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“Here we are,
trapped in the amber of the moment.
There is no why.”
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“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees,
you see all these different trees.
And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight,
and some of them are evergreens,
and some of them are whatever.
And you look at the tree and you allow it.
You see why it is the way it is.
You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light,
and so it turned that way.
And you don’t get all emotional about it.
You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that.
And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’
That judgment mind comes in.
And so I practice turning people into trees.
Which means appreciating them
just the way they are.”
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“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion.
What you perceive as precious is not time
but the one point that is out of time: the Now.
That is precious indeed.
The more you are focused on time—past and future—
the more you miss the Now,
the most precious thing there is.”
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“You and I are the force for transformation in the world.
We are the consciousness
that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into.”
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“It’s being here now that’s important.
There’s no past and there’s no future.
Time is a very misleading thing.
All there is ever, is the now.
We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it;
and we can hope for the future,
but we don’t know if there is one.”
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“Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment,
whether we mean to or not.
Our actions and states of mind matter,
because we’re so deeply interconnected with one another.
Working on our own consciousness
is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment,
and being love is the supreme creative act.”
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“Time is the longest distance between two places.”
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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019
In appreciation for the life of Richard Alpert:
Teacher, writer, explorer, visionary
April 6, 1931- December 22, 2019
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