Welcome to Samarpan Alchemy

If someone offered you a path better than the one you now travel, would you recognise it? – Ken Eagle Feather

People say what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive… so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive. – Joseph Campbell

If I ever get to heaven it will be by riding on the shoulders of all the people I have helped. – Edgar Cayce

We have no art; we do everything as well as we can. – Balinese saying

Time is a powerful river of passing events; no sooner is one thing brought to sight than it is swept away and another takes its place – and this, too, will be swept away. – Marcus Aurelius

Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals. – J. Isham

It is said that unskilled farmers throw away their rubbish and buy manure from other farmers, but those who are skilled go on collecting their own rubbish, in spite of the bad smell and the unclean work, and when it is ready to be used, they spread it on their land, and out of this, they grow their crops. – Chogyam Trungpa

Meditation and contemplation are the training grounds for this practice. Here we become adept at learning to shift our consciousness from one perspective to another – moving between individual consciousness and cosmic consciousness, somewhat like the graduation of perspectives contained within a hologram. – Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Why do you stay in prison, when the door is wide open? Rumi

We must each row with the oars we have. – English saying

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching. – Saint Francis of Assisi

The amazing thing about hassle and problems is that they never seem as big the second time round. If you successfully deal with them the first time round, the second time you won’t even notice them. The experience will have formed your cognitive map… That is the wonderful thing about goals and dreams. We create them but they also create us. The challenges sculpt us into what we need to become to achieve them. – Michael Anthony Jackson

Your body is a metaphor for your life. In the marriage of flesh and spirit, divorce is impossible. – Gabrielle Roth

The first step is not to talk about knowing God, but to know yourself. – Swami Rama

Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead. – C.J. Jung

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make our world. – The Buddha

If you think you can or you think you can’t you are right. – Henry Ford

Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily. – Epicurus

Loyalty to a petrified opinion yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. – Mark Twain

When we walk in solitude, angels whisper to us. – Anonymous

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them. – Brendan Francis

Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, providing the madness is given as a divine gift. – Socrates

Everything flows and nothing abides. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. – Heraclitus

Something we were withholding made us weak until we found it was ourselves. – Robert Frost

I am the one who went and came back. – Pyramid Text of Unas

I am from such as those by whom the worlds are shaken. – Robert Moss, from a dream

In and of itself, desire is one of the least harmful of emotions. It is that to which desire gives rise that is the real problem. It is the breeding ground for all kinds of other, more complicated emotional states. The simple arousal and playing out of desire (whether it is sexuality or any other kind of desire and attachment) will bring other things along with it – greed, jealousy, anger, quarrelling, envy, etc. – wherein the problem lies. – Kalu Rinpoche

Use what talents you possess. The woods would be silent if only the birds sang that sing the best. – Anonymous

If you cannot find the truth where you are, where do you expect to find it? – Master Dogen

You just give folks a key, and they can open their own locks. – Robert R. McCammon

All gods send their gift of love upon this earth, without which it would cease to be. My faith teaches me more clearly perhaps, than yours, that life does not end with death, and therefore that love being life’s soul, must endure for all eternity. – Anana, Chief Scribe and companion to Pharaoh Jentle Leti II; approximately 1320 B.C.

Sleepers are workers. – Heraclitus

Life without love and passion is a life not worth having lived. – Rumi

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. – John Wooden

Centreing the mind is vital in the discovery of the self. Without mental discipline and control, life’s a losing battle. It’s like having 40 chickens in a truck and they’re constantly flying about. There are feathers everywhere and a tremendous commotion is going on. Somehow you’ve got to sit your chickens down in little rows and keep them quiet. – Stuart Wilde

The power of instinct will protect you from harm through all the days of your life. – Lao Tzu

There are victories whose glory lies only in the fact that they are known to those who win them. – Nelson Mandela

I can look down to the very beginning. I can go to where the world is born. – Maria Sabrina

All things come in their due season. – Heraclitus

Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes in playing a tough hand well. – Robert Louis Stevenson

In the difficult are friendly forces, the hands that work with us. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. – Marianne Williamson

A sacred being cannot be anticipated, it must be encountered. – W.H. Auden

The secret is that love isn’t about someone else loving you. It is about your ability to love yourself and the people around you, regardless of what the world does or doesn’t give you. Love isn’t about outside proof. – Rhonda Britten

We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love. – Mother Teresa

The human mind, like the universe itself, contains the seeds of many worlds. – Loren Eiseley

To study the way of the Buddha is to study your own self. – Master Dogen

Come to the edge, no we’ll fall, come to the edge, no we can’t, come to the edge, no we’re afraid, and they came, and he pushed them, and they flew. – Guillaume Apollinaire

If you want to change your personality, and if you are following a true path and you commit a mistake, you’ll receive help because of your quest for truth. Your inner world is larger and more powerful than the world you see around you. – Swami Rama

But then, a sensitive is not always walking about with his head in the clouds. The meaning of mediumship is balance – balance between two worlds – and you are the balance wheel in the middle. – Ena Twigg

Nature loves to hide. – Heraclitus

He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils. – Francis Bacon

If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have a little, give of your heart. – Arab proverb

In Tibet, there is a proverb that states that the best introduction to sleep is bad meditation, meaning that if one has a dull approach in meditation, it leads straight into a state that is not significantly different from sleep. – Kalu Rinpoche

To the question of your life, you are the answer. To the problems of your life, you are the solution. – Jo Coudert

If thine eye be single, the whole body shall be full of light. – Anonymous

Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is. – Will Rogers

Manifesting the life you want is a dance you do with the Tao. That’s the point of it. It is, to be crude about it, a spiritual experience. You see it’s not the things, situations and events you manifest that bring you spiritual satisfaction, it’s watching the Tao in action as those things, situations and events spring into existence before your very eyes – that’s the blessing, that’s the point (if there is one). – The Barefoot Doctor

A bit of the fragrance clings to the hand that gives the flowers. – Chinese proverb

It is difficult to retain what you have learnt unless you practice it. – Pliny the Younger

If you do not do something with your dreams, you will not dream well. – Huichol shaman

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish. – Heraclitus

Nothing happens until something moves. – Albert Einstein

When you are willing and eager, the gods join in. – Aeschylus

The average man who does not know what to do with this life, wants another one which will last forever. – Anatole France

To do nothing is sometimes a great remedy. – Hippocrates

The solution to the problem of the day is the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the divinity within. – Hazrat Inayat Khan

There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it more beautiful. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is not what he appears to be on the surface. On the surface he appears to be flat but inside he is a chain of mountains. When you reach one peak, another peak higher than that is waiting for you ahead, challenging you. You think this is going to be the last one, but once you have arrived on that peak, other peaks are waiting for you still higher. There is no end to it. Man is an infinite journey, unending, within no beginning and no end – a chain of peaks. Osho

