Quotes by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

"I want to know if you've touched the center of your own sorrow, if you've been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain."

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments

The Dance

I have sent you my invitation, the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living.

Don't jump up and shout, "Yes, this is what I want! Let's do it!"

Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiraling down into the ache within the ache, and I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, every day.

Don't tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.

Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are, and see who I am in the stories I am living.

And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don't tell me how wonderful things will be...someday.

Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next...

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring.

Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will.

What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the learn, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart, and I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are.

When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul's desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children's children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle, not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging.

Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions have died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don't say, "Yes!"

Just take my hand and dance with me.

What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am? 

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing

It doesn't interest me how old you are
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dreams
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your
fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

"Not doing is not about immobility or giving up in despair. It is first and foremost about being able to be with, to accept fully, what is in this moment."

   

I want to remind us all that the world is listening, all the time.  How we are ripples out from us into the world and affects others.  We have a responsibility-an ability to respond-to the world.  Finding our particular way of living this responsibility, of offering who we are to the world, is why we are here.  We are called because the world needs us to embody the meaning in our lives.  God needs us awake.  The world we live in is a cocreation, a manifestation of individual consciousness woven into a collective dream.  How we are with each other as individuals, as groups, as nations and tribes is what shapes that dream.