Inspirational Quotes

​The following are my favourite passages from some of my most treasured books and revered teachers. I hope you will find the time to contemplate these words of wisdom.

Trust

So long as we believe in our heart of hearts that our capacity is limited and we grow anxious and unhappy, we are lacking in faith. One who truly trusts in God has no right to be anxious about anything.
-Paramahansa Yogananda

You must understand that each life is a master novel written by God. It is not up to you to try to fathom it; you will be defeated by the limitations of your Maya-deluded intelligence.
-Paramahansa Yogananda, Journey to Self-realization

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labours are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong… Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.
-Emerson in The Mystic Masters Speak (Vernon Howard)

Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
Rumi- The Essential Rumi 

Do you think I know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next.
Rumi- The Essential Rumi 

While a bird starts out with a direction in mind, it simply rides the currents. As human beings, though, we somehow overreach the currents, imagining routes and timetables that we have no control over. We call these routes and timetables goals. If large enough, they become ambitions or aspirations. Then we adhere to them as if they came from God....However you might plan-- to tunnel our way through life toward intentions cast ahead of us as obligations is to actually bypass being touched by much of life. In truth, being single minded is highly overrated. It often limits what we can learn from the world. For life is tangential and circulatory like the veins on a leaf or in a chamber of the heart. Or like the web of tributaries feeding water to a continent. The larger intention is to stay in relationship with everything that comes along, at least long enough to taste what is living. For all my focus and conscientious planning, unplanned unfoldings are what have made me more human.
- Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Eventually, we are asked to undo the story we've been told about life- or the story we have told ourselves- so we might drop freshly into life. For all our attempts to script our lives, life itself cannot be scripted. It's like trying to net the sea. Life will only use our nets up: tangle them, sink them, unravel them, wear them down, embed them in its bottom. Like the sea, the only way to know life is to enter it.
-Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen
 
God never intended for you to go through life on your own power. He wants you to trust him and depend on him. That's why he allows problems in your life that you have no possible chance of solving on your own. Actually, he had the solution to your problem long before you even knew it was a problem. He's been waiting for you to stop trying and start trusting.
- Rick Warren, The Purpose of Christmas

What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood his plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life.
-A Course in Miracles

Simplicity is extremely powerful. You ask God to uphold you, and everything else follows. This is the holistic solution to all problems. The lilies of the field do not toil or spin, but human beings spend a lifetime of toil. Jesus was holding out the same holistic solution that we have arrived at: Providence will uphold you when you are totally aligned with God, as nature upholds all simpler life forms. "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?" (Matthew 6:26-27). The expression may be poetic, but the logic is pure wisdom: Alignment is the natural way; nonalignment isn't.
-Deepak Chopra, The Future of God

Truth isn't found in words but through insight and self discovery.
Truth isn't taught or learned. It is wrapped inside consciousness itself.
Your consciousness must deepen until what is false has been left behind.
Then the truth will exist by itself, strong and self-sufficient.
-Deepak Chopra, The Future of God

Just remember yourself. 'I am', is enough to heal your mind and take you beyond. Just have some trust. Commonsense too will tell you that to fulfill a desire you must keep your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands revealed.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That


Faith

Faith is personal. It doesn't need to be justified to someone else.
Faith is something you must participate in- you can't judge it from the outside.
Faith is a way of exploring reality, but doesn't have to pass scientific testing.
Faith looks beyond physical appearances.
Faith is about meaning.
-Deepak Chopra, The Future of God

To really lose yourself is like holding a gun to your head
And pulling the trigger-- it takes courage.
Facing the truth means tying a bag over your head
Until you suffocate-- it takes faith.
You have to be brave to follow God's tracks into the unknown
  Where so many new things overwhelm and panic you.
But trust me and plunge the jeweled dagger into your heart.
This is what it takes to lose yourself.
There is no other path back to God.
-Hafiz (from The Future of God by Deepak Chopra)

When the mind becomes like a beautiful woman,
It bestows all that you want of a lover. 
Can you go that deep? 
Instead of making love in the body
With other children of God, 
Why not seek the true Lover 
Who is always in front of you 
With open arms? 
Then you will be free of this world at last,
Like me
- Hafiz  (from The Future of God by Deepak Chopra)

Grace

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.
-Anne Lamott

Personality

We are born at a given moment, in a given place, and like vintage years of wine, we have qualities of the year and the season in which we are born.
-Carl Jung

