Dawna Markova

are now at a point in time when the ability to receive, utilize, store, transform and transmit data—the lowest cognitive form—has expanded literally beyond comprehension. Understanding and wisdom are largely forgotten as we struggle under an avalanche of data and information.

—Dee Hock, Birth of the Chaordic Age

May you find the courage you need to ask yourself the questions that will free your mind and strengthen your soul.

Traveling from the known to the unknown requires crossing an abyss of emptiness. We first experience disorientation and confusion. Then, if we are willing to cross in wonder, we enter an expansive and untamed country that has its own rhythm. Time melts. Thoughts become stories, music, poems, images, ideas. This is the intelligence of the heart—a vast range of receptive and connective abilities: intuition, wisdom, meaning making. It is aesthetic, qualitative, creative, sensitive, innovative.

We make our lives bigger or smaller, more expansive or more limited, according to the interpretation of life that is our story.

—Christina Baldwin

The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them and learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memories.

—Barry Lopez

Sacred hungers keep pushing at our edges, wanting us to let go of the old ways we have kept ourselves secure so we can expand into blossoming the life force of what we love.

May you open your heart to yourself in wonder and mercy.

If your purpose is only about you, it has no branches. If it is only about the rest of the world, it has no roots. This is why learning through the wounds in our history, the moments when our essential needs were not met in some very basic ways, are moments that stand still in our memory and moments that hold possibility for you to unfurl your gifts. Wouldn't it be a good joke if the worst that has happened to you holds the possibility of bringing the best in you to the community?

When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others. . . . Only when one is connected to one's core is one truly connected to others.

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh

How could the worst that has happened to you hold the possibility of bringing out the best in you?