The spiritual journey is one of continually falling on your face, getting up, brushing yourself off, looking sheepishly at God, and taking another step. – Sri Aurobindo

There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back. – Elizabeth David

If you want to understand the nature of your soul and its level of development, examine your relationships, not only physical ties but the people you emulate at the heart level and who function as your role models. The soul is reflected not so much by what we know but in the strength of our character, which is sustained by the people we look up to. The integrity of character projects the highest magnetic force that serves to integrate not only our own being but those of others. – David Frawley

People who deliberate too long before they take a step may spend their lives on one leg. – Anthony de Mello

The wind and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. – Edward Gibbon

Whenever we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. – John Muir

The wheel of time rotates, but its axis is ever at rest. – Mikhail Naimy

Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find the truth, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain. – Heraclitus

I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward. – Thomas Edison

I saw Eternity the other night, like to a ring of pure and endless light, all calm, as it was bright. – Thomas Vaughan

When you get a wake-up call, pick up the phone; when opportunity knocks, answer the door. – Anonymous

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. – Mark Twain

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them. – Charles West

The sages who have died are present in this world to a greater extent than when they were alive. – The Zohar

When you come to a fork in the road – take it. – Yogi Berra

The eternally youthful quality of the mahamudra experience is one of its outstanding qualities. It is eternally youthful because there is no sense of repetition, no sense of wearing out of interest because of familiarity. Every experience is a new, fresh experience. So it is childlike, innocent and childlike. The child has never even seen its body – such a brand new world. – Chogyam Trunpa

To think too long about doing something often becomes an undoing. – Eva Young

I am not bound to win but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed but I am bound to live up to what light I have. – Abraham Lincoln

Detachment isn’t callousness. It’s not that you’re going to say, “Hey, I don’t give a damn about these people.” It’s just that you have to understand that their evolution is important; it’s sacrosanct… So when you look at people, you have to work from that kind of compassion – from the more distant understanding that we cannot know precisely what people need, metaphysically and spiritually. – Stuart Wilde

The soul possesses three basic powers – life (jiva), light (jyoti), and love (prema) – from which arise the ability to perceive, move, and feel. – David Frawley

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another. – Plotinus

The soul is bound, freely and naturally, to radiate its secrets. – Kahlil Gibran

If you are in the body of a donkey, enjoy the grass. – Tibetan saying

We may be disappointed if we fail; but we are doomed if we don’t try. – Beverly Sills

Much learning does not teach understanding. – Heraclitus

A grateful mind is a great mind which eventually attracts to itself great things. – Plato

Creativity blossoms amongst friends and withers amongst enemies. – Julie MacNamara

The minute you choose to do what you really want to do, it’s a different kind of life. – Buckminster Fuller

While modern physics and Aboriginal science differ, they also share certain ideas. Indigenous people speak about Dreamtime as the root of essential power from which everything comes; quantum physicists speak of an invisible mathematical entity called the quantum potential from which reality arises. – Arnold Mindel

What kind of person can live without risk or daring. – Charles A. Lindburgh

The Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life. Although it works very accurately, it is yet so fluid that it needs extreme intelligence and clarity, and the most complete absorption and tranquillity. – The Secret of the Golden Flower

In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain. Either you reach a higher point today or you exercise your strength in order to be able to climb tomorrow. – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? – Dhammapada

As fledglings, our influences (people and environment) become our trainers and mostly they teach us what they know (which is not always much) and what they believe (which is not always true). Hence we tend to become a product of our environment, a mirror image of those who wean us… But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can unlearn the bad habits of upbringing, you can shed that old and weathered skin and you can educate yourself into a powerful, creative, and very happy individual with the muscle to shape worlds. – Geoff Thompson

Follow then the shining ones, the wise, the awakened, the loving, for they know how to work and forebear. – The Buddha

Heroes and cowards feel the same fear. Heroes act differently, that’s all. – Cus D’Amato

As transcendently blissful and peaceful as the state of Samadhi may be, however, awakening beyond life can never be the final goal of spiritual practice. It has to be followed by awakening in life. The means seeing life through the eyes of God – the Universe – casting the light of your realization upon the intractable problems and emotional sufferings of a human being on planet earth. – Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Storms make trees take deeper roots. – George Herbert

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather around us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet. – William Butler Yeats

Never doubt that a small group of commonly minded individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Mead

You give birth to that on which you fix your mind. – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Start doing the things which should be done, start being what you think society should become. – Adam Michnik

The duty that the Supreme being has assigned to you cannot be avoided. – Ashante saying

Can we draw Beauty unless it draws us first? Can we utter Truth before Truth has uttered us? Did we live but a beautiful life, we should do nothing but the beautiful; and then we should have no need of drawing Beauty. Did we obey the Truth in our thoughts, we should be able to utter nothing but the Truth; and then we should have no need to preach the Truth. – Kahlil Gibran

Sensitivity is wholly different from refinement; sensitivity is an integral state, refinement is always partial. There is no partial sensitivity, either it is the state of one’s whole being, total consciousness or it is not there at all. – J. Krishnamurti

Never mistake thinking for doing, or knowledge for wisdom; one helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life. – Sandra Carey

Desire is one of our life forces. To deny desire or to want to cut it off is to deprive ourselves of an incomparable dynamic; it is to head toward becoming dried up and drained of life. – Daniel Odier

The real learning is unlearning all that one has learned. – Hazrat Inayat Khan

Jump into the experience while you are alive! If you don’t break your ropes while you are alive do you think ghosts will do it after? – Kabir

I am trying to unite what is divine in me with what is divine in the universe. – Plotinus

A certain amount of opposition is a great help. Kites rise against the wind, not with it. – John Neal

The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention. – Duguet

You know that if you get in the water and have nothing to hold on to, but try and behave as if you would on dry land, you will drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water, you will float. – Alan Watts

Those who understand see themselves in all, and all, in themselves. – Bhagavad Gita

Creative people knock on silence for an answering music, they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean. – Rollo May

Our own pulse beats in every stranger’s throat. – Barbara Denning

People see ugliness in themselves and each other and then struggle to love that ugliness. That will never work. Instead, dwell on the beauty you see, on even the tiniest positive. Love will flow naturally and positively. It is the nature of beauty to draw out love like a magnet. – Khenpo Brothers, quote by David Ramsdale

Eventually everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences. – Robert Louis Stevenson

Choosing to move yourself with full heart and mind has the ability to move others – indeed it is what spins the galaxies. – Ron Rubin & Stuart Avery Gold

