Secrets: You Are Light

Your human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day.

Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels which can be seen with the naked eye. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light.

“We know today that man, essentially, is a being of light.”

“We are still on the threshold of fully understanding the complex relationship between light and life, but we can now say emphatically, that the function of our entire metabolism is dependent on light.” Prof. Fritz-Albert Popp

In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.

(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation — an invisible form of light — that comes from body heat.)

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”~Carl Gustav Jung

The most intimate relationship we will have in our entire lifetime is with ourselves.
No one hears our hearts the way we do.
No one knows our hurts the way we do.
We are the sages of our soft spots and our edges.
Self-compassion is showing up to that relationship with honesty and with love.
– Jamie Ridler –

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness.
It’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.
– Brené Brown –

You are whole and also part of larger and larger circles of wholeness
you many not even know about.
You are never alone.
And you already belong.
You belong to humanity.
You belong to life.
You belong to this moment, this breath.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn –

After all the years of [spiritual] work,
… I’ve realized this: that everything and everyone is precious beyond words.
Everything and everyone is holy.
And the point of our being on this sweet planet is to be of service to all of it.
And when we understand this truth in our bones, joy fills our hearts.
– Geri Larkin –

You do not have to leave the room. Remain standing at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait. Be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
– Franz Kafka –

I had thought joy to be rather synonymous with happiness,
but it seems now to be far less vulnerable than happiness.
Joy seems to be a part of an unconditional wish to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet with whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us.
– Rachel Naomi Remen –

Forget about enlightenment.
Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be.
Not the saint you’re striving to become.
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You’re already more and less than whatever you can know.
Breathe out, look in, let go.
– John Welwood –

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens
for the sound of the genuine in yourself.
It is the only true guide you will ever have.
And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life
spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls…
– Howard Thurman –

First, come into the present. Flash on what’s happening with you right now.
Be fully aware of your body, its energetic quality. Be aware of your thoughts and emotions.

Next, feel your heart, literally placing your hand on your chest if you find that helpful.
This is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in that moment, a way of saying,
“This is my experience right now, and it’s okay.”
Then go into the next moment without any agenda.
– Pema Chodron –

We often disapprove of parts of our lives without really examining them –
it’s like never going into certain rooms of your house.
But meditation allows all the voices and all the images in the room.
When we open the invisible doors, we can come to rest in the life we have;
we can love it as it is instead of waiting for a shinier version.
– John Tarrant –

It has a lot to do with developing patience, not with the check-out person so much,
but with your own pain that arises, the rawness and the vulnerability,
and sending some kind of warmth and love to that rawness and soreness.
I think that’s how we have to practice.
– Pema Chodron-

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a
Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say,
‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
– Martin Luther King –

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away
and become something better.
It’s about befriending who we are already.
– Pema Chodron –

Ring the bells that can still ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen –

Those who do not have faith in others will not be able to stand on their own.
– Sheng Yen –

All of you are perfect just as you are
… and there is still room for improvement!
– Shunryu Suzuki –

Arguments begin with an answer in mind.
Conversation begins with a question .
– Anonymous –

If you know something hurtful and not true, don’t say it.
If you know something hurtful and true, don’t say it.
If you know something helpful but not true, don’t say it.
If you know something helpful and true, find the right time to say it.
– Buddha –

My religion is very simple.
My religion is kindness.
– Dalai Lama –

Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable.
It means to show up and be seen.
To ask for what you need.
To talk about how you’re feeling.
To have the hard conversations.
– Brené Brown –

One of the most satisfying feelings I know – and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other person – comes from my appreciating this individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset. People are just wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be. In fact, perhaps the reason we can truly appreciate a sunset is that we cannot control it. When I look at a sunset as I did the other evening, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and use a little more pink in the cloud color.” I don’t do that. I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.
– Carl Rogers –

Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different;
enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will);
being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).
– James Baraz –

Our true nature is like a precious jewel:
although it may be temporarily buried in mud, it remains completely brilliant and unaffected.
We simply have to uncover it.
– Pema Chodron –

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,”
a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings,
as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of a prison to us, restricting us to our personal desires
and to affection for only the few people nearest us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Nobody is able to achieve this completely,
but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation
and a foundation for inner security.
– Einstein –

