietzsche
Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. Elbert Hubbard
He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom. James Huneker
He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty. Mary Wilson
Little Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Thomas Jefferson
In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool. Lord Chesterfield
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. Henry David Thoreau
It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own. William Ralph Inge
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. Walter Lippmann
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. Alfred Lord Tennyson
Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe. Josh Billings
Memory is the mother of all wisdom. Aeschylus
Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another. Juvenal
Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. Theodore Roosevelt
No man was ever wise by chance. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Patience is the companion of wisdom. Saint Augustine
Some folks are wise and some are otherwise. Tobias Smollett
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. William James
The doors of wisdom are never shut. Benjamin Franklin
The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. Jean Paul
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. H. L. Mencken
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. Socrates
The truest wisdom is a resolute determination. Napoleon Bonaparte
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations. Benjamin Disraeli
The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense. Dean Inge
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions. Oliver Wendell Holmes
There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart. Charles Dickens
When we fall asleep, we withdraw our awareness from its hypnotic fascination with physical sensation, thereby enabling us to listen with our now awakening sixth sense. Henry Reed
Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness. Jim Rohn
To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not. Akhenaton
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. Bertrand Russell
Turn your wounds into wisdom. Oprah Winfrey
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. George Bernard Shaw
When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth. Sara Teasdale
Wisdom begins at the end. Daniel Webster
Wisdom begins in wonder. Socrates
Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself. Tom Wilson
Wisdom is a sacred communion. Victor Hugo
Wisdom is found only in truth. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it. David Starr Jordan
Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone. Horace
Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it. Doug Larson
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk. Doug Larson
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness. Sophocles
Wisdom outweighs any wealth. Sophocles
Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents. Kahlil Gibran
Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men. Confucius
A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode. Chanakya
As long as karma exists, the world changes. There will always be karma to be taken care of. Nina Hagen
How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. Wayne Dyer
I believe in Karma. If the good is sown, the good is collected. When positive things are made, that returns well. Yannick Noah
I would never disrespect any man, woman, chick or child out there. We're all the same. What goes around comes around, and karma kicks us all in the butt in the end of the day. Angie Stone
I'm a true believer in karma. You get what you give, whether it's bad or good. Sandra Bullock
I'm also married for the first time, and I have two kids. So there's some kind of good karma right now. Lindsey Buckingham
It was not uncommon for the children to be told they were being treated this way because it was their bad karma and they must have hurt a child in a past life. Mary Garden
Karma is not just about the troubles, but also about surmounting them. Rick Springfield
Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us. Bodhidharma
The conscious process is reflected in the imagination; the unconscious process is expressed as karma, the generation of actions divorced from thinking and alienated from feeling. William Irwin Thompson
When someone has a strong intuitive connection, Buddhism suggests that it's because of karma, some past connection. Richard Gere
Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior. Stanislav Grof
A lot of people in spiritual life use the awareness of difference, and the spiritual glorification of difference, as a justification to indulge in that which is ultimately unreal. Andrew Cohen
Awareness requires a rupture with the world we take for granted; then old categories of experience are called into question and revised. Shoshana Zuboff
Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond,to change. Stephen Covey
I think that growth and spiritual awareness come in slow increments. Sometimes you don't know it's happening. Mariel Hemingway
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. James Thurber
Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter. Charles Lindbergh
The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one. M. Scott Peck
The infinite vibratory levels, the dimensions of interconnectedness are without end. There is nothing independent. All beings and things are residents in your awareness. Alex Grey
The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness. Lao Tzu
What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. Abraham Maslow
Whatever we are waiting for - peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance - it will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open and grateful heart. Sarah Ban Breathnach
When a human being becomes so still that they begin to lose awareness of their gender, and they are simply looking into that abyss where there is no notion of self whatsoever, the world disappears. And that's really the only place to go. It's the only place to remain. Andrew Cohen
When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection. Agnes Martin
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