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. – Helen Keller

In order to bring any situation to the path quickly, as soon as it is met, join it with meditation. – Atisha

Except it have a meaning a word is but an echo in the void. – Mikhail Naimy

The path of the soul after death is the same as the path of the soul in dreams. – Lakota saying

Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be. – Grandma Moses

The lesson is simple, the student is complicated. – Barbara Rasp

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation. – J. Krishnamurti

What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. – Friedrich Nietzche

My religion is to live and die without regrets. – Milarepa

May you split open a place for yourself in the sky, among the stars of the sky. – Pyramid Text of Unas

What cannot be known in the dream cannot be known in its glory. – Robert Moss, from a dream

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

If you keep on doing the same thing you keep on getting the same results. – Anonymous

Success should therefore be measured by your yardstick of happiness; by your ability to remain in peaceful harmony with cosmic laws. Success is not rightly measured by the worldly standards of wealth, prestige and power. None of these bestow happiness unless they are rightly used. – Paramahansa Yogananda

When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake. – Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky

To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, roads for travelling souls. – Walt Whitman

For you grow to heaven, you don’t go to heaven. – Edgar Cayce reading

The wise learn from adversity; the foolish repeat it. – Anonymous

Feelings buried alive never die. – Karol Truman

Nature’s way is simple and easy. – Lao Tzu

Unless we attempt the absurd we cannot achieve the impossible. – Albert Einstein

The ego is, above all, separation. – Daniel Odier

All day long I have exciting ideas and thoughts. But I take up in my work only those to which my dreams direct me. – C.J. Jung

In order to arrive at a place you do not know you must go by a way that you do not know. – St. John of the Cross

Dreams are wishes of the soul. – Iroquois saying

You cannot harm me, you cannot harm one who has dreamed dreams like mine. – Ojibwa tribal song

Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, and repeated failures, are posts on the road to achievement. – Charles F. Kettering

No matter what you achieve, somebody helps you. Behind the creation that we all call our own are the thoughts and efforts of many. – Althea Gibson

The real is what works. – C.J. Jung

Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure. – Rainer Maria Rilke

The world of imagination is the world of eternity. – William Blake

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing. – George Bernard Shaw

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. – Helen Keller

When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with the truth, then you have suffering. – Anthony DeMello

If we can be more conscious, this will make the higher centres work. The functioning of higher centres will be in many ways miraculous. – P.D. Ouspensky

Everything should be as simple as possible, and no simpler. – Albert Einstein

The world is not only stranger than we suppose, it is stranger than we can suppose. – J.B.S. Haldane

We discover what works by finding out what doesn’t work; those who never made a mistake never made a discovery. – Samuel Smiles

I know God will not give anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. – Mother Teresa

Be not merely good, be good for something. – Edgar Cayce reading

Whatever authority I may have rests solely on knowing how little I know. – Socrates

The universe is a school where people will eventually develop into the image and likeness of God. It will exist as long as a school is needed. – Peace Pilgrim

The best thoughts you have are when you’re young, and the best you can do is never give up on those thoughts. – Rockwell Kent

The beginnings of all great things are small. – Cicero

I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand. – Zen proverb

The name of a philosopher, then, will be reserved for those whose affections are set, in every case, on the Reality. Socrates

Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence. – Patanjali

Indeed, I tell you truly, any object you have on your mind, however good, will be a barrier between you and the inmost truth. – Meister Eckhart

Meditation is opening the eyes, meditation is looking. – Osho

To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour. – William Blake

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a Judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. – Albert Einstein

Experience is not what happens, but what we do with what happens. – Aldous Huxley

Thought is memory and memory is accumulated responses and so thought is always conditioned however much it may imagine that it is free. Thought is mechanical, tied to the centre of its own knowledge. The distance thought covers depends on knowledge and knowledge is always the remains of yesterday, of the movement that is gone. Thought can project itself into the future but it is tied to yesterday. – J. Krishnamurti

We do not see things as they are but rather as we are. – The Talmud

Everyone should know that we cannot live in any other way than by cultivating the soul. Apuleius

Perception has a destiny. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it. – James Baldwin

It is never too late to be what you might have been. – George Elliot

Out of the shell of the broken heart emerges the newborn soul. – Hazrat Inayat Khan

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. – Buddhist scripture

When man ceases to be an individual he raises himself again and penetrates the whole world. Plotinus

What is to give light must endure burning. – Victor Frankl

It is true that the ‘no thought state’ of meditation appears similar to deep sleep, but there is a world of difference in the manner in which we reach this state. The most striking difference is the presence of awareness in meditation, and its total absence during sleep. In this sense the distinction between the two is quite self-evident. Dr Samprasad Vinod

Everything is this world has a hidden meaning… People, animals, trees, stars are all hieroglyphics… We think they are really only people, animals, trees, stars. It is only years later that some of us understand. – Nikos Kazantzakis

Nothing in all creation is so like God as silence. – Meister Eckhart

Time brings changes, and may even reverse many of our present opinions. So let us refrain from setting ourselves up as the judge of the highest matters. – Plato

No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. – Albert Einstein

The mystic experience is an extraordinary one because it is not an intellectual experience. – U.G. Krishnamurti

The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. – Victor Frankl

Change alone is unchanging. – Heraclitus

There is one Light, but many lamps. – Anonymous

Surrender means seeing that “I am not separate” – just seeing that “I am not separate”. Nothing is surrendered, nothing is dropped, just a nonsense idea, a dream is no more there because you are awake. Osho

To be yourself in a world which does its best to make you someone else means fighting the hardest battle that any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. – e.e. cummings

Only that Illumined One who keeps seducing formless into form had the charm to win my Heart. Only a Perfect One who is always laughing at the word Two can make you know of Love. – Hafiz

What is essentially mysterious cannot yield itself to scrutiny. – Frank Barron

The nature of the Self and how it is seen and understood, like the Solar System, depends very much on the perspective of the viewer. – Sue & Simon Lilly

Our work is to stay present, available to the universe and vulnerable to the truth. When we are wholeheartedly present, exploring the conditioned mind, who we really are sees who we really aren’t. – Stephen and Ondrea Levine

If you judge people you have no time to love them. – Mother Teresa

Throughout the whole journey on the spiritual path, the main thing that has to be accomplished is the forgetting of the false ego. – Hazrat Inayat Khan

The substance of the universe is in us; the one force, energy, sustains that substance, and that substance of the universe is our consciousness. – Antony Andreasen

What is true, is true only for one time and only in one place. – T.S. Eliot

We are all teachers; the question is not whether we will teach, but what. – Anonymous

Lulled by Time’s beats, eternity sleeps in us. – Sri Aurobindo

Do you remember how electrical currents and ‘unseen waves’ were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy. – Albert Einstein

