Dreamtime & Inner Space: The World of the Shaman by Holger Kalweit

Science and religion can be united by the realization that life is an adventure in consciousness.

The zen monk allows the images to come and go; they pass his all-pervasive wakefulness without leaving emotional traces in his consciousness.

If we were able to understand sickness and suffering as processes of physical and psychic transformation... we would gain a deeper and less biased view of psychosomatic and psychospiritual processes and begin to realize the many opportunities presented by suffering and death of the ego.

The Trauma of Everyday Life by Mark Epstein

Trauma, in any of its forms, is not a failure or a mistake.  It is not something to be ashamed of, not a sign of weakness, and not a reflection of inner failing.  It is simply a fact of life.

We emerge, as infants, from a relational matrix and then struggle to come to terms with the trauma of aloneness.

Trauma forces one into an experience of the impersonal, random, and contingent nature of reality, but it forces one violently and against one's will.

In dissociation the personality wards off becoming fragmented.  It does this by withdrawing from that which it cannot bear.  The shocked self is sacrificed, sent to its room for an endless time-out…. In order to go on, the self cuts its losses and dissociates its alarm.

In dissociation there is no self-reflection -- in order to survive trauma the devastated self is immobilized and hidden out of view.  The emotional impact has nowhere to go, however.  It becomes stuck, in a frozen state, inaccessible to the person's usual waking consciousness.  It is never digested, never symbolized or imagined, never processed by thought or language, and never really felt.

There is no single word for meditation in the original language of Buddhism.  The closest is one that translates as "mental development". 

Mindfulness, in its fullest flowering, actually balances two distinct mental qualities:  relaxation and investigation.

Feelings are always present.  They accompany every moment of awareness.  They can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and they can be based in the body or in the mind.  They flow continuously, although we tend to intervene reactively, dissociating from the painful feelings, clinging to the pleasant ones, and ignoring the neutral.

Our egos, in our relentless rush to normal, pulls us away from our feelings when they are difficult and immerse us in them unconditionally when they are alluring.

Dreams are dissociative by definition.  They occur when the rest of the mind is shut down, and they allow difficult feelings to be expressed in symbolic form.

Awakening does not mean an end to difficulty; it means a change in the way those difficulties are met. 

Dreaming the Soul Back Home by Robert Moss

There are always gifts in our wounds, if we are able to claim them.

The shaman don’t say, “You’re a mess.  I will fix you and make you what you were before,” but rather, “You’re a mess, a palette full of odd, chaotic blobs of color lost from their containers; let us discover the right way to combine those colors into art, rather than trying to push them back into their tidy tubes".

A dream is a journey; it is also a place.  You went somewhere in your dream, near or far from the fields you know in your regular life.  Because you have been to the place, you can find your way here again.

Humans are forgetful animals.  We forget that we have a story beyond our current circumstances, that we may have come into this world with an assignment and an identity that predate our present lives and won’t end when our present bodies are left behind.

We may not want to think about our ancestors, but our ancestors are thinking about us.

It’s not just about keeping soul in the body and remembering that we are star-born, and that our stories are played out – and are playing now—in more than one time.  It’s about growing soul, becoming more than we ever were before, embodying more of the greater, or higher self.  It requires the willingness to take the creator’s leap and bring something new into our lives and our worlds.  And we lose soul when we make the choice to give up on our big dreams, when we refuse to make the creative leap of faith or to trust ourselves to love.  When we wimp out on the larger life, a part of our soul may withdraw its energy and magic because it is disgusted with us.  The Iroquois Indians say that if we fail to honor “the wishes of the soul” (as opposed to ego agendas), the soul will distance itself from us, leaving us prone to sickness and bad luck, putting us on the road of the walking dead.

The Gentle Art of Blessing by Pierre Pradervand

What if unconditional love were the normal and natural response of those who have really grasped the idea that the universe and the self is – not are—one? 

Love is a dimension like time and space.

We can transform our past by transforming our consciousness about the past.

Divine love brings into my life exactly what I need to experience, grow, and progress in the present moment and to fill the cup of my joy now.

The more we expect good and affirm it as a law governing our lives, the more it will be manifested in our existence.

On awakening, bless this day, for it is already full of unseen good which your blessing will call forth, for to bless is to acknowledge the unlimited good that is embedded in the texture of the universe and waiting each and all.

