The End of Suffering: Fearless Living in Troubled Times by Russell Targ and JJ Hurtak

Suffering results from our delusional cultural conditioning created by family, school, and television from which we create our personal story of who we are. From earliest times, it has been known that suffering can be transformed when we finally learn to change our minds.

Our suffering almost always arises from a time frame not of the present, rather than from existential reality.

We carry in our memories anger, guilt, and especially resentment toward people who have mistreated or betrayed us even long after those nasty people have departed…. We cling to this garbage because it is part of our story -- who we believe we are.

The hidden craziness underlying the conditioned behavior that makes us suffer is the dualistic, "either-or" mode of thinking we have been immersed in since childhood.

The middle ground is vigilance and the fearlessness to experience the situation as it is.

Each day we have the choice to defend our ego and relive our story, or we can find a way to choose differently.

One could say that enlightenment is the state in which we experience everything for the first time.

For the most part, our everyday suffering is not caused by tragic events of the heart, but rather by insults -- real or imagined -- to our ego story.  Suffering is the response to those imagined attacks that interfere with what we want and what we feel we need.

We are spiritually asleep if we allow the regrets of the past, the worries and fears of the future, and the expectation of others to guide our lives.

Many now believe that it is nonlocal awareness, rather than matter that is the ground of all being.

Ultimate reality is devoid of all dualities and thus is wholly impervious to conceptual thinking.  It can only be accessed in nondual intuition, prajna. 

Suffering is instantaneously released when we finally surrender me and mine; suffering will not and cannot be released until that surrender is accomplished.

The insult cannot exist without a person to perceive it as an insult.

Lack of forgiveness is as exhausting as it is unnecessary.

Freedom affords us the opportunity to choose again at any given moment.

When we give up seeing the world through the lens of our conditioning, we no longer project our fears, hopes, and prejudices onto everything we encounter.

Nothing exists on its own, divided or separated from other things.  Everything is interdependent and cannot exist without other things, including the Self.

Peaceful reconciliation within oneself leads to compassion and justice for those who are suffering.

We live in a nonlocal reality, which is to say that we can be affected by events that are distant from our ordinary awareness.

There is no distance for consciousness.

We have an intuitive inner knowledge that transcends the conceptual limits of time and space.

Our personal awareness is nonlocal, fills all of space-time, and is one with it.  That's who you are -- limitless consciousness!

Although we reside for a time as physical bodies, that is not the limit of who we are.  Our true self is nonlocal awareness.

It appears that the ordinary reality we perceive is not one universe but a spiderweb of timeless interactions (a kind of nonlocal signaling) in which the future appears to be tugging on the present in order to become actualized.

We must overcome memory, imagination, and analyses in order to see in to the distance and the future.

When we give up seeing the world through our conditioning, we have an opportunity to experience our lives in liberation and spaciousness.

To discover this self, you don't have to go anywhere.  Better not to go.  Just be still.  You don't have to change anything.  Just be still and surrender to the love that is inside, trying to get your attention.

The highest concentration of neuropeptides in the body corresponds with the location of the chakras.

The transfer of memory need not depend on the cell at all, because our minds are nonlocal -- not located inside our brains or bodies.

Our ego and our story are among the principal sources of all our suffering and block our path to conscious awareness. 

When physical reality and sacred space are undivided, body, mind, and spirit move into spaciousness and timeless awareness, where we give up judgment and experience our inherent loving nature, rejuvenation, and healing.

You must go beyond the individual personality and ego to experience unity and fellowship without judgment or condemnation.

Evil is the self-serving imploding energy of ego.

The Dharma: That Illuminates All Beings Impartially Like the Light of the Sun and Moon by Kalu Rinpoche

Suffering comes from the endless search to satisfy that which cannot be satisfied.

[The mantra tayata om gate gate paragate parasamgate Bodhi soha] condenses the experience of emptiness into a verbal formula.

Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity by Jamil Jivani

You're a wishful thinker when you want a better life but don't know how to plan for it.  Wishing is about all you've got.  But you're a thoughtful wisher when you know the specific, attainable steps you need to take to get to the better life you're looking for.