It is the Soul which desires to know. Plotinus

I dreamed of myself in a dream, and told the dream, which was mine, as if it was another person’s of whom I dreamed. Indeed, what is life when thinking of the past, but dreaming of a dream dreamt by another who seems sometimes to be oneself? – Stopford Brooke

Everything you need or want is either owned or controlled by another human being. So you owe it too yourself to get good at asking for it. – Anonymous

Stop waiting for permission. You were born with the permission to be yourself. – Ron Rubin & Stuart Avery Gold

Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to reveal your mistakes. Antisthenes

May you walk in beauty. – Navaho blessing

I cannot be born on solid ground, only where everything flows. To enter my dawn you must be unbound from how the fixed world goes. Leave behind your maps and losses, let dreams be all your law. Trust the wind when the ocean tosses, burn your boats on the farther shore. – Birth of Apollo

In addition to freedom from thoughts, effortlessness and attentiveness, joy should also be an essential and integral part of our mediation. However, if we crave such joy through our meditation, it will never come to us… It is truly a great revelation to know that if we run after any joy it eludes us but the moment we stop such efforts, it automatically starts pouring on us in abundance. – Dr Samprasad Vinod

Your daily life is your school, your temple, and your religion. – Kahlil Gibran

Singleness of mind ensures success. – Hazrat Inayat Khan

We do not remember days, we remember moments. – Cesare Pavese

Yoga is a friend to those who embrace it sincerely and totally. It lifts its practitioners from the clutches of pain and sorrow, and enables them to live fully, taking delight in life – B.K.S. Iyengar

What I most want is to spring out of this personality, then to sit apart from that leaping. I’ve lived too long where I can be reached. – Rumi

It is natural for judgements to arise; this is not a problem. But if we mistake such thoughts for truth and reality, then we become a little crazy. – Roshi Reb Anderson

The Beloved is not a noun. It is a verb, it is beingness constantly unfolding. – Stephen and Ondrea Levine

What is Tao? A huge tree grows from a tiny sprout, a nine-storey tower rises from a heap of earth, a thousand-mile journey begins from one’s feet. – Lao Tzu

The greatest teaching is to live with an open heart. – Anonymous

If the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘thank you’ that would suffice. – Meister Eckhart

Through matter the soul attains to its highest realization; therefore, the physical body is a necessity for the fulfilment of its purpose. – Hazrat Inayat Khan

God is far off because we don’t know how to see Him close by. Actually there is nothing closer than Him, more than that – He is here and now. The name of God is just for those who can’t find the here and now. Words, names, doctrines, scriptures, religion, philosophy – all these are created for those who can see Him only at a distance. – Osho

The love you find when the heart centre opens is the universal, unconditional and all-encompassing love of the beloved, of the divine. It is there because it is who you are and always have been. You do not have to go in search of this love, or try to develop it, or pray for it to be shown to you. It is in you all along. You have no need to protect it, there is no concern about being taken advantage of or being hurt, no fear of losing it or of giving away so much that none is left. How can you lose what you truly are? How can you be left with nothing when love is the source of all life? – Ed & Deb Shapiro

Often we take the limits of our own vision for the limits of the world. –Schopenhauer

I honour those who try and rid themselves of any lying, who empty the self and have only clear being there. – Rumi

The purpose of life is a life of purpose. – Robert Byrne

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust

You do not see that the Real is in your home, and you wander from forest to forest listlessly. – Kabir

It’s only possible to live happily ever after on a moment-to-moment basis. – Margaret Bonnano

The only source of every kind of benefit for others is awareness of our own condition. When we know how to work with our situation we can really benefit others, and our feeling of compassion will arise spontaneously, without the need for us to hold ourselves to the rules of behaviour of any given religious doctrine. – Namkhai Norbu

The mind asks questions; the heart has the answers. – Byron Katie

To the dull mind, nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Remain available to the dimension of the strange, the mysterious, and that will help you tremendously. If you remain available, more and more experiences of this kind will start happening… Don’t think that life ends with arithmetic – there is magic too. – Osho

Success is not the attribute of a blessed few – it is the endowment of all who open themselves to inspiration, desire, and hard work. – Ron Rubin & Stuart Avery Gold

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s, I will not reason or compare, my business is to create! – William Blake

Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open. – Rumi

In Buddhism the definition of ignorance is to think you are only what you think. To believe you are only the conditioned mind and body. To forget the whole universe. To lose context. To compare yourself only to what you have thought in the past. To be your conditioning, deaf to the roar of your own great nature. – Stephen and Ondrea Levine

Life is always at a turning point. – Irwin Edman

I rose above the limits of the world… my feet were walking on the far side of heaven. – A Chuckchee shaman

All the different stages of Yoga are intended to bring us scientifically to the super-conscious state, or Samadhi. Furthermore, this is a most vital point to understand: Inspiration is as much in man’s nature as it was in that of the ancient prophets. These prophets were not unique; they were men such as you and I. They were great Yogis. They had gained this super-consciousness, and you and I can also gain the same. They were not peculiar people. The very fact that one man ever reached that state proves that it is possible for every man to do so. – Swami Vivekanada

Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited, for a short stay, without knowing why. To me it is enough to wonder at the secrets. – Albert Einstein

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. – William James

There will come a time when you believe that everything is finished. That will be the beginning. – Louis L’Amour

The great sea has set me in motion, set me adrift, moving me as the weed moves in a river. – An Eskimo shamaness

For people to achieve all that is demanded of them, they must regard themselves as greater than they are. – Goethe

No, to see spirits is relatively easy. All you need is a pure soul. – A Huichol shaman

The flight of the alone to the alone. – Plotinus

I sat down on the green bench next to them. I placed a small stone on their grave. I learned that gesture in Israel. It means, I have visited. – Natalie Goldberg

We cannot accept being separated from that which attracts us. We want to join it to ourselves in one way or another, to make it ours… All of our existence is based on such simple truths. Duality is our state of consciousness, yet we do not want duality. If we feel attracted to something, we want to unite it with ourselves, and since there exists only one, we have eliminated the duality. – Arnaud Desjardins

No one can ask another to be healed. But they can let himself be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not have? And who can share what he denies himself? – A Course in Miracles

Having been loved does not mean having been loved by mechanical, emotional love; it means having been loved by that other love for which French and English have no particular word. – Arnaud Desjardins

In a virgin forest, growth keeps pace with decay; at one place a tree will be reaching maturity, at another declining. As an old tree falls a gap is made in the canopy, light is let in and many younger trees reach with each other to occupy this new opening. This is happening by slow degrees throughout the forest and so the rhythm of growth is maintained. – Richard St. Barb Baker

