Balance
Posted: March 13, 2013 Filed under: 365 Meditation Challenge, Air, beginnings, Daily Walk, Digital Art, Earth, Fire, home, Letting Go, Mindfulness, nature, Photography, Quotes, snow, Spirit, Spring, Today's Joys, Walking, wandering, water, weather, winter | Tags: balance, Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, flowers, Health, Hiking, MaidinSun Photography, nature, Outdoors, Photography, quotes, Rumi, snow, spring, Sufi poetry, trees, water, weather, winter 19 CommentsYour hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.
~ Rumi, Essential Rumi
The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a world view that excludes nothing?
~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray Love
Thank you for visiting. Be good, be kind, be loving, just Be. 🙂
Love that last picture. So simple.
Thank you, CM. 🙂
Good words with visual support of something all of us need.
Thank you, Frank. 🙂
I love that book: Eat, Pray, Love! And Rumi’s words of wisdom. Beautiful “balanced” pictures. 🙂
Thank you, Cathy. That book is a favorite of mine, too. 🙂
it seems such a miracle to me that those flowers withstand the snow! what a balance 🙂
I don’t know how they do it, Christine. It’s a miracle to me, too. 🙂
something so simple… yet so hard sometimes. Thanks for the reminder. 😉
You’re welcome, Derrick. 🙂
looks like autumn there.. how beautiful
Thank you, Chloe. 🙂
Beautiful quotes and pictures. Did the crocuses survive the snowstorm?
Thank you, Rosie. Believe it or not, the crocuses are surviving the snow and the cold nicely. They close up tightly, opening up when the sun hits them. We had temperatures in the teens last night and this morning, and the hardy little things are still hanging in there. 🙂
Love the focus of the last photo — looks quite wintry though, considering it’s almost spring. But then weather has never consulted the calendar that I remember! 🙂
Thank you, Bo. You’re right about the weather and the calendar. No agreement going on between the two right now. We’ll be lucky to reach the 20’s on this first full day of spring and have snow in the forecast again for tonight. Might have to go skiing tomorrow. Crazy. 🙂
The colors in these shots are gorgeous, and I love how you processed the second one.
Thank you, Belen. 🙂
[…] You might recognize the first two photos in this series. I brought them to you in color back at Ye Olde Blogg home. (If you want to have a look, you’ll find the first one here and the second one there.) […]