A University of Toronto study found that 40 percent of job seekers from ethnic minority communities across North America "whiten" their resumes by "adopting Anglicized names and downplaying experiences with racial groups to bypass biased screeners and just get their foot in the door".

Government job programs sometimes support people's perceptions of unemployment as an active form of exclusion.  When job opportunities can magically be created by government funding, there is an accompanying assumption that job creation is a choice that could have been made beforehand but purposely wasn't.

The information gaps created by distrust of these authorities are quickly filled by conspiracy theories.

Egypt is far younger than any country in the West, with 60 percent of its population under the age of thirty.

Launch: An Internet Millionaire's Secret Formula To Sell Almost Anything Online, Build A Business You Love, And Live The Life Of Your Dreams by Jeff Walker

You need to tell an engaging story about your products and services and why they matter.

The vast majority of our decisions and behaviors are based in emotion and mental programming -- and then we use our precious logic to justify those decisions.

You want to go through the responses, group them into themes, and rewrite them into good questions that you can expand into teaching points.

Your most scarce resource is focus.  The world will conspire to distract you.

You should start the day by focusing on your highest-value activities before you get caught up in other people's agendas for you.

Meditations with the Navajo: Prayers, Songs, and Stories of Healing and Harmony by Gerald Hausman

As the people move upward, First Man makes day and night.  He becomes a being of power and has in his possession sacred stones and shells. The concept of evil comes early, but rather than a negative phenomenon, it is a force which must be controlled and used when needed. First Man says, “I am filled with evil, and yet there is a time to use it and a time to withhold it.”  Thus, First Man and the emerging People are not good or bad; they hold within themselves the powers of darkness and light.  Neither perfection nor the elimination of evil are goals to be sought; the key is always balance.

Kunzang Lamai Shelung: The Words of My Perfect Teacher by Patrul Rinpoche

Wherever you do something positive, whether of major or minor importance, it is indispensable to enhance it with the three supreme methods.  Before beginning, arouse the bodhichitta as a skilful means to make sure that the action becomes a source of good for the future.  While carrying out the action, avoid getting involved in any conceptualization, so that merit cannot be destroyed by circumstances.  At the end, seal the action properly by dedicating the merit, which will ensure that it continually grows ever greater.

It is no good listening with only your body physically present, while your mind wanders off after your thoughts.

The tendency of consciousness to get engrossed in the objects of the six senses is the root of all samsara's hallucinations and the source of all suffering. 

Healing and the Mind by Bill Moyers

Healing begins with caring.

In gaining a sense of control over our medical treatments, in making conscious choices about how we spend our lives, and in allowing others into our sufferings, we are releasing innate healing capacities that make us nature’s allies in our own recovery.

We form our communities today around illness.

The Miracle Morning for Writers: How to Build a Writing Ritual that Increases Your Impact and Your Income by Hal Elrod, Steve Scott, Honoree Corder

How you start each morning determines your mindset, and the context, for the rest of your day.  Start everyday with a purposeful, disciplined, growth-infused, and goal-oriented morning.

More important than the time that you start your day is the mindset with which you start your day.

Amateurs wait until they feel motivated before writing.  Professionals treat it like a job where they clock in and clock out everyday.

Surfers of the Zuvuya: Tales of Interdimensional Travel by Jose Arguelles

The planet is shouting out: “Hey humans!  Come clean or you will be cleaned up!"

Our truth is the sum of our imperfections and how they give us our unique perspectives.  Our perspectives define personal choice.  The choice is to cover and hide, or to shine in our individual truths. 

Your ego is the guy who won’t let go.  The ego’s job is to maintain the static blocks.  It is the controller.  It is the secretary of defense.  And it is the CIA mastermind of all denial mechanisms.

Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for A New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers

Don't be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams.  You need to know your personal philosophy of what makes you happy and what's worth doing.

Business is not about money. It's about making dreams come true for others and for yourself.

Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what's not working.

