Happy New Year ! :) ~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Jai Krishna Ponnappan, Fall 2014. All Rights Reserved © Image Ref .  http://www.imdb.com/media/rm167247616/nm3315045?ref_=nmmi_mi_all_pbl_3  

~~ May you go forth under the strength of heaven,
under the light of sun, under the radiance of moon; 

May you go forth with the splendor of fire,
with the speed of lightning, with the swiftness of wind; 

May you go forth supported by the depth of sea,
by the stability of earth, by the firmness of rock; 

May you be surrounded and encircled,
with the protection of the nine elements;

May the heavenly hosts and the Angels that obey and
serve the Lord’s Will dwell in your Life, 
your thoughts and being this year.~~

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Quotations from some of our favorite philosophers, poets and explorers to help inspire you to contemplate and take charge of your life this year. Enjoy, & Happy New Year :)



Emily Dickinson:

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul — and sings the tunes without the words — and never stops at all.”
“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
“That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.”
“I dwell in possibility.
Maya Angelou:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
Alice Walker:
“I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.”
“If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it.”
“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”
“The most common way people give up power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
Lewis Carroll:
“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
“One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.”
“Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”
Henry David Thoreau:
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
Anaïs Nin:
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
“A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.”
“Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.”
J.K. Rowling:
“Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default.”
“I don’t think there’s any harm at all in allowing a kid to fantasize. In fact, I think to stop people from fantasizing is a very destructive thing indeed.”
“Whatever money you might have, self-worth really lies in finding out what you do best.”
“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared. Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
Nelson Mandela:
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”
“There is no passion to be found playing small — in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”
Mahatma Ghandi:
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
“You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”
“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”
Terence McKenna:
“You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.”
“Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.”
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.”
Aldous Huxley:
“Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.”
“Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.”
“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large — this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.”
Alan Watts:
“You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.”
“But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.”
Ram Dass:
“A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there’s work to be done.”
“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion — and where it isn’t, that’s where my work lies.”
“The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it’s in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I’m caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.”
“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”
“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”
Martin Luther King Jr.:
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
Robert Frost:
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Joan Baez:
“As long as one keeps searching, the answers come.”
“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can decide how you’re going to live now.”
Audrey Hepburn:
“Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering — because you can’t take it all in at once.”
“You have to look at yourself objectively. Analyze yourself like an instrument. You have to be absolutely frank with yourself. Face your handicaps, don’t try to hide them. Instead, develop something else.”
“As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself… All of which I’ve earned a living doing.”
Bob Marley:
“Today, people struggle to find what’s real. Everything has become so synthetic that a lot of people, all they want is to grasp onto hope.”
“Possession make you rich? I don’t have that type of richness. My richness is life, forever.”
“Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.”
Carlos Castaneda:
“Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.”
John Muir:
“Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.”
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”





— FIN —

O Thou who kindly dost provide 

For every creature’s want! 

We bless Thee, God of Nature wide, 

For all thy goodness lent. 

And, if it please Thee, heavenly Guide, 
May never worse be sent; 
But, whether granted or denied, 
Lord bless us with content; 
Lord protect & bless this Land wherein I dwell.

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O Thou, in whom we live and move, Who made the sea and shore; Thy goodness constantly we prove, And grateful would adore; And, if it please Thee, Power above! Still grant us with such store The friend we trust, the fair we love, And we desire no more.



I wish You All the Very Best this New Year. 

Blessings & Warm Regards,

Jai Krishna Ponnappan