By the quality of our expectations and alertness we choose the kind of day that dawns in our life.

Humanity is learning in a gradual and individual process that the only punishment we can experience is the self-imposed suffering that results from neglecting the spiritual laws that exist solely for our happiness and freedom.

Every single event in life can become an opportunity for a silent “Yes, thank you”.

Absolutely everything – a traffic jam, an illness, a theft, a noisy neighbor, a flat tire – becomes an opportunity to learn, discover, progress, repent, rejoice, unveil, awaken, love more, and wonder.

Evil is sometimes the highest idea of good some people have…. Each one is at each moment at his or her highest level of consciousness…. Evil is always the result of ignorance, deep confusion, or an inability to see.

All of life is a subjective process of interpretation and definition.

Conversations with Menuhin by Robin Daniels

Our dreams dream us.

Attitude and awareness are all.  Personal shadows usually appear as threats.  If we can go beyond outward form and appearance, we shall see, and perhaps even welcome, these shadows for what they ultimately are --- teachers of life.

Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu by Brian Walker

If your willingness to give blessings is limited, so also is your ability to receive them.

That which is beyond form is ungraspable, and that which is beyond knowing is unmanageable.  There is, however, this consolation:  she who lets go of the knife will find the Tao at her fingertips. 

To the ordinary being, others often require tolerance.  To the highly evolved being, there is no such thing as tolerance, because there is no such thing as other. 

Never hating, never resisting, never contesting, she is simply always learning and being. 

Living with unconditional sincerity, eradicating all duality, celebrating the equality of all things, your every moment will be truth. 

This is the profound, simple truth: you are the master of your life and death.  What you do is what you are.

Quiet your thinking.  Stop analyzing, dividing, making distinctions between one thing and another.  Simply see that you are at the center of the universe, and accept all things and beings as parts of your infinite body.  When you perceive that an act done to another is done to yourself, you have understood the great truth. 

Understand that true growth comes from meeting and solving the problems of life in a way that is harmonizing to yourself and to others. 

Avoid daydreaming and allow your pure original insight to emerge. 

If you scramble about in search of inner peace, you will lose your inner peace. 

Whoever became a good rider by talking about horses?  If you wish to embody the Tao, stop chattering and start practicing.

If you wish to become a divine immortal angel, then restore the angelic qualities of your being through virtue and service.  This is the only way to gain the attention of the immortals who teach the methods of energy enhancement and integration that are necessary to reach the divine realm.

If you want to awaken all of humanity, then waken all of yourself.  If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself.

You can be a gentle, contemplative hermit right here in the middle of everything, utterly unaffected, thoroughly sustained. 

Do the Next Right Thing by Frank O'Dea

The pain you feel from the external event is caused by your reaction to it. 

You can control your reactions according to your environment.  When you control your reactions, you control your feelings, and this permits you not only to make decisions but also to make rational decisions.

One of the biggest lessons you may learn from a crisis is your own vulnerability.

Your ability to deal with a crisis situation though logic and intelligence is severely reduced when you are emotionally upset.

The biggest problem many of us face in dealing with personal crises is finding peace, yet peace is always available.  Your reaction to the crises you face is the only barrier to finding the peace you need to deal with the crises.  If you control your emotional reaction, you will find the peace you need.

The right thing to do is almost always the hardest thing to do.

When we build our happiness on pride alone, we are building a house of cards.  And when the house collapses, we face a serious crisis: our happiness vanishes along with our means of easily regaining it.

The largest, most important dividend to be enjoyed from achieving self-actualization is peace.

Promising yourself you’ll deal with things “tomorrow” is not just procrastination.  It is self-destructive. 

“Tomorrow” is not the day after today; it is a place where you put things that you don’t want to do.  “Tomorrow” comforts you and fools you.  Ultimately, it can destroy you.

One of the most effective ways to avoid or deal with personal crises is to elevate the joy you get out of living.  Crises seem to occur most often to people who view life as a chore to be completed, not as an adventure to be experienced.

The secret is this: The whole of your life’s experience is but an outer expression of your inner thoughts. 

A crisis is not necessarily an ending, a pause, or a total stop.  It is a turning point.  Something is changing, or about to change.  Your control over how things are changing may be limited, but your reaction to the change is entirely in your hands.

Essential Spirituality by Roger Walsh

Recognize pain as feedback.

