The Essence of Tao by Pamela Ball

In some ways we are like a computer which has been storing information since the moment we were conceived.  Unfortunately, this information is not held in separate files which can just be deleted, the files are all linked together and each one has an effect on the others. When we make adjustments to one aspect of life it impinges on others.  These imprints are the conditioning of our personalities and often the energy gets trapped within the tissues of the body, giving rise to aches, pains and difficulties.   When we begin to deal with these, it releases the energy and we then have to deal with the cause.  Generally, we should deal with the stuck negative emotions first, which might be called the lower level emotions, for example, hate, depression, anger, vindictiveness.

Buddha postulated that human beings are born and die according to their self-created karma.  This means that every action we perform leaves an impression on our very subtle mind, and each karmic potential eventually gives rise to its own effect.… With a deeper understanding of the concept, we come to realize that the laws of karma require that we harm nothing --  neither the mind, nor the body of man nor any living thing.  There are four aspects of karma which are: 1. Cause and effect.  2. Compensation.  3. Balancing.  4. Completion.

Dreaming While Awake: Techniques for 24Hour Lucid Dreaming by Arnold Mindell

Right now, as you sit or lie reading this book, ask yourself what tendencies your body has to move in one direction or another.  Do not move yet; just take a moment to feel those tendencies.  Your tendency to move in one direction or another precedes the actual movement.  You cannot measure your tendencies, even though you can feel them.  Your tendency to move, which precedes your actual movement, is like the quantum wave potential, which is a tendency for things to happen before they occur and can be measured.

Anything you see, hear, feel, or relate to is real, whether or not it can be repeated.  If you suddenly fantasize something, then its pattern is there; it is trying to happen.

Everyone undergoes the cycle of discovering, being fatigued, sleeping and reawakening.  The warrior, however, tries to break this cycle by remembering his entire self at all times.

You can never train enough in the shamanic work of hunting for lost energies and souls.  Becoming any kind of facilitator for human growth, for that matter, is a task without end.

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor

Your body is the life force power of some 50 trillion molecular geniuses.  You alone choose moment by moment who and how you want to be in the world.  I encourage you to pay attention to what is going on in your brain.  Own your power and show up in your life.

Watermelons, Nooses, & Straight Razors: Stories from the Jim Crow Museum by David Pilgrim

All groups tell stories, but some groups have the power to impose their stories on others, to label others, stigmatize others, paint others as undesirables, and to have these social labels presented as scientific fact, God's will, or wholesome entertainment.

Stories are a way of making sense of our lives, the lives of others, and the social order, and this is true for both the oppressed and the oppressors.

A Year of Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life by Judith Hanson Lasater

Realizing that your life is about learning will reduce self-judgment and contribute to your happiness.

The greatest avoidance strategy is I don’t have time.

 Discipline is not supported by ambition but by consistency.

To improve your communication today, translate whatever anyone says to you as a request for attention and respect. 

Emotions arise when beliefs are challenged.

Teach for yourself; practice for your students.

Today notice when you are agitated, or angry, or upset. Then ask yourself: what belief of mine has just been challenged?

Being curious is a high state of being.

Thoughts are just neurotransmitters locking into receptor sites; they are not truth.

Wonder perfectly combines curiosity, gratitude, and presence.

Yoga is not about touching your toes; it is about what you learn on the way down.

If you want to be loving, first accept your ability to hate.

Tension is your body’s response to the past.

Simplicity carried to extreme is elegance.

The mind can’t be controlled; it can be observed.

Today notice how you cling to control as a strategy to feel safe.

Letting go means realizing you weren’t in charge anyway.

Ask yourself which pain you want – the pain of moving through your challenge, or the pain of avoiding it.

The nature of mind is to be agitated.

When you try to protect people by not telling them the truth, you multiply their suffering.

Meditation… is the art of just being with your mental agitation, without the need to control or eliminate it.  This process creates a disidentification with your thoughts that is the basis of all true freedom.

Our beliefs create a screen between what is and how we want things to be.

Fear is never about the present moment.

Taking care of others’ needs cannot be done well and willingly without taking care of yourself.

Anger takes many forms.  Count how many times today you feel frustrated, or irritated, or impatient.  These are the number of times you have disconnected from yourself.

Impatience is the surface of anger.

The more difficult a thing is, the more it requires softness.

If you feel agitated, sad, or afraid today, ask yourself, What am I resisting?

We feel insecure when we forget our connection to ourselves.  Then we feel afraid and try to control everything around us.