Conscious Control of Thoughts

Why forestall things which, who knows, may never materialize, and so allow the mind to embrace all manner of apprehensions totally futile in themselves? Nay, to fear a thing is the most likely way of giving it birth, seeing that the mind is creative, and what a man thinks, that does he create sooner or later; while conversely, that on which a man refuses to think at all he starves, so that the very germ of it dies for want of sustenance.
-Cyril Scott, The Initiate

The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw your attention in completely.
-Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

Sometimes when we perceive the world, we perceive without language. We perceive spontaneously...But sometimes when we view the world, first we think a word and then we perceive. In other words, the first instance is directly feeling or perceiving the universe; the second is talking ourselves into seeing the universe. So either you look or see beyond language- as first perception, or you see the world through the filter of your thoughts, by talking to yourself.
-Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Time passes, there is no way we can hold it back. Why, then, do thoughts linger on, long after everything else is gone?
- Ryokan

Meditation

The joyous rays of the soul may be perceived if you interiorize your attention. These perceptions may be had by training your mind to enjoy the beautiful scenery of thoughts in the invisible, intangible kingdom within you. Do not search for happiness only in beautiful clothes, clean houses, delicious dinners, soft cushions and luxuries. These will imprison your happiness behind the bars of externality, of outwardness. Rather, in the airplane of your visualization, glide over the limitless empire of thoughts. There, behold the mountain ranges of unbroken, lofty spiritual aspirations for improving yourself and others.
-Paramahansa Yogananda, Metaphysical Meditations

The science of the soul consists, among other things, in the practice of concentration, by which the vicissitudes of the mind are brought under control, and no longer permitted to jump like a monkey in unending restlessness, willy nilly, from one thing to another; for like a pond is the mind covered with innumerable ripples, set in motion, by the wind of desire and the vagaries of desultory thought; and not until those ripples are calmed can the smooth bedrock of the pond be seen, which is the soul itself.
-Cyril Scott, The Initiate

Peace

Don’t be surprised if God’s favour on your life stirs up opposition, jealousy and criticism in other people. The more favour on your life, the more opposition it will stir up. People won’t like you simply because of the blessing God put on you. Some people won’t like you and there is nothing you can do about it. Don’t waste your time trying to win over people who are never going to be for you. Don’t waste your time trying to convince people to understand you that are determined to misunderstand you. You are not the problem, it’s the favour they see on your life that they can’t handle. If they don’t accept you, blow them a kiss goodbye and move forward with your life. You don’t need their approval to become who God has created you to be.
 - Joel Osteen

Expectation is the mother of frustration and acceptance is the mother of peace and joy.
-Pujya Swamiji in By God's Grace: The Life and Teachings of Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswati

Freedom

How could I possibly explain the great freedom that comes from realizing to the depth of your being that life knows what it is doing? Only direct experience can take you there. At some point there's no more struggle, just the deep peace that comes from surrendering to a perfection that is beyond your comprehension. Eventually, even the mind stops resisting, and the heart loses the tendency to close. The joy, excitement, and freedom are simply too beautiful to give up. Once you are ready to let go of yourself, life becomes your friend, your teacher, your secret lover. When life's way becomes your way, all the noise stops, and there is a great peace.
-Michael A. Singer, The Surrender Experiment

Forgiveness   

All sins are nothing but a searching for happiness in the wrong direction
-Cyril Scott, The Initiate

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.
-Longfellow in The Mystic Masters Speak (Vernon Howard)

What we don't recognize is that holding onto resentment is like holding onto your breath. You will soon start to suffocate.
-Deepak Chopra

Ultimately, you have to turn to the power of grace to break through the boundaries of your reason, which can be ruthless in producing justification and hurt pride. The mystical truth is that forgiveness has nothing whatsoever to do with the person you are forgiving; it is a self initiated act of transformation in which you release yourself from a level of consciousness that binds you to the illusion that you are safe and protected in a world of chaos and that your God is the only God of justice and fairness for all humanity. Forgiveness is an act so powerful that a resurrection of the inner self does indeed occur, because you are retrieving your spirit from the dead zone of past traumas and unfinished business.
-Caroline Myss, Defy Gravity

Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.
-Oscar Wilde

Love

See no one as a body. Greet him as the Son of God he is, acknowledging that he is one with you in holiness.
-A course in Miracles

Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, “you owe me”. Look at what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.
-Hafiz

I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.
-Anne Tyler

Hatred does not cease through hatred at anytime. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.
-The Buddha

In India when we meet and part, we say, "Namaste" which means: I know the place in you where the entire universe resides. I know the place in you of love, of truth, of peace. I know the place in you where, if you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.
-Maharishi Mahesh Yogi 

Happiness

When you seek happiness for yourself it will always elude you. When you seek happiness for others you will find it in yourself.
-Wayne Dyer

