The lamp of the body is the eye.  If your eye is sound,

your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad,

your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you

is darkness, how great will the darkness be.


Matthew 6: 22
New American Bible


______________

 

LETTING GO

When the day
has been lived
I let it go;
when a cycle
is done, I
release it.
I let the past
be no more
than an echo
in this present day,
knowing myself
free to move
toward new joy
and grow toward
a closer oneness
with God.

Elizabeth Searle Lamb

From "Bless This Day," by June Cotner
Kodansha International, 1998


__________________


Forgetting what lies behind but straining
forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit
of the goal, the prize of God's upward calling,
in Christ Jesus. Let us, then, who are "perfectly
mature" adopt this attitude.

Philippians 3: 13-15
New American Bible

According to Buddhist psychology, our consciousness is divided
into two parts, like a house with two floors. On the ground floor
there is a living room, and we call this "mind consciousness."
Below the ground level, there is a basement, and we call this
"store consciousness." In the store consciousness, everything we
have ever done, experienced, or perceived is stored in the form
of a seed, or a film...Upstairs in the living room, we sit in a chair
and watch these films as they are brought up from the basement...

Certain movies, like Anger, Fear, or Despair, seem to have the
ability to come up from the basement all by themselves. They
open up the door to the living room and pop themselves into
our videocassette recorder whether we choose them or not... Learning how to stop them is important for our well-being...

Store consciousness is also described as a storehouse filled
with all our seeds. When a seed manifests in our mind
consciousness, it always returns to the storehouse stronger.
The quality of our life depends on the quality of the seeds in
our store consciousness...

To practice mindfulness means to recognize each seed as it
comes up from the storehouse and to practice watering the
most wholesome seeds whenever possible...The length of
time we water a seed determines the strength of that seed...
If we water our wholesome seeds carefully, we can trust that
our store consciousness will do the work of healing.

Excerpted from "Thich Nhat Hanh: Essential Writings"
Orbis Books, 2004

If you remove from your midst perversion,
finger-pointing, and evil speech, and offer
your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted
soul; then your light will shine (even) in the
darkness, and your deepest gloom will be like
the noon. Then Hashem will guide you always,
sate your soul in times of drought and strengthen
your bones; and you will be like a well-watered
garden and a spring whose waters never fail.
Ancient ruins will be rebuilt through you,
and you will restore generations-old foundations;
and they will call you, 'repairer of the breach'
and 'restorer of paths for habitation.'

Isaiah 58: 9-12
The Stone Edition Tanach
Mesorah Publications Ltd.

Bonus Quote:
Why do you hurry to remove anything that hurts
your eye, but if something affects your soul you
put off the cure until next year?

Horace (65-8 BC)
Rome