If you think your life's purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you'll overlook the little day-to-day things that fascinate you.

If you think revolution needs to feel like war, you'll overlook the importance of simply serving people better.

When you're onto something great, it won't feel like revolution.  It'll feel like uncommon sense.

If you're ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, "How can I best help you now?"

It's counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers.  Just thrill them, and they'll tell everyone.

For an idea to get big-big-big, it has to be useful. And being useful doesn't require funding.

Your first idea is just one of many options.

Women Rocking Business: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guidebook to Create a Thriving Life Doing Work You Love by Sage Lavine

If you want more money, you have to first "bless that which you want", as the Hawaiians say.  Noticing what emotions money elicits from  you is the first step to improving your relationship with it and healing any hurt you've had because of it.

We're the ones who choose to associate money with worry, shame, and blame -- then blame it for not showing up for us.

We all have places where we go unconscious about money.  We stop paying attention, we overspend, or we hoard.

We re-create our childhood money story in adulthood… until we do the inner work.

Happier people on average make approximately $1 million more over the course of their lifetimes.

Money is just energy, and when we give our life force in a way that contributes to others, we invite energy to come back to us as an exchange.

Money is a tool -- like a hammer -- one we can use to either build things up or tear them down.

If there is food in your fridge, if you have shoes and clothes, if you have a bed and a roof, you're richer than 75 percent of the people in the world.  If you have a bank account, money in your wallet, and some coins in the money box, you're more fortunate than 92 percent of the people on the planet. 

When we, as women, adopt a humanitarian cause or service-based mission above and beyond our immediate client base, we rise above our typical income levels.

Stop trying to figure it out all at once.  Your business will evolve one client, one customer, one sale, or one project at a time.

The voice of fear---  your own personal gremlins -- simply get louder when you try anything new.

Having a purpose is a gift, even when it feels hard.

Trying to figure it all out before you take the first step will not only slow you down but keep you stuck.

Trust that all your desires are leading you to the next right step.

Successful people are successful not because of their talents but because of the choice they made to show up, over and over and over again.

Your leadership, skills, and capacity to wo-manifest will get polished in the experiences of life that are waiting for you.

Failure and success can be equally scary when you really decide to go for it.

Don't take criticism from those who are standing on the sidelines.  Don't accept judgment from those who aren't dipping their toes in the water of risk and transformation.

When you can bring your wounds into the current moment and dialogue with the parts of you that want to hold you back, you'll alchemize that pain into fuel for your future.

Pay close attention to which stories run on replay in your mind.  Watch your emotions and your moods. Notice what you do to lift yourself up.

When you balance your vulnerability with your credibility, you become solid in your leadership and create an energetic field around you that invites the right clients to come in.

Living big without boundary-setting, a support system, and conscious self-care practices can set you up for a truckload of stress.

The secret to not burning out has no more to do with avoiding work than it does with pushing or stressing out.  The secret lies in your ability to fully engage and plug in, as well as your equal ability to unplug and unwind at the end of your day.

Your purpose is like your side effect to the flowers that bloom when the bees create  honey.  The goal of the honeybee is to make honey, but the true and more spiritual purpose of a honeybee is to aid in flowers blooming.  And what's even more of a relief is that your purpose unfolds without pushing or prying the flowers open; it's a welcomed side effect to you following your desires.  So as you say YES to what's next for you, your purpose unfolds.

When you take the time to clean your mind, whether through meditation, quiet time, or an hour spent in nature, you tap into a timelessness.

You need to have enough spaciousness in your schedule to access the million-dollar ideas.

Your soul didn't come here to sit in peaceful feelings all the time. 

Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace and More by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len

Ho'oponopono is a process of letting go toxic energies within you to allow the impact of Divine thoughts, words, deeds, and impacts. 

Everything in your life -- simply because it is in your life -- is your responsibility.

The problem isn't with them; it's with you.

A clear intention is nothing more than a clear premonition.

Concern about weight is a memory. The only thing to do is love it and even give thanks for it.  By cleaning it, you ensure that the Divine has a chance to come through with an inspiration.

