Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves. Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people will not feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
Nelson Mandela
Inaugural Speech, 1994
4 comments:
Beautiful. This is one of my favorite poems. Thank-you for posting it.
James, this one is for you:
Those tender words we said to one another
Are stored in the secret heart of heaven.
One day, like the rain they will fall and spread
And their mystery will grow green over the world.
Rumi
Thank you, my friend.
Dear Mark-in-Eugene,
Thank you for your thoughtful post here. I agree with you that our thoughts are rarely a pure reflection of reality, though we think they are. For me, desire is longing. Longing to see or feel or experience something that isn’t happening right now. Noticing the longing is naming it; once named, it is easier for me to loosen my grip on what I long for, thereby coming back to the present moment. In the present moment I recognize the folly of desire. Here is some wisdom from Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche to illuminate this notion:
Having no mind, with out desires
Self quieted, self existing
It is like a wave of water
Luminosity is veiled only by the rising of desire.
If you neither dwell, perceive, nor stray
from the ultimate,
Then you are the holy practitioner, the torch
which illuminates darkness.
Thank you again, Mark-in-Eugene!
Meredith
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