Impermanence is both a process of continual loss,
in which things exist and then disappear,
and it is also a process of continuous rebirth or creativity,
in which things that do not exist suddenly appear.
– Joseph Goldstein –

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart,
it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person.
It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart…
– Pema Chodron –

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
– William Blake-

Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives.
It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment.
We also gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources
for insight, transformation, and healing.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn –

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
– Lao-Tzu, Tao-te-Ching –

The moment one gives close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious,
awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
– Henry Miller –

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing,
is giving up on being perfect
and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
– Anna Quindlen-

To be nobody-but-yourself
–in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else–
means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight;
and never stop fighting.
– e.e. cummings –

Une difficulte est une lumiere.
Une difficulte insurmontable est un soleil.
(A difficulty is a light.
An insurmountable difficulty is a sun.)
– Paul Valery –

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams.
Who looks inside, awakens.
– Carl Jung –

Outside of a dog,
a book is man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog,
it’s too dark to read.
– Groucho Marx –

Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said;
“one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen.
“When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
– Lewis Carroll –

If I do not practice one day, I notice it.
If I do not practice a second day, the orchestra notices it.
If I do not practice a third day, the world notices it.
– Ignacy Jan Paderewski –

It’s important to be aware of physical limits and to dwell at their boundary long enough to experience them but it’s just as important not to push beyond them…
Instead we are going to be looking deeply into each moment with full acceptance
and not trying to force ourselves to be different from how we are right now.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn –

In your meditation practice and in your daily life, can you be in touch,
not only with the changing content and intensity of your thoughts and feelings,
but also with the vast unwavering reservoir of awareness itself,
residing below the surface of your mind.
The lake can teach this, remind us of the lake within our selves.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn –

Through it all, the mountain just sits, experiencing change in each moment,
constantly changing, yet always just being itself.
It remains still as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day, calmness abiding all change…
– Jon Kabat-Zinn –

Enough.
These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now
– David Whyte –

When flowing water meets with obstacles on its path,
a blockage in its journey, it pauses.
It increases in volume and strength,
filling up in front of the obstacle
and eventually spilling past it.
– I Ching –

You do not belong to you.
You belong to the universe.
The significance of you will remain forever obscure to you,
but you may assume you are fulfilling your significance
if you apply yourself to converting all you experience to highest advantage to others.
– Buckminster Fuller –

You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day
– unless you’re too busy –
then you should sit for an hour.
– Old Zen adage –

There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
– Albert Einstein –

Realize that this very body, with its aches and it pleasures…
is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.
– Pema Chodron –

The range of what we think and do
Is limited by what we fail to notice
And because we fail to notice
There is little we can do
To change
Until we notice
How failing to notice
Shapes our thoughts and deeds.
– R.D. Laing –

The practice of meditation is not really about establishing inner stillness…
The moments of stillness are one of meditation’s byproducts, not the practice itself
– Erik Walker Wikstrom –

Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
– Victor Frankl –

There is nothing either good or bad
but thinking makes it so.
– Shakespeare, Hamlet –

Life is difficult.
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.
It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.
Once we truly know that life is difficult,
once we truly understand and accept it,
then life is no longer difficult.
Because once it is accepted,
the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
– M. Scott Peck –

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone,
including the people who drive us crazy,
can be our teacher.
– Pema Chodron –

If we could read the secret history of our enemies,
we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering
enough to disarm all hostility.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow –

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books
that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
– Rainer Maria Rilke –

… circles of trust … are a rare form of community – one that supports rather than supplants the individual quest for integrity – that is rooted in two basic beliefs.
First, we all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more reliable than anything we can get from a doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, or leader.
Second, we all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern the inner teacher’s voice.
– Parker Palmer –

For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone.
The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes.
To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.
– Marcel Proust –

This is not an answering machine.
This is a questioning machine.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
If you think these are trivial questions,
most people go through life without answering either one.
– Peter Russell’s answering machine –

You think you understand one.
You think you understand two, because one and one make two.
But, you must also understand “and”.
– Sufi saying –

I am not nearly so interested in what monkey man was derived from
as I am in what kind of monkey he is to become.
– Loren Eiseley –

We ourselves cannot put any magic spell on this world.
The world is its own magic.
– Suzuki Roshi –

There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.
– Thich Nhat Hanh –

There’s no problem so great it can’t be solved.
If it can’t be solved, it’s not a problem, it’s reality.
– Barbara Coloroso –

… few people actually receive big calls, in visions of flaming chariots and burning bushes. Most of the calls we receive and ignore are … the daily calls to pay attention to our intuitions, to be authentic, to live by our own codes of honor.