Hold the difficult as sacred.

Three times today, stop and ask yourself, what is true and alive for me right now? Then live from that understanding.

True freedom is the ability to be radically present to what arises, regardless of what it is.

Righteous anger is redundant. I can never be angry when I accept that I am wrong.  Today, when you feel irritated or angry, pause and identify the thought that fuels your belief in your rightness.

Shifting and giving in are not the same things.

Acceptance and acknowledgment are not the same.

Beliefs are thoughts that get repeated enough to take on a kind of internal structure.

When we are confused, we feel agitated.  This agitation has more to do with what we tell ourselves about being confused rather than actually being confused.

Whatever we experienced as a child, we consider normal.

We are either in the flow with the speed of what is happening or we are impatient.  Being patient is an attempt to cover our own impatience.

Reality is just one point of view.

Listening is being willing to be changed by what we hear. 

You are raising your grandchildren by how you raise your children.

My words reflect my thoughts; my thoughts reflect my beliefs; and my beliefs run my life.

Simple and easy are not the same thing.

Worrying is a way to avoid what is so by thinking about what could be.

What my senses tell me is only part of the truth.

The Obstacle is the Way: Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday

In every situation, that which blocks our path actually presents a new path with a new part of us.  If someone you love hurts you, there is a change to practice forgiveness.  If your business fails, now you can practice acceptance.  If there is nothing else you can do for yourself, at least you can try to help others. 

Think progress, not perfection.

People turn shit into sugar all the time. 

Behind the Serenity Prayer is a 2000 year old Stoic phrase: “ta eph’hemin, ta ouk eph’hemin.” What is up to us, what is not up to us.  And what is up to us? Our emotions, our judgments, our creativity, our attitude, our perspective, our desires, our decisions, our determination.  This is our playing field.

Go ahead, feel it.  Just don’t lie to yourself by conflating emoting about a problem and dealing with it.  Because they are as different as sleeping and waking.

Does getting upset provide you with more options?

Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is.  We decide what story to tell ourselves.  Or whether we will tell one at all.

Turn it around. Find some benefit. Use it as fuel. 

Fate doesn’t have to be fatalistic.  It can be destiny and freedom just as easily.

If someone we knew took traffic signals personally, we would judge them insane.  Yet this is exactly what life is doing to us.  It tells us to come to a stop here. Or that some intersection is blocked or that a particular road has been rerouted through an inconvenient detour.  We can’t argue or yell this problem away.  We simply accept it.  That is not to say we allow it to prevent us from reaching our ultimate destination.  But it does change the way we travel to get there and the duration of the trip.

The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher.

No one is born a gladiator.  No one is born with an Inner Citadel.  If we’re going to succeed in achieving our goals despite the obstacles that may come, this strength in will must be built.

The Heart of Meditation: Discovering Innermost Awareness by The 14th Dalai Lama

Do not let your mind think on what has happened in the past or let it chase after things that might happen in the future; rather, leave the mind vivid. 

What is the purpose in achieving such concentrated attention? It is not just for the sake of gaining a mind of higher levels of concentration by temporarily suppressing manifest coarse afflictive emotions.  Rather, the purpose of meditative stabilization is to serve as a basis for achieving supramundane special insight realizing selflessness, the emptiness of inherent existence, through which afflictive emotions can be removed completely and forever.

The Four Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary by Angeles Arrien

Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness.

In shamanic societies symbols are the bridge between visible and invisible reality and are the psychological mechanisms for transforming energy.

Calling in the One: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life by Katherine Woodward Thomas

We are so captivated by our collective myth of the happy ending, that we rarely acknowledge the amount of loss that can be involved in getting there.

We will continually be asked to give up the life we have for the life we are creating.

In order to live rich and meaningful lives, we must learn to undergo the necessary losses of life without having to distract ourselves with drama, or be rescued from the unknown.  We must learn to move forward even when we are afraid.

If you are in full possession of your personal power, you can afford to be generous when someone else is behaving poorly.  It’s only when you don’t own your power fully that it shows up as resentment.

The antidote to resentment is acceptance.

What can’t come through you, can’t come to you.

We don’t necessarily get what we want in life – we do, however, get what we give our attention to.

All relationships are an energy exchange.  Each connection either feeds us power or sucks it away.

When we are complaining, we are in a state of resistance to what’s so.

Love will often escort you straight into the most wounded parts of yourself, leading you round and round in some strange circuitous route right into the heart of disaster.

Magic only happens when one is fully present and available to what is so, and not preoccupied with what is not.

