Don’t be nice - Jeff Foster

Don't be nice!
Nice is boring.
Nice is fake.
Nice was an adaptation
designed to win you love.

It doesn't work.
Be real instead.

Nice is a mask
which covers up your anger, irritation,
frustration, disappointment
(beautiful energies you learned to smother
when you were young).

Nice will suffocate you
and everyone else around you.

Nice keeps others
from ever really knowing you.

Take the risk of not being nice!
Take the risk of showing yourself.
Be prepared for others to dislike you.
To think you're selfish, cold, mean,
or even worse: "Unspiritual".

Say what you mean!
Say yes when you mean yes.
Say no when you mean no.

Take the risk
of looking after yourself!

Be prepared to feel alive again.
To feel your heart pounding.
To sweat. To shake.
To wonder if you have the right...

To finally feel your guilt and shame
instead of running away from them.

Be prepared for your 'nice' world
to crumble.

Be prepared to lose your
carefully crafted image.

Be prepared to feel
the rush of newness! 

The Sound of the Sea - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep; 

A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.

So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

Sweet Darkness - David Whyte

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness
to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

Sleeping In The Forest | Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

My Brilliant Image by Hafiz

One day the sun admitted,
I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
The Infinite Incandescence
That has cast my brilliant image!
I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The astonishing Light
Of your own Being!

Failing and Flying By Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work.
That she was old enough to know better.

But anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that.
Listened to her while we ate lunch.

How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Dust If You Must by Rose Milligan

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better
To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there's not much time,
With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb;
Music to hear, and books to read;
Friends to cherish, and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world's out there
With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair;
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it's not kind.
And when you go (and go you must)
You, yourself, will make more dust.