Our lives are measured out … not in the grand sweeps but in the small gestures. The great breakthroughs in our lives generally happen only as a result of the accumulation of innumerable small steps and minor achievements. We’re called to reach out to someone, to pick up an odd book on the library shelf, to sign up for a class even though we’re convinced we don’t have the time or money, to go to our desks each day, to turn left instead of right.
These are the fire drills for our bigger calls.
– Gregg Levoy –

When I do not know who I am, I serve you.
When I know who I am, I am you.
– Indian Proverb –

Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means
experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly,
a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven,
that nothing is separate or extraneous.
If you see in this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense.
Doing science is spiritual. So is washing the dishes..
– Jon Kabat-Zinn –

Hillel the sage, who was asked to relate the whole of Torah while standing on one foot:
“Do not do to others that which is hateful to you.
All the rest is commentary. Now go study.”
– Talmud, Shabbat 31a –

The saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others,
but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else.
– Thomas Merton –

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.
– Wu-men –

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
– Ghandi –

Today like every other day
We wake up empty and scared.
Don’t open the door of your study
And begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do
There are hundreds of way to kneel
And kiss the earth.
– Rumi –

Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.
– Jose Ortega y Gasset –

I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither; then I awoke.
Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly,
or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?
– Zhuangzi –

Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol used to say,
“If they ask me in the next world, ‘Why were you not Moses?’
I will know the answer.
But if they ask me, “Why were you not Zusya?’
I will have nothing to say.
– Martin Buber –

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly:
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
– Antoine de Saint Exupery –

When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that’s wisdom.
When I look outside and see that I am everything, that’s love.
Between these two my life turns.
– Nisargadatta Maharaj –

We are not troubled by things,
but by the opinions we have about things.
– Epictetus –

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently…
And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back,
though it went away every time you brought it back,
your hour would be very well employed.
– St. Francis de Sale –

Stand still.
The trees before you and the bushes beside you are not lost.
Wherever you are is a place called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
– David Wagoner –

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
– Helen Keller –

Buckminster Fuller himself was fond of stating that what seems to be happening
at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on.
He liked to point out that for the honey bee, it is the honey that is important.
But the bee is at the same time nature’s vehicle
for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers.
Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature.
Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn –

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles,
most of which never happened
– anonymous (sometimes attributed to Mark Twain) –

We see things not as they are, but as we are.
– H.M. Tomlinson –

The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
– Li Po –

Ram Dass tells of a student who went to a Zen master.
“What can you tell me about death?” the student asked.
“Nothing,” the other replied. “I’m a Zen master. Not a dead Zen master.”
– Stephan Rechtschaffen –

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth,
so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.
To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again.
To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over
the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
– Henry David Thoreau –

May you live all the days of your life.
– Jonathan Swift –

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
– Howard Thurman –

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
– anonymous (sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein) –

First I was dying to finish high school and start college.
And then I was dying to finish college and start working.
And then I was dying to marry and have children.
And then I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school so I could return to work.
And then I was dying to retire.
And now, I am dying…
And suddenly realize I forgot to live.
– Anonymous –

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.
– Rabindranath Tagore –

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know
to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
You are already naked.
There is no reason not to follow your heart.
– Steve Jobs –

You must not lose faith in humanity.
Humanity is like an ocean;
if a few drops of the ocean are dirty,
the ocean does not become dirty.
– Mahatma Gandhi –

In my walks, I would fain return to my senses.
What business have I in the woods
if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
– Thoreau –

Our bodies know they belong,
It’s our minds that make our lives so homeless.
– John O’Donahue –

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.
It’s a relationship between equals.
Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
– Pema Chodron –