Reflect on the four mind changers: Life is inconceivably precious. Life is short and death is certain. Life contains inevitable difficulties. Our ethical choices mold our lives.

Decolonizing Trauma Work by Renee Linklater

All quotes from Renee's book

Indigenous resilience should be seen as a culturally rooted, community-based response that encompasses resistance and survival strategies as leading sources of strength.

Indigenous worldviews arise out of deep and profound connections with an Indigenous world.  As Fitznor points out, “Being Aboriginal itself does not mean that we necessarily work from Aboriginal self-determination and knowings.” Accordingly, to acquire an Indigenous worldview, and exist from this location, we must maintain reactions with our land, language, people, ancestors, animals, stories, knowledge, medicine, culture and spiritual environment.  It is only within the context of Indigenous communities that an Indigenous worldview can be maintained.

Indigenous knowledge production faces continued pressure to exist in a world that is only comfortable if colonial institutions maintain control over knowledge, including the power to verify legitimate knowledge.

Colonization has caused multiple injuries to Indigenous people, and therefore many Indigenous people experience trauma in a multi-traumatic context; thus living in and with trauma is a common experience.

The terms “parallel realities” and “multiple realities” are intended to replace “psychoses” and “psychotic episodes.

Huna: A Beginner's Guide by Enid Hoffman

You are programming your own neo-cortex every time you think or feel.  But you, who use your brain, may choose at each moment what to do.  You can create programs within your brain that will be keyed off by a flow of mana to them that is beneficial to your keeping control over your life and living it in a self-actualizing way. Or, you can reinforce strong programs of negativity that will control you. 

Denied expression will often manifest itself as illness or accident-proneness.

The Red Book by Sera Beak

All quotes from Sera's book

God is a verb.

You are not here to play it safe.  You are here to start fires.

Being intuitive is not about trying real hard, it’s about relaxing real soft.

Being psychic does not necessarily mean that someone is more spiritually advanced.

Just because someone is psychic or can sense energy fields or can hear your guardian angels, that doesn’t mean that all the information they are giving is right for you.

Developing your resonance skills takes a little time and practice, lots of “Oh, so that was my intuition

telling me to avoid that workshop, not just my acid reflux".

The ultimate ideal is for us to turn our lives into a moving meditation. 

Meditation provides the space and time for you to assimilate, to metabolize all the spiritual ideas and concepts you’ve been learning, so that you can start translating them into lived experience.

You can’t establish an authentic relationship with the divine if you don’t take the time to establish an authentic relationship with yourself.

Dreams that are not understood are like letters that are not opened.

Don’t sit back and wait for the doorbell to ring before you move.  Go ahead and ring it yourself.

To put it bluntly, the universe is not your bitch.  The divine does not hand out complete answers all tied up in pretty ribbons; it is your partner, not your personal Santa Claus.

You gotta drop your normal expectations of how a prayer is supposed to be answered. 

Spirituality is not just about trying to see the divine in all things but is also about getting the divine to see all of you.

Remember to actually walk the spiritual path of your life; don’t spend too much time lingering in the gift shop.

This is one of the most difficult lessons of all: realizing that when it comes down to it, you can’t really blame anybody or anything outside of yourself for you ruining your day, your year, your life.

If you come across a manifestation of divine energy that catches your heart while you’re exploring your divine path, don’t keep it out in the cold just because you’re not sure of its background.

Healing Ourselves by Naboru Muramoto

All quotes from Naboru's book

To explain the heart governor and triple heater in western medical terms is very complicated; they can best be understood if we say that the heart governor supervises the entire process of circulation, thus connecting together the entire organism.  It is approximately equivalent to the autonomic nervous system.  The triple heater is traditionally said to control the three systems (respiratory, digestive, excretory) which regulate body temperature.  It its function as regulator of body temperature, it is closely related to the skin.  These two organs are the most fundamental to life; even the most primitive life forms have an autonomic nervous system and skin. 

In the far east, yin is the name given to that force which produces expansion.  Water, air, trees, flowers, etc are all expanding elements in nature, since their essential tendency is to forever fill up the dimensions of space.  Therefore, we consider as yin anything that grows to a relatively great size in a relatively short time.

It takes a great binding force (yang) to balance the great expansion created by yin (drugs, alcohol, sugar, etc).  It is due to this difficulty in maintaining equilibrium that all kinds of sicknesses arise.

