Be the change you want to see.

"The thing is, we spend too much time looking outside ourselves for what we should really be trying to find inside. But we can't seem to trust what we find in ourselves --maybe because that's where we find it. I suppose it's all a part of how we ignore who we really are. We're so quick to cut away pieces of ourselves to suit a particular relationship, a job, a circle of friends, incessantly editing who we are until we fit in. Or we do it to someone else. We try to edit the people around us.

I don't know which is worse...

...Why do we love ourselves so little? Why are we suspect for trying to love ourselves, for being true to who and what we are rather than what someone else thinks we should be? We're so ready to betray ourselves, but we never call it that. We have all these other terms to describe it: Fitting in. Doing the right thing. Getting along. ...

...But how can we expect others to respect or care for us, if we don't respect and care for ourselves? And how come nobody asks, "if you're so ready to betray yourself, why should I believe that you won't betray me as well?" "

-- from "My Life as a Bird" in Moonlight and Vines by Charles de Lint

Schiller, quoted in my current Waldorf textbook, Philosophy of Freedom:

"Truth seek we both -- Thou in the life without thee and around;
I in the heart within. By both can Truth alike be found.
The healthy eye can through the world the great Creator track;
The healthy heart is but the glass which gives Creation back."

translation by E. Bulwer Lytton.

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT by Rob Breszny from his book Pronoia:

"Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. Through some magic you don’t fully understand, you’re still breathing and your heart is beating, even though you’ve been unconscious for many hours. The air is a mix of gases that’s just right for your body’s needs, as it was before you fell asleep.

You can see! Light of many colors floods into your eyes, registered by nerves that took God or evolution or some process millions of years to perfect. The interesting gift of these vivid hues is furthermore made possible by an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, that continually detonates nuclear reactions in order to convert its body into light and heat and energy for your personal use.

You can walk! Your legs work wonderfully well. Your heart circulates your blood all the way down to replenish the energy of the muscles in your feet and calves and thighs, and when the blood has delivered its blessings, it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This wondrous mystery recurs over and over again without stopping every hour of your life.

You can smell aromas and you can hear sounds and you can taste tastes, many of which are quite enjoyable. You can think! You can feel feelings and visualize images of things that don't even exist. You’re in possession of the extraordinary power of self-awareness. Do you realize how far-fetched that stupendous ability is? You not only know that you are you. You also know that you know that you know you are you.

Each of the 50 trillion cells in your body can be considered a sentient being in its own right, and they all act together as a community, performing an ongoing act of prodigious collaboration.

By some improbable series of coincidences or long-term divine plan, language has come into existence. Millions of people have collaborated for many centuries to cultivate a system for communication that you understand very well. Speaking and reading and writing give you great pleasure and a tremendous sense of potency.

Do you remember when you were born, by the way? It was a difficult miracle that involved many people who worked very hard on your behalf. No less miraculous is the fact that you have continued to grow since then, with millions of new cells being born within you all the time to replace the old ones that are dying. It's just like magic."
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