By asking for forgiveness we cleared the path for healing to be manifest.  What was blocking our well-being was nothing more than lack of love. 

Problems are just replayed memories of the past showing up to give us one more chance to see with the eyes of love and to act from inspiration.

Complete responsibility means accepting it all -- even the people who enter your life and their problems because their problems are your problems.  They are in your life, and if you take full responsibility for your life, then you have to take full responsibility for what they are experiencing too.

Whenever you want to improve anything in your life, from finances to relationships, there's only one place to look: inside yourself.

You don’t say "Please forgive me" to the Divine because the Divine needs to hear it; you say it because you need to hear it.

The purpose of life is to be restored back to love.

We are living in a belief-driven world.  Whatever you believe, that belief will work.  

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Dr Nadine Burke Harris

High doses of adversity affect not only the brain structure and function but also the developing immune system and hormonal systems, and even the way DNA is read and transcribed.

Because the body is like one big, intricate Swiss watch, what happens in your immune system is deeply connected to what happens in your cardiovascular system.

Dysregulation of the stress response can lead to increased inflammation, hypersensitivity (think allergies, eczema, and asthma), and even autoimmmune disease (when the immune system attacks the body itself).

Research findings show a strong correlation between childhood stress and autoimmune disease in both children and adults.

Many physicians had no clear understanding that clinical illnesses like asthma and diabetes might also be manifestations of toxic stress.

Infants of depressed moms have a harder time regulating their sleep; they sleep an average of ninety-seven few minutes a night than infants of non-depressed moms.

For a person with toxic stress, moderate physical activity (like breaking a sweat for roughly an hour a day) can help the body better decide which fights to pick and which ones to walk away from.

Many people with over-active stress responses don't know what's happening in their bodies, so they spend all this time chasing down the symptoms instead of getting to the source of the problem. 

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier

The essence of coaching lies in helping others and unlocking their potential.

At least 45 percent of our waking behavior is habitual.

Resilient systems build in fail-safes so that when something breaks down, the next step to recover is obvious.

There are just five types of triggers: location, time, emotional state, other people, and the immediately preceding action.

It's hard to change your behavior, and it takes courage to have a go at doing something differently, and resilience to keep at it when it doesn't work perfectly the first time (which it won't).

One of the laws of change: as soon as you try something new, you'll get resistance.

Call them forward to learn, improve and grow, rather than to just get something sorted out.

When your brain feels safe, it can operate at its most sophisticated level.  You're more subtle in your thinking, better able to see and manage ambiguity.

If you're not sure about a situation, you'll default to reading it as unsafe.

The strategic question: if you're saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?

People don't really learn when you tell them something.  They don't even really learn when they do something.  They start learning, start creating new neural pathways, only when they have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened. 

The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav

Each choice of fear -- anger, jealousy, vengefulness -- is a choice to evolve unconsciously through the painful, destructive consequences that fear creates.

From the perspective of the universe, the language of comparison is not the language of lesser and better, but of limitation and opportunity.

The insecurity which underlies the perception of power as external cannot be healed by the accumulation of external power. 

When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose, and meaning.  Life is full and rich.  We have no thoughts of bitterness…. This is the experience of authentic power.

An authentically empowered person is incapable of making anyone or anything a victim.

Your personality, like your body, is the vehicle of your evolution.

Only the personality can judge, manipulate and exploit.  Only the personality can pursue external power.  The personality can also be loving, compassionate, and wise in its relations with others, but love, compassion and wisdom do not come from the personality.  They are experiences of the soul.

Your soul is not a passive or a theoretical entity that occupies a space in the vicinity of your chest cavity.  It is a positive, purposeful force at the core of your being.

Creating authentic power requires experiencing within us the differences between fear and love and choosing love no matter what is going on inside us.

Competition for external power lies at the heart of all violence. 

Multisensory perception is your ability to see beyond what the five senses can detect.

Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect.  If we participate in the cause, it is not possible for us not to participate in the effect.