Good relationships require a tremendous amount of generosity, kindness, compassion, and self-awareness.

True forgiveness is an emotional expansion of the heart that must be arrived at honestly and organically.

Gratitude is an inner map that instructs the Universe how to respond to us.

Life is constantly redefining itself according to our consciousness.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz

Kidnappers are just businessmen trying to get the best price.

The United States was experiencing an epidemic of airline hijackings at the time: there were five in one three-day period in 1970.

People want to be understood and accepted.  Listening is the cheapest, yet most effective concession we can make to get there.

In this world, you get what you ask for; you just have to ask correctly.

Too often people find it easier just to stick with what they believe.  Using what they've heard or their own biases, they often make assumptions about others even before meeting them.

It's not that easy to listen well.  We are easily distracted.  We engage in selective listening, hearing only what we want to hear, our minds acting on a cognitive bias for consistency rather than truth. 

Instead of prioritizing your argument -- in fact, instead of doing any thinking at all in the early goings about what you're going to say -- make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say.

Neither wants or needs are where we start; it begins with listening, making it about the other people, validating their emotions, and creating enough trust and safety for a real conversation to begin.

On a mostly unconscious level, we can understand the minds of others not through any kind of thinking but through quite literally grasping what the other is feeling.

We fear what's different and are drawn to what's similar.

Negotiation is not an act of battle; it's a process of discovery.  The goal is to uncover as much information as possible.

Emotions are one of the main things that derail communication.

Emotions aren't the obstacles, they are the means.

Empathy is paying attention to another human being, asking what they are feeling, and making a commitment to understanding their world.

Empathy is not about being nice or agreeing with the other side.  It's about understanding them.  Empathy helps us learn the position the enemy is in, why their actions make sense (to them), and what might move them.

Labeling is a way of validating someone's emotion by acknowledging it… Think of labeling as a shortcut to intimacy, a time-saving emotional hack.

The trick to spotting feelings is to pay close attention to changes people undergo when they respond to external events.

The best way to deal with negativity is to observe it, without reaction and without judgment.

Many of us wear fears upon fears, like layers against the cold, so getting to safety takes time.

"No" is the start of the negotiation, not the end of it…. "No" is often a decision, frequently temporary, to maintain the status quo.  Change is scary, and "No" provides a little protection from that scariness.

When someone tells you "No", you need to rethink the word in one of its alternative --- and much more real -- meanings:  I am not yet ready to agree; You are making me feel uncomfortable; I do not understand; I don’t think I can afford it; I want something else; I need more information; or I want to talk it over with someone else.

There are actually three kinds of "Yes": Counterfeit, Confirmation, and Commitment. 

We need to persuade from their perspective, not ours.

Though the intensity may differ from person to person, you can be sure that everyone you meet is driven by two primal urges: the need to feel safe and secure, and the need to feel in control.

The sooner you say "No", the sooner you're willing to see options and opportunities that you were blind to previously. 

The moment you've convinced someone that you truly understand her dreams and feelings (the whole world that she inhabits), mental and behavioral change becomes possible, and the foundation for a breakthrough has been laid.

While we may use logic to reason ourselves toward a decision, the actual decision making is governed by emotion.

All negotiations are defined by a network of subterranean desires and needs.

Loving Yourself to Great Health by Louise Hay, Ahlea Khadro and Heather Dane

If you experience a health challenge, life is inviting you to love yourself.  

Good health is about connection: to ourselves and our bodies, to nature, and to other people. And the most important step you can take to build your connection is establish a relationship with yourself.

Illness is an invitation to change your relationship with yourself for the better.

What message are you giving to your cells right now? If you believe that you are a bad person, your cells are listening. If you believe that you are sick, your cells are listening. Likewise, if you believe that you are a beautiful being worthy of love and that you are healthy, your cells are listening.

When you love yourself, you take care of your own needs.

The real health epidemic is a disconnection from self.

In order to push through things you don’t really want to do, you often have to disconnect from yourself, your inner child, or your inner guidance in some way.

When your body feels safe, it can heal. Just remember that your body wants to heal.

Reconnection to self is also about reconnecting with others – finding your tribe, your community of like-minded, supportive people.

Change is one of the greatest teachers. It scares us and asks us to reach deep inside ourselves for courage we didn’t even know we had.

Health starts with how you think and ends with how you feel.

We don’t go wrong when we live in the modern world. We go wrong when we let the speed, convenience, and fears of the modern world disconnect us from our bodies.

Physical symptoms are the body’s way of talking to you.

