Inspiration 

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy,
a quickening, that is translated into action.
And because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never
exist through any other medium and will be lost.
The world will not have it. It is not your business to
determine how good it is, nor how valuable nor how it
compares with other expressions. It is your business to
keep it yours clearly and directly… to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.

–Martha Graham

The real world is beyond our thoughts and ideas:
We see it through the net of our desires,
Divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer.
To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net.
It is not hard to do so
For the net is full of holes.

–Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging
waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith in its course.
It will go on its own way, meandering here, trickling there.
It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it.
Never let it out of your sight. It will take you.

–Sheng Yen

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple:
On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur.
L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

–Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Le Petit Prince

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books
written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers.
They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them.
It is a question of experiencing everything.
At present you need to live the question.
Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it,
find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

–Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Both yoga and art aim at the same thing, that is to re-establish
our personal connection with the world around us according
to our own inner creativity.
To render body and mind a conduit through which the creative
energy can flow freely, unimpeded by outer restrictions,
in the trust that this energy, being a part of the universal energy,
is ultimately “pure” and joyful.

–Dona Hollemann

Until one is committed,
there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back,
always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)
there is one elementary truth,
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
That the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor
all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Begin it now.

–William Hutchinson Murray / Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The true material of knowledge is meaning. The only way to glean knowledge is contemplation. And the road to that is time. There’s nothing else. It’s just time. There is no shortcut for the conquest of meaning. And ultimately, it is meaning that we seek to give to our lives.

–Maria Popova