There is a connection between the desire for love in a man-woman relationship (or in a homosexual relationship) and the desire simply to be loved… to be truly loved as the little child in you was at least relatively loved by its mother. Yet I am telling you that you can only love if you no longer have the gut-level need to be loved. – Arnaud Desjardins

If you are becoming a kinder, more intelligent, more compassionate person as a result of what you are doing, I think you are doing something right. – Charles Tart

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin

The motto of life is “give and take”. Everyone is both a giver and receiver. He who is not is a barren tree. – Martin Buber

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. – Aristotle

After the final no there comes a yes. And on that yes, the future world depends. – Wallace Stevens

Action is the product of the qualities inherent of nature. – Bhagavad Gita

You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched. – Phaedrus

Our problem is that we don’t want to surrender what we can surrender, and do want to surrender what we can’t surrender. – Daniel Moran

When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. – Lao Tzu

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. – Mathew, New Testament

Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard them as a drain on your energy. – Trungpa Rinpoche

Sex is the outward visible sign of an inward spiritual grace bringing about love. – Alan Watts

If we could first know where we are, and wither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. – Abraham Lincoln

Awakening brings us closer to life, more in contact with life, more sensitive to everything that everyone else feels, not less sensitive, not cut off, divorced or detached. The difference is that with awakening it becomes not only acceptable, but joyful to experience both the joys and sufferings of the world. – Robert Ennis

Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him and then choose that way with all his strength. – Hassidic saying

Your friends are God’s way of apologising for your relatives. – Wayne W. Dyer

Decide to love. Just do it – love. Take the first step. Everything is based on love. – Arnaud Desjardins

Love thy neighbour despite all his shortcomings and displeasing habits in the same way that thou loveth thyself with all thy known shortcomings with undesirable ways. – The Baal Sham Tov

The doors of wisdom are never shut. – Benjamin Franklin

We can chart our future clearly and wisely when we know the path which has led to the present. – Adlai E. Stevenson

Faith contains the power of growth. A person with perfect faith will grow and develop… regardless of the obstacles and difficulties he may encounter, nothing will throw him off course. He will accept whatever he experiences with patience. – Nachman of Breslov

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

God is love, and he who is in love is in God and God is in him. – Meister Eckhart

Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the opportunity of living. – The Buddha

My work is about realizing both the Relative and Absolute. – Joan Halifax

He looked at this soul with a Telescope. What seemed all irregular… he saw to be beautiful constellations… hidden worlds within worlds. – Samuel Coleridge Taylor

Our soul is one with God, unchangeable goodness, and therefore between God and our soul there is neither wraith or forgiveness because there is no between. – Julian of Norwich

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. – Alfred Lord Tennyson

Reasoning beings were created for one another’s sake; and patience is a branch of justice. – Marcus Aurelius

One thing life has taught me; if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Like the universe coming into existence, the lover wakes, and whirls in a dancing joy. – Rumi

All Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing else exists. – Huang Po

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. – Mark Twain

Whatever position you may have to sexuality – even if you are a monk or an ascetic living in total abstinence – Tibetan or Hindu tradition maintains that sexual energy is paramount. But what use do we make of this energy? This is where we see all the variety that exists in human nature. – Arnaud Desjardins

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. – Meister Eckhart

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. – Herman Hesse

The secret of secrets is in me again. – Anna Akhmatova

You gain strength and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” You must do the thing you think you cannot do. – Eleanor Roosevelt

When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. – Alexander Graham Bell

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved. – Helen Keller

To see what is right and not to do it is lack of courage or principle. – Confucius

The moment of change is the only poem. – Adrienne Rich

Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other. – Euripides

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

You must follow a natural path and, as I often insist, you must be normal before aspiring to what is supra-normal. – Arnaud Desjardins

We are already one and we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our own original way. Whatever we have to be is what we are. – Thomas Merton

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. – C.G. Jung

The darkness declares the glory of the light. – T.S. Eliot

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The universe is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and human by nature, endeared to each other. – Epictetus

Once you know who you are, nothing can stop you. – Stedman Graham

Light, light, the world needs more light. – Goethe

In every beginning there is a magic power… that protects us and helps us to live. – Herman Hesse

Whoever can see through fear will always be safe. – Tao Te Ching

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is something valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our trust. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. – e.e.commings

God is present in every act of service. All life turns on this law. The Bhagavad Gita

By cultivating one’s nature one will return to virtue. – Chuang Tzu

The virtue of the universe is wholeness. It regards all things as equal. – Tao Te Ching

Self-actualizing people must be what they can be. – Abraham Maslow

Realistically, we can stop trying to do the impossible and instead concentrate on what all teachings declare necessary: freeing ourselves from the past. And if the weight of the past is lifted, there is no future either. – Arnaud Desjardins

Eternity is not the hereafter… this is it. If you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. – Joseph Campbell

We ask ourselves: “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? – Marianne Williamson

Man is in the process of changing, to forms which are not of this world; grows he in time to the formless, a plane on the cycle above. Know ye, ye must become formless before ye are one with the light. – The Emerald Tablets of Thoth

Everyone is born a genius, but the process of life de-geniuses them. – Buckminster Fuller

If you want to see what your body will look like tomorrow, look at your thoughts today. – Navajo saying

The opposite of self-deception is just working with the facts of life. – Chogyam Trungpa

It’s not enough to come into the temple and divide your practice from your daily life, and then walk out. – Danan Henry

Ego is extremely resilient and very quick to take credit for anything that arises that looks attractive or powerful. – Anonymous

No man is wise enough by himself. – Titus Maccius Plautus

If you do a lot of inner purification very seriously, that contains the ego. It actually creates a shell around the ego that stops it from being saturated by the spiritual experiences. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

A person should not become dumber as a result of spiritual training. – Charles Tart

Although God is the ultimate source of all energy, the self has a tendency to misuse it for its own ignorant purposes. – Bernadette Roberts

From the position of the egoic consciousness, unitive consciousness always appears to be quite supernatural, mysterious or nirvanic, but once we get there, it turns out to be utterly ordinary. – Bernadette Roberts

Those who play at being angels, end up as animals. – Blaise Pascal

If we think we have achieved something, that we have “made it”, then we have been seduced by Mara’s daughters. – Chogyam Trungpa

The ego cannot have a mystical experience. It can only carry the reflection of a mystical reflection. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The candle is not there to illuminate itself. – Nawab Jan-Fishan Khan

If you have developed a perfectly functioning human organism, that’s something to surrender. That is a worthy gift to god. – Robert Ennis

Only the person who has unpacked his or her own experience can help other people unpack theirs. – Joan Halifax

Tantra supports all – light and dark… Claim the power of your wholeness. Yang and yin live within. Unconditionally accept life’s dualities and you transcend them. – David Ramsdale