Could our minds and our hearts be big enough just to hang out in that space where we’re not entirely certain about who’s right and who’s wrong? Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person, not know what to say, not make that person wrong or right? Could we see, hear, feel other people as they really are? It is powerful to practice this way, because we’ll find ourselves continually rushing around to try to feel secure again—to make ourselves or them either right or wrong. But true communication can happen only in that open space.
– Pema Chodron –

Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary.
There are burning bushes all around you.
Every tree is full of angels.
Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb.
– Macrina Wiederkehr –

Every part of our personality that we do not love
will become hostile to us.
– Robert Bly –

If you have embarked on this journey of self-reflection,
you may be at a place that everyone, sooner or later, experiences on the spiritual path.
After a while it seems like almost every moment of your life you’re there,
where you realize you have a choice.
You have a choice whether to open or close, whether to hold on or let go,
whether to harden or soften, whether to hold your seat or strike out.
That choice is presented to you again and again and again.
– Pema Chodron –

I sought my soul – but my soul I could not see.
I sought my God – but my God eluded me;
I sought my brother – and found all three.
– Anonymous –

If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything
I was trying to say, it would be something like this:  Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.
In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it
because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
– Frederick Buechner-

Is there anything I can do to make myself Enlightened?
As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.
Then of what use are the spiritual excercises you prescribe?
To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.
– Anthony de Mello –

There is nothing you can do to improve your soul.
There is nothing you can do to stain your soul.
– Inyat Khan –

Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be. Not the saint you’re striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You’re already more and less than whatever you can know. Breathe out, look in, let go.
– John Welwood –

The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere
and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary.
Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe.
Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain,
and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.
– Mark Nepo –

We can stop struggling with what occurs and see its true face without calling it the enemy.
It helps to remember that our spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything
– not about winning or losing – but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is.
That is what we are doing when we sit down to meditate.
That attitude spreads into the rest of our lives.
– Pema Chodron –

Most of us need to be reminded that we are good, that we are lovable, that we belong.
If we knew just how powerfully our thoughts, words, and actions affected
the hearts of those around us, we’d reach out and join hands again and again.
Our relationships have the potential to be a sacred refuge, a place of healing and awakening.
With each person we meet, we can learn to look behind the mask
and see the one who longs to love and be loved.
– Tara Brach –

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts,
the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach,
the core of their reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the Divine.
If only they could all see themselves as they really are.
If only we could see each other that way all the time.
There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. …
I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.
– Thomas Merton –

Enlightenment does exist. It is possible to awaken. Unbounded freedom and joy, oneness with the Divine, awakening into a state of timeless grace – these experiences are more common than you know, and not far away. There is one further truth, however: They don’t last.
Our realizations and awakenings show us the reality of the world, and they bring transformation,
but they pass. …
We all know that after the honeymoon comes the marriage.
After the election comes the hard task of governance.
In spiritual life it is the same: After the ecstasy comes the laundry.
– Jack Kornfield –

When we think that something is going to bring us pleasure, we really don’t know what’s going to happen. When we think something is going to give us misery, we don’t know. Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. We try to do what we think is going to help. But we don’t know.
We never know if we’re going to fall flat or sit up tall. When there’s a big disappointment,
we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of a great adventure.
…Life is like that.
We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know.
– Pema Chodron –

With spiritual maturity … comes a sense of the sacred that is integrated and personal. … Integrated and personal spiritual practice includes our work, our love, our families, and our creativity. It understands that the personal and the universal are inextricably connected, that the universal truths of spiritual life can come alive only in each particular and personal circumstance. How we live is our spiritual life. As one wise student remarked,
‘If you really want to know about a Zen master, talk to their spouse.’
– Jack Kornfield –

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood…
Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
‘Look!’ and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.
– Mary Oliver –

Your generosity toward others is key to your positive experiences in the world.
Know that there’s enough room for everyone to be passionate, creative, and successful.
In fact, there’s more than room for everyone; there’s a need for everyone.
– Marianne Williamson –

Don’t think the purpose of meditation is to go deep into consciousness,
wrap a blanket around yourself, and say,
‘How cozy! I’m going to curl up in here by myself; let the world burn.’
Not at all.
We go deep into meditation so that we can reach out further and further to the world outside.
– Eknath Easwaran –