Influence

Those people who are in touch with the deep soul are the very ones who do real good in the world. Those who are more concerned with “doing good” than with finding and loving their own deep souls end up unable to really help others.
-Elizabeth Lesser, The Seeker’s Guide

A man who is good does not go around contriving to do good. His own goodness does good, wherever he goes, though few realize it. Being one with goodness, he has no separate self-image of being a good man who can help the bad to be good. He leaves such imaginary and ego centered goodness to the self-deceived. The bad man thinks about goodness with personal gain in mind, while the truly good man impersonally expresses goodness. Because  a rose is a rose, it never needs to think of itself as one.
-Vernon Howard, Esoteric Mind Power

The deeper the self-realization of a man, the more he influences the whole universe by his subtle spiritual vibrations, and the less he himself is affected by the phenomenal flux.
-Swami Sri Yukteswar, in Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda) 

In this interconnected universe, every improvement we make in our private world improves the world at large for everyone. We all float on the collective level of consciousness of mankind, so that any increment we add comes back to us. We all add to our common buoyancy by our efforts to benefit life. It is a scientific fact that what is good for you is good for me.
-David R. Hawkins

Authenticity   

You fail on the stage of life because you are trying to act a part different from the one divinely designed for you. Sometimes the buffoon attracts more attention than the King; so no matter how obscure your role play it conscientiously. Tune yourself with Spirit, and in this earth drama you will play your part well.
-Paramahansa Yogananda, Man’s Eternal Quest

There is another more subtle way in which the innocence of childhood is lost: when the child is infected with the desire to become somebody. Contemplate the crowds of people who are striving might and main to become, not what Nature intended them to be- musicians, cooks, mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, inventors- but somebody: to become successful, famous, powerful; to become something that will bring, not quiet and self-fulfillment, but self-glorification and self expansion.
-Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
-Steven Pressfield

It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live a perfect imitation of somebody else's life.
- Bhagavad Gita


Principles     

He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions- such a man is…. A thing moved, instead of a living and moving being- an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner life is a slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient slave of the air.
-Amiel, in The Mystic Masters Speak (Vernon Howard)

Vision

No man can see over his own height. Let me explain what I mean. You cannot see in another man any more than you have in yourself. Your own level strictly determines the extent to which he comes within your understanding. If your intelligence is unawakened, mental qualities in another, even though they may be of the highest kind, will have no effect on you at all… his higher mental qualities will no more exist for you than colours exist for those who cannot see.
-Schopenhauer, in The Mystic Masters Speak (Vernon Howard)

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
-Anais Nin

When people show you who they are, believe them the first time. 
-Maya Angelou

Solitude

Great minds are like eagles, and build their nest in some lofty solitude.
-Schopenhauer, in The Mystic Masters Speak (Vernon Howard)

Seclusion is the price of greatness. Be alone within. Don’t lead the aimless life that so many persons follow. Meditate and read good books more. There are so many inspiring things to know, and yet man spends his time foolishly. Happiness will never come if you don’t concentrate on the wisdom of great men. Their thoughts are there to help you, in the scriptures and other truthful books.
-Paramahansa Yogananda, Man’s Eternal Quest

Inward change is followed naturally by a change in one’s speaking habits. A person can clearly notice this transformation as it takes place within himself. He finds himself speaking less impulsively and more consciously, that is, he is aware of what he says as he says it. He does not waste energy in useless talk, and he is not afraid to remain silent in certain situations, as many people are.  As his level of being rises, so does the quality of his speech, just as a growing tree produces higher apples.
-Vernon Howard, Esoteric Mind Power

Introspection

Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don't know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress. 
-Paramahansa Yogananda

Beauty

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others.
-Audrey Hepburn

Envy

Before we passionately desire anything which another enjoys, we should examine into the happiness of its possessor.
-La Rochefoucauld, in The Mystic Masters Speak (Vernon Howard) 

A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.
-Proverbs 14:30

Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You many house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which cannot visit,
Not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek
Not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His
Might that his arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So He loves the bow that is stable.
-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Wisdom

Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears. Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness. Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters it must have lost its power to wound. Before the soul can stand in the presence of the Master its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart.
-Mabel Collins, Light on the Path

Wisdom is not communicable….Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
-Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

Personal Effort

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
-Theodore Roosevelt

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
- Abraham Lincoln

We should live or lives like gardeners in God’s divine garden carefully tending each flower and each tree, but never becoming attached to what will blossom, what will flower, what will give fruit, and what will wither away.
--Pujya Swamiji in By God's Grace: The Life and Teachings of Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswati

Adversity

You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.
-Maya Angelou

Lost job in 1832.
Defeated for state legislature in 1832.
Failed in business in 1833.
Elected to state legislature in 1834.
Sweetheart (Ann Rutledge) died in 1835.
Had a nervous breakdown in 1836.
Defeated for Speaker in 1838.
Defeated for nomination for Congress in 1843.
Elected to Congress in 1846. 
Lost renomination in 1848.
Rejected for land officer in 1849.
Defeated for U.S. Senate in 1854.
Defeated for nomination for Vice President in 1856.
Again defeated for U.S. Senate in 1858.