You can get very high, but you may fall. – Ram Dass

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions. – Idries Shah

To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. – Carlos Castenada

One of the greatest misunderstandings that people have is regarding the spiritual journey as a vacation trip. – Chogyam Trungpa

One attains to God by sticking to truth. – Saradi Devi

Western individualism is bad – up, down and all around. But there is one area that is really detrimental; the idea that each person is on their own and that you don’t really need a community because everything is individualistically guided. – Reggie Ray

Failure is one of the simplest ways of destroying the ego. Anonymous

Slowly and surely I began to realise that the whole question of Awakening is infinite in its subtlety and complexity. – Andrew Cohen

The veil is not in the mind, but in the heart. Only the heart will lift the veil. – E.J. Gold

The less the wayfarer knows about his own spiritual progress the better… In the journey toward annihilation and nothingness, it is best not to know where we are. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The spiritual journey has to do with really raw material, really confronting our fundamental ego-mania, our separation from the world. And as such, it’s a threat to our accumulated habits. – Judith Leif

When we think about enlightenment, we can see it as a process, not just a final state. – Charles Tart

The water practices come from a very different philosophical perspective that pragmatically makes a huge difference in how you live and practice. Whatever you do must feel comfortable. You must have full effort without strained force. In order to do that one must refine a very fine edge in the mind. To use all of your effort and yet not use force, yet not contravene the actual limitations of the body, the mind, and the spirit. This is the tradition of Lao Tse. – Bruce Frantzis Kumar

No matter what remarkable state arises, we must learn to allow it to come and go freely, recognising that it is not the goal of meditation. – Jack Kornfield

Our own comfort prevents us from seeing where we may work and serve. Comfort can be deceptive – it may be material, mental, or spiritual. – E.J. Gold

Not to advance in the spiritual life is to go back. – Brother Lawrence

The natural inclination of most people is to want to rest. And when one rests, the next thing that might happen is one may get drowsy, and from there one may end up falling asleep once again. – Andrew Cohen

All energy inside a human being if it is free, easy and unblocked is like a flowing river. There is absolutely no reason why you should do anything to it. It is as it should be. There would never be any reason to do anything with it if we remained in this exceedingly natural state that is ours at birth. Because of a myriad of conditions and circumstances we do not remain this way. – Bruce Frantzis Kumar

The may find after you’ve climbed to the top that your ladder is against the wrong wall. – Anonymous

The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of the divine. – St. John of the Cross

You must know yourself, must know your weaknesses. – E.J. Gold

You yourself are your own barrier – rise from within it. – Hafiz

It’s a universal truth: When people are stuck, their stuckness has to be theirs until such a point that they can come away from it. – Andrew Rawlinson

As long as we exist in this world, the expression of love and compassion is a million times greater than our transient experiences of another existence wherein this world is neither seen nor known. – Bernadette Roberts

Experiences can be transforming in and of themselves, but if we don’t make use of the transformation, it’s an academic question. – Lee Lozowick

The ego is always behind every corner. You have to watch out! – Irina Tweedie

Success as a practitioner is not necessarily about being the perfect practitioner, but avoiding the traps at whatever level you are at. Lee Lozowick

Compassion is the essence of a spiritual life. – The Dalai Lama

How rarely are we able to let anyone see us as we really are, without donning a mask of any kind. – John Welwood

Ecstatic or pleasurable experiences by themselves are not transformational. They need to be integrated, digested and reanimated in a particular way in order to be useful. – Lee Lozowick

There seem to be degrees to which people get stuck in the grandiosity; some live on it for the rest of their lives. – Claudio Naranjo

One experience is not enough. – Irina Tweedie

The mind has a way of tricking us into thinking that the way not to suffer is to get enlightened and have everything happen exactly the way we want it to be. – Robert Ennis

We all need to be loved. We each have heroes that were loved, so we try to be like them – like Jesus, or Buddha, or Krishna. Yet the very act of “trying to be like” takes us further away from ourselves. That’s the paradox. – Gary Mueller

O Lord! If I worship you from the fear of hell, cast me into hell. If I worship you from desire for paradise, deny me paradise. – Rabia

Authentic discipleship paradoxically demands a mature personality with a strong ego. – Georg Feuerstein

In the first level of taoist meditation one spends a long time learning to become a mature human being. My teacher Liu and I spent a long time on this. This is absolutely necessary before going further. Without this level of maturity, as one starts moving into the world of spirit, one can either only become a power tripper, or one must throw away whatever one gathers in order to be free. – Bruce Frantzis Kumar

Do not try to be humble: learn humility. – Idries Shah

Remember that greed includes greed for not being greedy. – Idries Shah

If our work is successful, it is not into another world to which we will return but into this world. – E.J. Gold

What characterizes genuine transformation is some residual results of these mystical states that makes the particular human being more mature – meaning wiser, more serene, more able to respond to circumstances skilfully, more generous, more compassionate and so on. – Lee Lozowick

We’re all bozo’s on the bus. – Wavy Gravy

When people come to study, they need to have a strong ego, not a non-ego. They need to be formed. When they are formed, when their condition is strong, then they can also let go of it. – Jakusho Kwong Roshi

The inflow of light and love is rhythmical, as is everything in the universe. After awhile it diminishes or ceases, and the flood is followed by the ebb. – Stanislav and Christina Grof

“Unusual experiences” can create an obstacle course of repeated difficulties and pitfalls in our spiritual journey. – Jack Kornfield

When someone has a mystical experience and thinks they are enlightened because of it, it’s like someone who goes to England once and considers, “Oh, now I’m a world traveller.” Seeing someplace does not mean that one is a citizen of that place. – Robert Ennis

On the path you can become a little bit more psychic, a little more open, and then you can confuse things like psychic experiences and clairvoyant experiences for enlightenment itself. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

True freedom must be won, by each and every individual through their own determination, clear intention, and perfect surrender. – Andrew Cohen

If you do not clear out your own energy fields beyond the body, then all energies coming in from an external environment activate the unresolved energies in your own personal Qi. – Bruce Frantzis Kumar

True spirituality is a mental attitude that you can practice at any time. – The Dalai Lama

It may be that one always thinks that one is more awake than one is. I’m always grateful when I realise what a bozo I’ve been, because then I have the opportunity of not doing that anymore. – Robert Ennis

The relationship between control (taking charge) and surrender (letting go) presents one of deepest existential quandaries humans face. – Joel Kramer and Diane Alstad

There is a sucker born every minute. – Phineas T. Barnum

Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it. – Hazrat Ali

Self-deception seems always to depend upon the dream world, because you would like to see what you have not yet seen, rather than what you are now seeing. – Choygam Trungpa

