As I was feeling uninspired recently, I decided to get this book in one of the book sales I visited here in Singapore. I thought this book will be able to help me, entice and encourage me to search for my purpose and quest for something that I really wanted to do and eventually make the big move.

But I was wrong. It talked about being happy and accepting whatever situations you are in by doing some detailed mediation techniques for specific purposes. I read most of the pages except for the detailed instructions on how to meditate because I thought, meditation is idiosyncratic. Every individual has their own techniques and methods on how to get centred.

It focused more on just being content, happy and embracing whatever problems one has openly. As mentioned, “There is no waiting for something to happen, no point in the future to get to. All you ever longed for is here in this moment, right now.”

The concept is something like that of “The Secret”. I feel so happy because, after a long busy while, I was able to finish a book again! My first since May this year. Wohoo..I feel accomplished.

Anyhow, here’s a list of my favourite quotes:

“Sometimes it comes as a soft-bellied whisper. Sometimes it holds an edge of urgency. But always it says: Wake up, my love. You are walking asleep. There’s no safety in that!”- pg 19

“We are loved more than we ever will know.” Pg 24

“He is right. I have never been particularly interested in gems or jewellery. I did not  have a diamond ring when I married his father twenty years ago or when I married my first husband years earlier. I hadn’t wanted one. I know about the diamond industry’s profit-driven efforts to get us to pay outrageously prices for small clear stones; I understand how marriage and its symbols have often been used by patriarchal institutions to keep women in a position of dependency and less power.” – haha my thoughts too..the feminist in me does agree. – pg 65

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between following deep intuitive guidance and being led around by the nose of unconscious wanting and fear.” – pg 74

“So when I pray for this kind of guidance I am not so much asking whether or not the Great Mystery wants me to go to the Amazon. I am  asking for help in discerning my real motivations and perhaps unconscious agendas and whether, given these motivations and agendas, this trip will help me wake up more fully or is just one more way of distracting myself from being present, one more way of trying to go back to sleep.”- my prayers too..=( pg 75

“The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the question, Nor is bought with going to amazing places. Until you have kept your eyes and your wanting still for fifty years, you don’t begin to cross over from confusion.” Pg 75

“It’s true that sometimes it is easier t hear or see what we are surrounded by when we are in an unfamiliar setting, not because what we are looking for is not available in the more familiar places, but because our seeing is sometimes when we are surrounded by the new. But the risk is that we get caught up in an endless need for novelty, spending all our time and energy moving about and searching instead of really seeing that what we are looking for is right here.” – Should I agree? One of the many phrases that negate what I thought I should be finding in this book. Should I just settle here?  Pg 76

“And I see and am with the fears that hook me into wanting things to be different from the way they are, fears that pull me into the belief that a different location or situation-a more creative job, a home in a more natural setting, more money or time or other resources, a relationship with someone who has the same “spiritual” goals or daily practice-is needed if I am ever to find  deep abiding peace, if I am ever to learn how to love well. These beliefs are rooted in the deeper if intermittent fears; the fear that I am not now and never will be able to hear the call at the center of my life accurately or fully enough to know how to consistently live who and what I am; the fear that the Beloved, tired of my inability to get it right, will simply stop calling, stop sending out the voice that can guide me home; the fear that I am not in the right place, have not found the right situation in which I can live my purpose fully, offer the one word I have come here to say and weave into the collective dream of the people.

This is what I learned on my quest; There is simply no place, no location or situation, that cannot be used to wake up to and live all of what and who you are, if you are willing to show up, to be present in the only place you ever have access to: here.” – pg 78

“Be still and let the impulse to move come from deep within. Wait for it without waiting. Move when it comes.” Pg 80

POEM: The Treasure’s Nearness by Rumi

A man searching for spiritual treasure,

Could not find it, so he was praying

A voice inside said, “You were given

The intuition to shoot an arrow

And then dig where it landed,

But you shot with all your archery skill!

You were told to draw the bow

With only a fraction of your ability.”

What are you looking for

Is nearer than the big vein

On your neck! Let the arrow drop.

Don’t exhaust  yourself like the Philosophers.

Who strain to shoot the big arcs

Of their  thought-arrows.

The more skills you use, the farther you’ll be

From what your deepest love wants.

                                                 Pg 83

”There are many people living in spiritual communities who will tell you that changing location does not change who you are or take you out of the relationship with others and the world.” Pg 85

“And does an ox know its strength if there is cart to pull, if it has only long days of grazing in fields of grass?” She pauses, “Strength is its nature, and yet that nature is only revealed when it is called upon to do some necessary task.”  Pg 112

“Many around you would think you are mad, particularly if the impulse you followed involved turning away even temporarily from what this culture promotes as most real and most valuable. Yes, I mean if your movement took you in a direction that cut into income or profits.”  Who cares, really? – pg 145

“Let the Lover pull you to your feet and hold you close, dancing even when fear urges you to sit this one out.” Pg 57

My fave: “Craving is fuelled by fear and pushes for speed and doing, whereas longing wants to linger with, go deeper  into, and learn from what is in the present moment. Craving is never really satisfied, is always reaching for more, looking to some other time and place, to the idealized past or hoped-for future satisfaction. Craving most often focuses on the particular form of what we want; a particular relationship, a specific job, a certain kind of home or some other possession-even spiritual fulfilment. Longing will take us to the knowledge of our essence and the meaning enfolded in being what we are.” So, Am I Craving or Longing? I don’t know for sure.

“Each of us kept trying to do it right, fuelled by our desire to change what was-Catharine striving to do all that she could to beat the effects of the brain aneurysm, I struggling to do whatever it would take to live true to the soul’s deepest desires. One day you wake up and realize that doing is simply not what is required.” Pg 197

“One of the arguments I remember most clearly was about religion. I argued that all differences between religions did not amount to anything important, that the common experience of the vastness and love of the divine far outweighed the differences in how people approached or explained or celebrated this experience, and so there should be only one religion.” Pg 201

Another Fave “Our Lives can only be made richer by expanding the number of ways we allow the Beloved to speak to us. We mistake rigid human-created categories for reality, but reality knows no mutual exclusivity.” – pg 203

“When I ask, If you knew the world were listening attentively, what is the one word you would say?” first word that came to me was LOVE – pg 206