After all these setbacks, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of the United States. He was a key figure in the Civil War, issuing the Emancipation proclamation, which led to the long awaited freeing of the millions of African American slaves.

http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/friend/lincoln-failures.html

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-Albert Einstein

We can have joy in our troubles, because we know that these troubles produce patience. And patience produces character, and character produces hope.
-Romans 5: 3-4

Turn your wounds into wisdom.
-Oprah Winfrey

For, if the soul be not tempted, exercised and proved with trials and temptations, it cannot quicken its sense of wisdom. For this reason it is said in Ecclesiasticus: He that has not been tempted, what does he know? And he that has not been proved, what are the things that he recognizes?....
For how long a time the soul will be held in this fasting and penance of sense, cannot be said with any certainty; for all do not experience it after one manner, neither do all encounter the same temptations. For this is meted out by the will of God, in conformity with the greater or smaller degree of imperfection which each soul has to purge away. In conformity, likewise, with the degree of love of union to which God is pleased to raise it, He will humble it with greater or less intensity or in greater or less time. Those who have the disposition and greater strength to suffer, He purges with greater intensity and more quickly. But those who are very weak are kept for a long time in this night, and these He purges very gently and with slight temptations.
-St John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

When you begin to see clearly the imperfection of the world, you will begin to seek the perfection of God. The truth is that God is using evil, not to destroy us, but to make us disillusioned with His toys, with the playthings of this world, so that we might seek Him.
-Paramahansa Yogananda

Most of us look upon defeat and reversals as weakening us; but in the spiritual life, when we are defeated it is possible to go deeper into our consciousness to bring out greater resources. Defeat is found very often in the lives of selfless people as an opening into opportunity. When you follow the spiritual path, living for others, there come increased challenges, to make you go deeper and deeper into your consciousness. If there were no difficulties, you would only be skimming on the surface of life.
-Eknath Easwaran, Living Thoughts of Great People

I have been a gem prospector, and I know that the precious stone needs to suffer the process of cutting and polishing in order to reveal its beauty. Seeing a gem in its raw state, one would not give it any value, but once polished, its magnificence is revealed. Every son and daughter is a rare diamond of creation, but they must be polished, implying pain and suffering, in order to realize their higher mission and consciousness. The world passes through great transformations, consequently generating great suffering, so we must put our faith and trust in the One Supreme Being who is our God.
​-John of God

Emotional Awareness

Frequently, we act as though we are lightbulbs and anyone who wants can simply switch us on or off. The smallest comment, look, or action of another changes our mood by 180 degrees. So frequently, we may be in a wonderful mood, and someone at the grocery store is rude to us, or someone on the freeway passes in front of our car, or a friend is cold and distant. Any of these things immediately switches our mood off as though it were a lightbulb. Instead, let us take whatever comes as Prasad (a blessing) and as a gift from God. Let us remain calm and steady in the face of both prosperity and misfortune. We must not lose our vital energy in this constant action and reaction to everyone around us.
-Pujya Swamiji in By God's Grace: The Life and Teachings of Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswati

Compulsive activities in your life are your way of avoiding pain. If you don't experience your pain, you remain locked in your compulsive behaviours, which are creating difficult and painful consequences in your life. You are not able to fulfill your greatest potential and that is important because that is where your deep meaning and sense of purpose resides. The emotional awareness of your pain allows you to free yourself from your obsessions, compulsions and fixations.
- Gary Zukav (excerpt from Super Soul Sunday on OWN)

Changing Direction

What other people label or might try to call failure, I have learned is just God's way of pointing you in a new direction. 
- Oprah Winfrey

We must be willing to get rid of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
- Joseph Campbell

No single decision you ever made has led in a straight line to where you find yourself now. You peeked down some roads and took a few steps before turning back. You followed some roads that came to a dead end and others that got lost at too many intersections. Ultimately, all roads are connected to all other roads. 
- Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets  

God is fully wherever we are, and when our plans are bent or split or reversed by the unexpected appearance of life in its many guises, this is often where the learning begins.
Mark Nepo- Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