Do not think your magic ring will work if you yourself are not Solomon. – Hafiz

To accuse others of one’s misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows one’s education is complete. – Epictetus

Sooner or later on the spiritual journey one will come to a point where a leap of faith – a leap of trust – is required. – Andrew Cohen

As long as you want power, you can’t have it. – Ram Dass

People prefer to fight imaginary windmills rather than bravely stare the dragon of their own unconscious in the eye. They are scared of the sacred. – Georg Feuerstein

Do not think that you will be necessarily aware of your own enlightenment. – Dogen

When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can cling to. – Carlos Casteneda

Ultimately, you have to trust your own journey, and struggle through the process. – Gary Mueller

If you are evaluating a gemstone, you want to look at it from a number of different perspectives. – Robert Svoboda

The minute you don’t want power, you’ll have more power than you ever dreamed possible. – Ram Dass

It is necessary to make people realise the responsibility for their own lives and their own spiritual path. It is possible to accompany them, but not travel in their place. – Marie-Pierre Chevrier

To go with the drift of things, to yield with a grace to reason, to bow and accept the end of a love or of a season. – Robert Frost

In Zen, if someone gives you the teaching from the right, you must give it to someone on the left. If somebody gives you teaching from the front, you must give it in the back. We are all in this together. – Danan Henry

One does not become holy all at once. – Brother Lawrence

After the ecstasy, the laundry. – Zen saying

Meditation is not a war. It is a way of making friends with yourself. – Rick Fields

The greatest war you will have to fight is the war within yourself. The greatest pacifist is your own heart. – Swami Brahmananda

To love God is much easier than to love a human being. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

When you begin to see that suffering is grace, you cannot believe it. You think you are cheating. – Ram Dass

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart. – Meister Eckhart

What is the sound of one hand clapping? – Zen koan

Reality is hard and persistent and will knock you on your ass every time. – Werner Erhard

To become conscious of the shadow involves recognising the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. – C.G. Jung

Do not seek perfection in a changing world. Instead, perfect your love. –Master Sengstan

Always discriminate. – Saradi Devi

It takes time to make a soul pregnant with God. – Bhai Sahib

Liberation is not something any human being can own. It’s a matter of how resistant you are to it. – Reginald Ray

There is an idea that with the spiritual life that there will be an increase in the amount of happy experiences and a decrease in the amount of unhappy experiences. The difference is in the way in which we live those experiences. – Annick D’Astier

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

Do not have unrealistic expectations: “Today I’m completely negative, tonight I meditate, tomorrow I’ll be completely pure.” You cannot purify yourself overnight. Not only are such expectations wrong, they themselves become obstacles on the path. – Lama Thubten Yeshe

Words have the power to destroy or heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world. – The Buddha

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. – Martin Luther King

Life itself provides the test. The way in which we live what life presents us with is an indication of where we are at. – Annick D’Aster

As our case is new, we must think and act anew. – Abraham Lincoln

A monk asks, “Is there anything more wonderful than the wonders of nature?” The master replies, “Yes, your awareness of the wonders of nature”. – Angelus Silesius

You can’t live in God’s world for very long; there are no restaurants and no toilets. – Sazaki Roshi

All men know the utility of useful things; but they do not know the utility of futility. – Chuang-Tzu

If we divide reality into two camps – violent and non-violent – and stand in one camp, the world will never have peace. – Thich Nhat Hanh

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

I have never seen a man lost who was on a straight path. – Saadi of Shiraz

Even in the middle of great despair and crisis we can discover a place deep within which is totally beautiful, pure, and powerful, and which is never victimised – it never has been and never will be. – Serge Berrington Behrens

Even the extraordinary experiences are no good, only something to let go of, unless they are connected with this moment here and now. – Aachan Chah

I am not more gifted then anybody else. I am just more curious than the average person and will not give up on a problem until I have found the proper solution. – Albert Einstein

Spiritual practice can never be fulfilled by imitation of an outer form of perfection. – St. John of the Cross

We are all just disciples of God; sinners trying to be better. – Irina Tweedie

To me every hour of light and dark is a miracle. Every inch of space is a miracle. – Walt Whitman

You see the fact that your spiritual journey is an entirely different ball game to the path you thought you were on. It is very difficult to make that transition. – Ram Dass

Hatred never ceases by hatred; by love alone it is healed. This is an ancient and eternal law. – The Buddah

If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. – Idries Shah

There is no completeness without sadness and longing, for without them there is no sobriety, no kindness. Wisdom without kindness and knowledge without sobriety are useless. – Carlos Casteneda

We are born into the world of nature; our second birth is into the world of spirit. – The Bhagavad Gita

Love is empty of everything but love. – Stephen Levine

When I began to plunge into the real nitty-gritty of spiritual practice that is when the real obstacles came up. – Claudio Naranjo

A sadhu must always be alert. His path is slippery, and a slippery path must also be trod. – Saradi Devi

Some people are always grumbling that roses have thorns. I am thankful that thorns have roses. – Alphonse Karr

Continuous practice over many years is a much more powerful way of purifying negative actions and much better for you than impulsive, emotional bursts of meditation in solitary retreat. – Lama Thubten Yeshe

All that majesty, ecstasy, and wonder doesn’t change the way things are. – Lee Lozowick

Within you is a fountain of joy, within you is an ocean of bliss. – Swami Sivananda

One who doesn’t have a sense of humour about what they are doing cannot possibly be awakened. – Robert Ennis

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there? – The Buddha

The individual shadow is ineluctably tied in with the collective shadow. The integration of the shadow into consciousness is not a once-and-for-all-event but a lifelong process. – Georg Feuerstein

As you progress in the Work, your chief weakness doesn’t go away, it actually becomes stronger. It is the grain of sand in the oyster around which the pearl is coated. – E.J. Gold

Enlightenment is not difficult, keeping your practice pure is difficult. – Mel Weitzman

Our greatest gift is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. Anonymous

If one completes the journey to one’s own heart, one will find oneself in the heart of everyone else. – Father Thomas Keating

To imitate a saint is to ask for real trouble. – Robert Svoboda

When we have touched another with forgiveness we no longer require anything in return. – Stephen Levine

Genuine understanding and living your life according to the four thoughts – loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity – this is bodhicitta. – Kentin Tai Situpa

I have been all things unholy; if God can work through me, he can work through anyone. – St. Francis of Assisi

You can search the whole universe and not find a single being more worthy of loving kindness than yourself. – The Buddha

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would rather see you in better living conditions. – Hafiz

It is easy to question apparently irrational, funny or bizarre beliefs of others, but one’s own are usually assumed to be true. – Frances Vaughan