In order to become whole, the soul must balance its energy.  It must experience the effects that it has caused.

Non-judgmental justice is the freedom of seeing what you see and experiencing what you experience without responding negatively.

Actions and reactions in the physical arena set energy into motion, forming our experiences and revealing in the process the lessons that the soul has yet to learn.

The framework of karma and reincarnation is impersonal, and provides for each soul, in response to the actions of its personalities, the experiences that it requires in order to evolve. 

We see Life as cheap.  This perception pervades all of our perceptions…. We look upon each other as prey to satisfy our emotional and physical needs.

When we curse a competitor or strive to disempower another person, we absent ourselves from reverence.  When we work to take instead of to give, we labor without reverence. 

A disempowered person is a frightened person.

The decision to approach Life with reverence means acting and thinking as a spiritual person in a world that does not recognize spirit.

Impatience is the desire to have your needs met first.

Reverence is connecting with the true power and essence of what a person is or what a thing is.  It is a holy perception.

When we close the door to our feelings, we close the door to the vital currents hat energize and activate our thoughts and actions.

If we are not intimate with our emotions, we cannot perceive the dynamics that lie behind emotions, the way that these dynamics work, and the ends that they serve.  Emotions are currents of energy that pass through us.  Awareness of these currents is the first step in learning how our experiences come into being and why.

Reverence is not an emotion.  It's a way of being.

Only through your emotions can you experience the force field of your own soul. 

A splintered personality experiences the circumstances within its life as more powerful than itself.

At each instant you make decisions in the form of your attitudes.

Your dispositions, aptitudes, and attitudes reflect your intentions.  If you are angry, fearful, resentful, or vengeful, your intention is to keep people at a distance.

If you attend to the negative aspects of life, if you choose to focus your attention on the weaknesses of others, on their faults and shortcomings, you draw to yourself the lower frequency energy currents of disdain, anger, and hatred.  You put distance between yourself and others.  You create obstacles to your loving.

If you direct your energy into criticism of others with the intention to disempower them, you create negative karma.

You cannot choose your intentions consciously until you become conscious of each of the different aspects of yourself.  If you are not conscious of each part of yourself, you will have the experience of wanting to say, or to intend, one thing, and finding yourself saying or intending something else.  You will want  your life to move in one direction, and find that it is moving in another. 

The choice not to choose is the choice to remain unconscious and therefore, to wield power irresponsibly.

Each decision requires that you choose which parts of yourself you want to cultivate, and which parts you want to release.

A responsible choice is a choice that takes into account the consequences of each of your choices.  In order to make a responsible choice you must ask yourself, for each choice that you are considering, "What will this produce? Do I really want to create that? Am I ready to accept all of the consequences of this choice?"

A disagreement between two friends, for example, is not so much a disagreement as aspects of each surfacing in order to be healed.

The splintered personality is not content.  The contentment that it feels in one moment is replaced by anger or fear or envy in the next moment as conflicting aspects of itself struggle with each other.

When you struggle consciously with a choice between the wants of your personality and the needs of your soul, you enter a dynamic through which you are enabled to evolve without creating negative karma. That is the dynamic of temptation…. Temptation is a dress rehearsal for a karmic experience of negativity.

Temptations are not traps.  Each temptation is an opportunity through which the soul is able to learn without creating karma, to evolve directly through conscious choice.

Temptation is the gracious way of introducing each individual to his or her power…. With each choice that you make to align yourself with the energy of your soul, you empower yourself.

Responsibility is a sacred word.  It means the ability to respond from love rather than automatically reacting from fear.

When you struggle with an addiction, you deal directly with the healing of your soul.

Addictions are the strongest frightened parts of your personality.

Our species is no longer humble.  It has no reverence…. We take from the Earth and from each other.

If you wish the world to become loving and compassionate, become loving and compassionate yourself.  If you wish to diminish fear in the world, diminish your own.

What is in one is in the whole, and therefore, ultimately, each soul is responsible for the whole world.

When energy leaves you in fear or distrust, you experience physical pain in  your body near the energy centers that are losing power.