People are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take of them
-Epictetus

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change
-Wayne Dyer

Sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.
-Dalai Lama

Leading by Example
 
I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day,
I’d rather one would walk with me than merely show me the way.
The eye’s a better pupil and much sharper than the ear,
Fine counsel can confuse me, but examples are always clear.
The lectures you deliver may be very wise and true,
But I’d rather get my lesson from observing what you do.
-Edgar Guest

Making a Difference

One early morning, after a fierce storm had hit the coast, I strolled to the beach for my morning walk. Horrified, I saw that tens of thousands of starfish had been washed up on the beach by the winds and the waves. I was saddened by the realization that all of them would die, stranded on the shore, away from the life-giving water. Despairing that there was nothing I could do, I sat down on the sand and put my head in my hands.
       But then I heard a sound, and I lifted my eyes. There, in the distance, I saw a man bending down and then standing up, bending down and standing up. Curious, I rose and walked toward him. I saw that he was picking up the starfish, one at a time, and throwing them back into the sea.
             "What are you doing?" I yelled.
             "Saving the starfish," he replied.
             "But don't you see, man, that there are tens of thousands of them?"
I asked, incredulous. "Nothing you can do will make a difference."
       He did not answer me but instead bent down, picked up another starfish, and cast it back in the water. Then he smiled, looked me in the eye, and said, "It made a difference to that one!"
-Parable found in The Hole in our Gospel (Richard Stearns)

The 'Doer'

You see yourself as the doer of work, so you feel tired. If it doesn’t go your way, you feel frustrated. If it goes your way, you feel proud. I do not think like that. I am not the doer. He is the doer—God is the doer. I am just his instrument. If I can be used every minute and every moment, for me, that is ecstasy. It is not work, I love it. 
-Pujya Swamiji in Hollywood to the Himalayas (Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati)

Interpersonal Understanding

If you do not want what I want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.
Or if my beliefs are different from yours, at least pause before you set out to correct them.
Or if my emotion seems less or more intense than yours, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel other than I do.
Or if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, please let me be.
I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up trying to change me into a copy of you.
If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself up to the possibility that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear as right-- for me. To put up with me is the first step of understanding me.
Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed in me for my seeming waywardness.
And one day, perhaps in trying to understand me, you might come to prize my differences, and, far from seeking to change me, might preserve and even cherish those differences.
I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend or your colleague. But whatever our relation, this I know: You and I are fundamentally different and both of us have to march to our own drummer.
-David Keirsey, Please Understand Me II

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.
- Dalai Lama

Friendship

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
-Henri Nouwen

Perspective

All things work together for good. There are no exceptions except in the ego’s judgment.
-A Course in Miracles

Compassion

Small kindnesses, small courtesies, small considerations habitually practiced... give a greater charm to the character than the display of great talents and accomplishments.
-Mary Ann Kelty

When you came into this world you cried, whereas everyone else rejoiced. During your lifetime, work and serve in such a way that when it is time for you to leave this world, you will smile at parting while the world cries for you. Hold this thought and you will always remember to consider others before yourself.
-Paramahansa Yogananda, Man’s Eternal Quest

Death

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we always enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effort, without the ghost of a shadow in it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute unbroken continuity. What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well. Nothing is past; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
-Henry Scott Holland

Karma Yoga

M: The Gita starts saying that you are not the body, that you are not
therefore the karta.
D: What is the significance?
M: That one should act without thinking that oneself is the actor.
The actions go on despite his egolessness. The person has come
into manifestation for a certain purpose. That purpose will be
accomplished whether he considers himself the actor or not.
D: What is Karma yoga? Is it non-attachment to Karma or its fruit?
M: Karma yoga is that yoga in which the person does not arrogate
to himself the function of being the actor. The actions go on
automatically.
D: Is it the non-attachment to the fruits of actions?
M: The question arises only if there is the actor. It is being all along
said that you should not consider yourself the actor.
D: So Karma yoga is kartrtva buddhi rahita karma - action without
the sense of doership.
M: Yes. Quite so.
-Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi- 643

M: There is only life. There is nobody who lives a life.
Q: That we understand, yet constantly we make attempts to live our lives instead of just living. Making plans for the future seems to be an inveterate habit with us.
M:  Whether you plan or you don't, life goes on. But in life itself a little whorl arises in the mind, which indulges in fantasies and imagines itself dominating and controlling life. Life itself is desireless. But the false self wants to continue--pleasantly. Therefore it is always engaged in ensuring one's continuity. Life is unafraid and free. As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you: The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.
-I Am That, Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, chapter 63, pp.297-298


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