People think that a teacher should display miracles and manifest illumination. But the requirement of a teacher is that he should possess all that the disciple needs. – Ibn Arabi

The side-effect that makes spiritual work most attractive is the possibility of developing compassion and the ability to love. I don’t think it is to achieve enlightenment, whatever that is. – Robert Hall

If a dervish remained in a state of ecstasy, he would be fragmented in both worlds. – Saadi of Shiraz

If we open our eyes, if we open our minds, if we open our hearts, we will find that this world is a magical place. – Chogyam Trungpa

The spiritual path is a process, a journey, and I don’t think anyone who is at ease with himself or herself would assume that the journey is completed. It’s an ongoing process. – Robert Hall

To not forgive is a decision to suffer. – A Course of Miracles

Surely it is not so much a matter of giving people what they want as giving them the best of what one has to give. – Ashley Montagu

Finally, everything that we’ve said here is just the bubble that pops, and all that remains is just to be here at one with the here and now, with one’s self in a clean way, and be open to the whole, without asking ourselves whether this gives us pleasure or not – simply being one. – Daniel Moran

Pleasure-anxiety is the foundation of the fear of a free, independent way of living. – Wilhelm Reich

Not only the thirsty seek the water, the water as well seeks the thirsty. – Rumi

The past decides the present to the extent that the world is a machine. The future decides the present to the extent that the world is creative. – Fred Alan Wolf

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. – C.K. Chesteron

If all the heavens were to open up, and shower us with truth, a thought would be enough, to give the heart a roof. – Malcolm Cawley

We cannot say what joy is. We must go the further step and discover its true nature for ourselves. – Robert A. Johnson

The goal of the community is to make sure that each member of the community is heard and is properly giving the gifts that they have brought to the world. – Sobonfu E. Some

All truth goes through three stages: it is ridiculed, it is vehemently opposed, it is agreed to be self-evident! Shopenhauer

Without the feeling of pleasure, happiness is just an illusion. – Alexander Lowen

Smilingly, out of my pain, I have woven a little poem – Aline Kilmer

Energy follows thought – Anonymous

Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces… Instead of forever straining for the tantalizing prize just dangled out of reach, one begins to harvest the genuine rewards of living. – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Therefore, ask not of yourself what you need, for you do not know, and your advice to yourself will hurt you. – A Course of Miracles

When human relationships fail… they fail because they were entered into for the wrong reason. – Conversations with God

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. – George Elliot

Self-acceptance in its transformative sense is difficult, exacting, subtle; we cannot do this work alone. We need help. – Jacob Needleman

The universe is an ocean of sentience. You are already swimming in that ocean, and you are conscious because the universe knows itself through you. It knows itself as you. That you are barely aware of who you are proves nothing. – Tony Crisp

There is a way to be happy in relationships, and that is to use relationships for their intended purpose, not the purpose you have designed. – Conversations with God

The day came when the risk to remain closed in a bud became more painful then the risk to took to blossom. – Anais Nin

Try not to confuse longevity with a job well done. Remember, your job on the planet is not to see how long you can stay in relationship, it’s to decide, and experience, Who You Really Are. – Conversations with God

Reality! What a concept! – Robin Williams

Tolerance of pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognise, however dimly, that there must be a better way. – A Course in Miracles

You will be required to confront many powerful adversaries, because the dark always follows the light. You can only overcome these opponents if you refuse to become them. If you win by acting as they do, then you have lost everything. – Robert Moss, from a dream

In psychology one possesses nothing unless one has experienced its reality. A purely intellectual insight is not enough, because one knows the words and not the substance of the thing from the inside. – C.G. Jung

It is safer to wander without a guide in unmapped country than to trust completely a map traced by men who came only as tourists and often with biased judgement. – Marie-Louise Sjoestedt

Western education predisposes us to think of knowledge in terms of factual information… By contrast, within the indigenous world the act of coming to know something involves a personal transformation. – F. David Peat

If the soul is strong, the images are clear and the dream does not require interpretation… If a soul is so strong that sensible objects are powerless to turn it aside from the activity that corresponds to its proper nature… it perceives in the waking state what others perceive in dreams. – Avicenna

If at first the idea is not absurd then there is no hope for it. – Albert Einstein

In a sense the secret of alchemy is to imagine a world in which it is possible to transmute base metal to gold. – Patrick Harpur

But all this alchemy is inside us, not outside… In man’s inner alchemy higher substances are distilled out of other, coarser material which otherwise would remain in a course state. – P.D. Ouspensky

All inner work begins with work upon the shadow. It is the foundation of any psychological or spiritual path. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Therefore, if we want to do something positive with our life we need a method that is at least as powerful as the confused materialistic energies we are caught up in. – Lama Thubten Yeshe

The ground of the soul is dark. – James Hillman

The duration of the Work depends on the amount of personal stuff to be worked through. – Patrick Harpur

To desire and to see through desire – that is the courage which the heart requires. – James Hillman

So we can see that the ordinary and enlightened functions of desire are directly opposed to one another. In Tantra, the experience of bliss that arises from desire expands the mind so that we overcome all our limitations, whereas ordinarily that pleasure that comes from contact with desirable objects narrows our attention and leads to a restrictive obsession with more and better pleasure. – Lama Thubten Yeshe

Look at these worlds spinning out of nothingness. That is your power. – Rumi

So how do you make your life sacred? You say, “This is sacred,” and you treat it that way. – Stuart Wilde

Being alive means having a heart and expressing it. In freeing the body, we free the heart to experience the power of love. – Gabrielle Roth

Tantra teaches the first thing: Be loving toward your body, befriend your body, revere your body, respect your body, take care of your body – it is God’s gift. Treat it well, and it will reveal great mysteries to you. All growth depends on how you are related to your body. – Osho

Even in the best circumstances, we are all just learning. No parents are fully enlightened. Children will unconsciously absorb their parent’s fears and biases and later in life will, one hopes, learn to become conscious of these conditioned attitudes and find ways to release them. This is normal; this is the work we all have to do. – Richard Moss

The mind goes insane without the guidance of the heart. – Marianne Williamson

Ecstasy is the final stage of intimacy with yourself. – Deepak Chopra

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive. Jump into the experience while you are alive! – Rumi

One has to break through the barriers of belief; cease reliance upon one's beliefs no matter how wonderful and comforting in order to break through the barriers of the third dimension. If one wishes to remain satisfied with what one believes, then that's where one remains. One tricky aspect is that one has to even give up a belief in other dimensions before being able to genuinely experience them if they exist. Just as in order to find out if God exists one has not only to cease believing God does not exist; one also has to cease believing God does exist. Belief creates its own evidence. In other words we have to have the faith the trust to explore. To find out. To seek and keep seeking. Barney Camfield