Which Universe?
Stay Awake
40 days of A Space for Soul continues…
Heaven or Hell – Which Will I Choose?
In her book, Awakening Loving-Kindness, Pema Chodron offers us a wonderful story about the illusions of heaven and hell:
“There’s another story that you may have read that has to do with what we call heaven and hell, life and death, good and bad. It’s a story about how those things don’t really exist except as a creation of our own minds. It goes like this: A big burly samurai comes to the wise man and says, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.” And the roshi looks him in the face and says: “Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you?”
The samurai starts to get purple in the face, his hair starts to stand up, but the roshi won’t stop, he keeps saying, “A miserable worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?” Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword, and he’s just about to cut off the head of the roshi. Then the roshi says, “That’s hell.”
The samurai, who is in fact a sensitive person, instantly gets it, that he just created his own hell; he was deep in hell. It was black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment, so much so that he was going to kill this man. Tears fill his eyes and he starts to cry and he puts his palms together and the roshi says, “That’s heaven.” “
We create our own reality moment by moment.
Nancy’s New Book
I am THRILLED to Announce the Birth of My New Baby!
Born: May 22, 2014
Weight: 9 oz
Length: 134 pages
Name: A Space for Soul
You can view my baby at Amazon.com. Just follow this link: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=nancy+lankston
☾ ☽
A Space for Soul is available in both Print and Kindle Versions.
Fairy Magic
Our new yard in Boulder has fairy flowers everywhere – even under the deck!
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“When the first baby laughed for the first time,
the laugh broke into a thousand pieces
and they all went skipping about,
and that was the beginning of fairies.
And now when every new baby is born
its first laugh becomes a fairy.
So there ought to be one fairy
for every boy or girl.”
~James Barrie, Peter Pan
Nature is my Religion
When people question what my religion is, I want to say that I believe in Taoism mixed with a large serving of gnostic Christianity and a side of Tibetan Buddhism thrown in for meditative measure. Or perhaps I could offer a brief lecture on the common threads in all religions….
Maybe it’s more honest to just say that nature is my true religion. And share this beautiful poem by J.L. Stanley as a way of explaining:
Catechism for a Witch’s Child
When they ask to see your gods
your book of prayers
show them lines
drawn delicately with veins
on the underside of a bird’s wing
tell them you believe
in giant sycamores mottled
and stark against a winter sky
and in nights so frozen
stars crack open spilling
streams of molten ice to earth
and tell them how you drink
a holy wine of honeysuckle
on a warm spring day
and of the softness
of your mother who never taught you
death was life’s reward
but who believed in the earth
and the sun
and a million, million light years
of being.
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A Blessing of Solitude
May you recognize in your life, the presence, power and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone,
That your soul in its brightness and belonging
connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique,
that you have a special destiny here,
That behind the facade of your life
there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening.
May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride,
and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.
~John O’Donohue
Anam Cara