A Walk in the Garden of Wisdom: Intuitive Reflections

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A Walk in the Garden of Wisdom

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Chapter One

It is necessary to open the heart to life and to make genuine values alive in our lives.

The interaction with nature requires resources that we must not seek only in rationality. To appreciate the sun, to smile, to observe the moon and to appreciate its company several times require more a poetic view than a scientific one.

Beauty should thrill us. We should shine and expand the light of the brilliance of inner happiness.

To commune with life is to make simple, special things; it is to discover beauty in common things, and it is to renovate what is old, even in the most common and customary sceneries. When we do that, it is like paving the highway of our lives with genuine values. They simply start coming up.

If we observe what surrounds us, we will see the new and the old, being born and dying, creating and destroying.

The divine cycle is manifested in transformation. Vitality nurtures the art of living.

To live forever is not related to the continuity of a process but to the intensity with which we live different processes.

A moment becomes eternal if lived with full love and with happiness.

Our interaction with the moment makes it eternal if we give life to it. A moment is our own creation-either we give life to it or we destroy it.

It is necessary to transcend the conventional.

This translates into living a full life, not only a guarded and planned life, but a life of rediscovery, cocreated at each moment.

To congratulate oneself with the unexpected, to express light there, and to connect with the light and the birth of the new is the energy of cocreation.

Ecstasy happens in the full integration of the divine energies that permeate the moment. The secret is how to access them.

For this, the inner harmony, the friendship and intimacy with our true values, the experience of unconditional love, of inner peace, must be visible, both in the hearts and in the minds.

Intimacy with the genuine values has huge importance in our lives. In order to cultivate intimacy we have to trust and that is only possible when there is inner peace. Usually, we have a complex set of feelings, but that does not matter; what really matters is to be in peace.

This is one key, simple and extraordinary, that enables us to transcend a bureaucratized and guarded life.

There are others, but be sure: this is a key that opens the portals of the heart to full living.

With it, breathing will be deep, refreshing, and regenerative.

The emotions will be visible, at the height of our creative potential.

To live life in full is possible-and necessary.

To give quality to our emotions is something that a happy soul can do naturally, without effort.

When we are happy, each cell of our body vibrates with happiness.

Happiness is the access ramp to a full life.

To draw this way is a matter of choice, which will lead us to the great wonder of life that exists in wisdom and to let us access it; this is our first and most important lesson.

I.2. The Comfortable Seat of Gratitude: When the Seed of Nonviolence Sprouts.

The light that illuminates our journey is in our heart.

Only when we perceive what we have in our heart do we experience inner comfort.

The more information we receive, the more we learn or absorb knowledge; we will only feel really comfortable and happy, and we will only feel fully harmonious, light, and filled with energy, when the sublime feeling of gratitude is present in us.

The comfortable seat of the heart, cozy and transforming, is the feeling of gratitude.

When there is no feeling of gratitude in our heart-when we do not let it come alive inside of us-there will be a void within the being.

The energy of enthusiasm can be disguised with attractive objectives or goals; however, the latent enthusiasm, the one that sprouts within the soul, the enthusiasm of living, breathing, simply of being, will only be expressed when there is gratitude within the soul.

Gratitude gives graceful shape, full of harmony, to life.

Gratitude fills the void that expectation creates.

It replaces the dense weight of fear and alleviates the pain of sadness.

The feeling of gratitude is magical; it is like a breeze in our lives.

Gratitude is the illuminated form of devotion.

Fear and the misunderstanding of the energy of devotion lead to the emptying of gratitude. Such fear was born in the mind, not the heart. The heart can convert it from darkness to light once again.

The feeling of devotion has been translated by the mind, removing the human being from the essence of a feeling that is sublime, but must have manifestation from the inside to the outside and not from the outside to the inside.

Many rituals have nurtured this mistake.

The strength of gratitude in the heart translates the strength of wisdom and opens channels for light, giving conditions to live with the most diverse cultural, philosophical, or spiritual practices, always connecting to the essence and never losing oneself in appearance.

Without gratitude in the heart, there is room for the expression of arrogance, for a lack of love or a lack of understanding and respect, and this leads to the breach of harmony in the chain of manifestations of the several energetic patterns that lead people to stay in tune with what they perceive and value. Obviously, this can change from time to time.

Instead of being in tune with the essence that generates the manifestation and living that moment, the person, leaving the essence aside, takes the direction of the clothing of dogmas and beliefs and makes use of weapons to attack, even believing to be defending himself or defending what he believes in. He does not even note that the ammunition that causes the damage is inside himself.

When attacking what he sees, or thinks he sees, he will be attacking himself, contributing to the rupture of the links in the chain of harmony in the planet.

To perceive gratitude and to love its expression helps to revitalize inner peace and its manifestation in living.

To have a chance to make the most of the moments that present themselves with no thought of attack, even if translated by the mind as being defensive, means to be grateful to life, to oneself and to God.

Fool is the one who attacks himself, while the wise person is the one who has gratitude in his heart.

Gratitude is an active feeling, which loads the most powerful weapons that may exist, which may be the most subtle ones. These are the weapons of the future, which are not used to attack or assault, but which have almost unlimited power, as they are able to create invulnerability.

They are genuine love, authentic happiness, wisdom, inner peace, compassion, tolerance, humility, and will-they create our shield of invulnerability.

The key to activate it is gratitude.

The shield of invulnerability is always available; the question is when and how to activate it. Through the weapons of the future, our vibration field-the shield of invulnerability-will be naturally restored and strengthened.

To react and attack are bad habits born from insecurity and fear, which soon will belong to the past.

To act means to own the authorship of the moment, assuming your attitudes with the greatest legitimacy possible. And there is nothing more legitimate in the human being than his innate qualities of love and compassion.

What we receive from life may not seem always gratifying to everyone, but somehow it is part of the strengthening of our relation with our own values.

To deal with difficult situations, problems, disrespect, etc., we must not consider them as confrontations or a competition; we must reprogram our mind and establish a new interpretation for such situations. Instead of "reacting," we must, more than anything, "act" and understand that, for this, we do not need the weapons of reaction or attacks.

We can envisage actions, which have spirit. These are born from our latent values and are strengthened in the heart.

Reactions are fantasies that deceive the ego and disturb the being, as they make a misleading manifestation of the will.

The game of exercising the reaction, which has become customary for humankind, has a small and ultimate secret: it can only survive if we feed the reactions and only has efficacy when in a relationship between egos. It disintegrates when seen by the eyes of a wise person. When acting rather than reacting, we will be face-to-face with the reality that presents itself, without letting us be struck down by traps. Traps only work if we activate them, which is what happens when we react.

To react and to attack are the easiest ways of falling into traps.

The subtlety of the love of an intuitive heart and the wisdom of a clean and serene mind will express the power and the strength of the being in any situation and will guide him to positions that will lead to achievements without making use of violence or aggressiveness, with oneself and with others.

When we are in peace, we are manifesting gratitude.

Gratitude is a matter of attitude!

And this depends on each one of us.

To see under this prism of light, born and bred within each one, helps to evidence and make relevant a renovated and special method of living-with gifts that we start to aggregate to our heart and to the power and wisdom that we start to associate with our learning in the way of action and nonviolence.

I.3. The Superior Octave of Appreciation.

A small distinction, a higher octave of a musical note can give special qualification to a melody.

Small changes in posture can bring significant transformation to the quality of our lives.

To want to understand everything does not bring beauty to living.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A Walk in the Garden of Wisdom by Herbert Santos Silva Copyright © 2010 by Herbert Santos Silva. Excerpted by permission.
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