Part of listening to yourself means having the courage to commit to yourself.

Before & After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes by David W Penney and Gerald McMaster

In Anishinaabemowin (Anishnaabe language) the word doodem is an expression of ancestral relation to family members, near and distant, to animals of this and unseen worlds, and to particular places on the earth, tying back to stories of origins and how the world came to be.

When Frenchmen first journeyed into Anishinaabe country, the people they met referred to themselves by their doodem, calling themselves, for example, people of the beaver, catfish, crane, elk, bear, or snapping turtle.

More than three hundred thousand people living today identify themselves as Anishinaabe.

In addition to a language of words, however, there is an Anishinaabemowin of things, of relations with a material world that simultaneously shape and express a distinctive Anishinaabe identity.

To the Anishinaabe eye, the world expands outward in layers. (Chapter: Animikii miinwaa Mishibizhiw:  Narrative Images of the Thunderbird and the Underwater Panther by Alan Corbiere and Crystal Migwans)

The underwater woman (perhaps an underwater panther or serpent in a changed form) needs protection against the thunderbirds, and it is the turtle who has that power.  (Chapter: Animikii miinwaa Mishibizhiw:  Narrative Images of the Thunderbird and the Underwater Panther by Alan Corbiere and Crystal Migwans)

In this altered state, the person who has turned wiindigoo perceives an individual not as human but as the animal that represents the person's clan.  So a person of the Bear Clan is seen by the wiindigoo as a bear, and the wiindigoo, who is starving, thinks he is eating bear instead of a human. (Chapter: Animikii miinwaa Mishibizhiw:  Narrative Images of the Thunderbird and the Underwater Panther by Alan Corbiere and Crystal Migwans)

What the Bleep Do We Know? Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering Your Everyday Reality by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, Mark Vicente

Most of the grand discoveries and revelations that our society cherishes came from asking questions.

Questions are the precursors or first cause, in every branch of human knowledge.

That's what a Great Question is: one that can change the direction of your life.

When Albert Einstein was a boy, he asked himself:  "What happens if I'm riding my bicycle at the speed of light and I switch on my bike light -- will it come on?"

It's only by asking questions, challenging the assumptions and the "truths" taken for granted at any given time, that science progresses.

Perceiving one's self as a victim is possibly the strongest rejection of "I create my reality".  And it happens all the time. 

The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving by Lisa Miller

The child is born whole.  This new soul arrives with spirituality intact.  The developmental work of childhood and then adolescence is to integrate this natural spirituality into the changing capacities of cognitive, social, emotional, moral, and physical growth. 

Welcome nature as your co-parent and your child’s teacher.

The spiritual space of family is about discovering and helping your child see abundance – the experience of enoughness – rather than the shrinking pie.  Gain-gain means we have more then enough to go around.  We don’t need to compete as if love is a scarce resource.

Build your ark before it rains.

When we acknowledge, embrace, and help build a child’s natural spirituality, we build a pathway through which children can access their knowing from the heart, over develop a transcendent sense of themselves, other people, and dynamic relationship with a higher power.  With a felt awareness of transcendence build in, life becomes more.

No matter how spiritual you may already be, a descent into pain or depression holds the potential for new growth and opportunity.

Parenting is an erosion of vanity and of the illusion of control.

Parenting by its very nature gives us transformative opportunities, which offer up the possibility of opening us to the spiritual, a clearer sense of our place in the universe.

Spirituality as “inner sense of living relationship to a higher power”.

The key factor in thriving has to do with the habits of living, particularly around relationships, that we establish in childhood.  These are daily patterns of thought and relationship that become a stance toward life.  Often transmitted from parents, they continue to surface as latent habits as we grow older.  When we were children, did our parents take missteps or failures in stride and perhaps even as opportunities, or did they catastrophize or criticize us about them? Did the family celebrate each member of the family – accept and enjoy one another – or were members judgmental or critical? Was love an affection unconditional, or was it contingent upon measuring up to expectations or inward success?

The parent is an ambassador of transcendence, the guide on the ground who introduces a child to the spiritually attuned life.

From the moment of birth, the infant is nature’s most potent catalyst for love…. The infant upends the world and opens our heart in ways we never imagined possible.  Loving relationships deepen, opportunities for family reconciliation arise, new people come into our lives, people we knew reconnect with us in new and thoughtful ways.

Your connection is your baby’s first experience of relationship with a loving universe.

The natural path to enlightenment: feeling connected, empathy, clarity, truth, and bliss.