You are not a drop in the ocean,
You are the entire ocean in a drop.
– Rumi –

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.
Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it.
This is a kind of death.
– Anais Nin –

For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone.
The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes.
To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.
– Cynthia Occelli –

Paradise is thus not so much a place,
as liberation into the fullness and bounty
of everyday experience.
– Ian Baker –

When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
– Alan Watts –

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation
can that which is indestructible be found in us.
– Pema Chodron –

One day I asked Kassie [Temple] the question that had been vexing me:
“How do you keep doing this hard, heart-wrenching work when you know you’ll wake up tomorrow to problems that are as bad or worse than the ones you’re dealing with today?”
I’ve never forgotten Kassie’s answer:
“What you need to understand is this — 
just because something’s impossible doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it!”
– Parker Palmer –
The beauty of the heart
is the lasting beauty:
its lips give to drink
of the water of life.

Rumi

Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity – not a threat.
-Albert Einstein

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
-Walt Disney

Know what’s weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon, everything’s different.
-Bill Watterson

An unexamined life is not worth living.
-Socrates.

“The soul’s evolution is an ongoing observation of the ego’s state of mind.”
Anita’s Guides (Ishmael)

“The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”
Walter Bagehot

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”
Anne Bradstreet

“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”
Bertha Calloway

“Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”
Dale Carnegie

“The key to change… is to let go of fear.”
Rosanne Cash

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
Confucius

The wise man looks for what is within the fool for what is without.”
Confucious

“I don’t like work – no man does -but I like what is in work – the chance to find yourself”
Joseph Conrad

“Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for transformation. Use it!”
Ram Dass

“Nothing has changed but my attitude, therefore, everything has changed.”
Anthony DeMello

“If there’s any message to my work, it is ultimately that it’s OK to be different, that it’s good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.”
Johnny Depp

“If you wait until the wind and the weather are just right you will never plant anything and never harvest anything.”
Ecclesiastes 11:4

“It is never too late to be what you might have been”
George Eliot

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You can never do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”
Robert Fritz

“You give but little when you give of your posessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”
Kahlil Gibran

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time”
Andre Gide (1869 – 1951)

“Let food be thy medicine…and medicine be thy food”
Hippocrates

“There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.”
Aldous Huxley

“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”
William James

“Person to person, moment to moment, as we love, we change the world.”
Samahria Lyte Kaufman

“It is the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.”
C.W. Leadbeater

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
John Lennon

“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
Vince Lombardi

“Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself for he shall never cease to be entertained.”
Shirley Maclaine

“The universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes–every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man.”
Orison Swett Marden

“Keep your sense of proportion by regularly, preferably daily, visiting the natural world.”
Caitlin Matthews

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that we aim too high and we miss it, but we aim too low and reach it.”
Michelangelo

“Whatever you fear most has no power – it is your fear that has the power”
Oprah Winfrey

“Just as it is necessary to breathe out regularly in order to receive fresh air into the lungs, so it is necessary to give regularly if we wish to receive regularly.”
Catherine Ponder

“You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing”
Michael Pritchard

“Life is eternal: and love is immortal: and death is only a horizon: and a horizon is nothing save a limit to our sight.
Rossiter W.Raymond (1840-1918)

“The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just Listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attentions. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.”
Rachel Naomi Remen

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
Maria Robinson

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there”
Will Rogers

“The greatest gift you give others is the example of your own life working”
Sanaya Roman from her book ‘Creating Money’

“If it feels right, honors your integrity and brings you joy… Do It. Success comes when you follow your heart”
Sanaya Roman

“Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

” Don’t cry because its over, Smile because it happened!”
Dr. Seuss

“A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything.”
Laurence Sterne

” Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap … but by the seeds you plant! ”
Robert Louis Stevenson

“Many receive advice, only the wise profit by it.”
Publilius Syrus

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
Albert Schweitzer

“Let him that would move the world first move himself”
Socrates

“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”
Thich Nhat Hanh

Make one person happy each day and in forty years you will have made 14,600 human beings happy for a little time at least.”
Charles Wiley

“There is no Them, there is only Us. Some of Us think this or some of Us think that, but we are all Us.”
Lisa Williams

” In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away”
Shing Xiong