Energy is yang.  Inertia is yin.  Activity is yang and passivity is yin.

Energy Medicine by Donna Eden

All quotes from Donna's book

Pain is evolution’s oldest device for getting your conscious mind involved in your body’s health and safety.  

Pain is your body’s version of tough love. Pain forces you to stop what you are doing and shift your attention.

The acupuncture points situated along the meridians have been likened to the amplifiers that are found along a telephone cable, boosting the signal so that it can continue to the next amplifier. 

Rather than thinking of meridians as an obscure or foreign concept, you can know them as 14 tangible pathways that carry energy into, through, and out of your body.

If you keep ignoring your body’s demand that you slow down, your body will eventually make the decision for you.

Your nervous system is a phenomenally sensitive 37 mile long antenna that reverberates to the subtle and not so subtle energies of the world in which you live.  Everything from the food you eat to the people you encounter carries its own frequency and impacts your nervous system.  While most of these vibrations exist below the threshold of your awareness, your body resonates to some and tenses against others.

Pain is more than just a distress signal.  It is a distress signal with teeth.  It insists that you fix the problem and that, if you don’t know how, you figure it out.

Awakening the Spine by Vanda Scaravelli

All quotes from Vanda's book

The body is the hologram of the being. 

To relax is not to collapse, but simply to undo tension.

To die is alright, we all have to die sooner or later, but what we must do is not allow the body to degenerate while living.

All religions encourage self-sacrifice, but when we are ill we pray to god to heal us.

The way we live is destructive to the body.

Goethe said that he could understand the falling of the apple but he could not understand how a tree could grow in two opposite directions. 

Passing Through the Gateless Barrier by Guo Gu

All of life’s ups and downs are opportunities to realize your true nature.  

You are already free. But knowing that is not enough. You have to live it. 

Ordinary people’s thinking is a form of self-grasping. 

The problem is the tendency to take the concept of a thing to be the thing itself.

The sense of not-knowing is most precious.

Your self-image, core values, and feelings come from many people, things, and interconnecting experiences.

This self is the source of grief.

Why is it in this natural world, with its natural order of things, you accumulate suffering?  When you have something, you’re satisfied.  When you lose it, you are sad.  The gaining and losing seem natural. Yet do you really gain anything?

This is like the play-doh person mistaking other play-doh things as something else.

Success or failure, having or lacking, are relevant only in the game of play-doh.

Deeply experiencing that you are impermanent, inseparable, and connected to everything and everyone around you in this world of play-doh is the wisdom of no losing and no gaining.

The small wave became the ocean – yet when there’s only the ocean, there’s no longer the need for the idea of ocean.

All situations in life are opportunities that point to peace.  Your practice is not to attain peace but to recognize that all are already at peace.

The key to practice is to recognize the sheer, remarkable amazement of all the manifold appearances, personalities, problems, and to be able to flow with them freely, without attachment.

You may scorn the idea of mountain deities, but there are all kinds of sentient beings in this world, and just because you don’t see them does not mean they don’t exist.

Buddhadharma poses questions such as: Who are you? Are you your thoughts, your emotions? Are you the body? What is awakening? What is your full potential? At the threshold of your death, are you at peace? Have you lived a blameless life without regret?

The practice is to recognize that and not create problems where there are none.

Not being at peace comes from attachment to self.  You want to defend, to protect, to justify yourself.  Is there a need?

Of all the ways you could respond to the world, why do you choose frustration or anger? You choose this because you want to defend something that is not there.

This true nature that flows freely is the reality that, in all situations and at all time, your heart-mind is at peace.  If for some reason you’ve strayed from this truth, then ask yourself, “Why am I not at peace?”.

Sitting meditation is an appointment with yourself to be honest with yourself…. How you respond to all the thoughts that come up in sitting meditation actually mirrors how you usually deal with your problems in daily life.  Recognizing this pattern is necessary because only when you take this first step in facing yourself on a regular basis  will you become more honest with that you have to work with.

You are a foreigner to yourself.

What is it to live unbound? It is not living without rules, like a free spirit.  Rather, it is to be free from the shackles of vexations and deluded thinking – “things” that bind you wherever you are, whatever you do.

You are clouded by everything that makes you not a Buddha.

Any situation is an opportunity to practice, even people who pesecure you.  The wonderful thing is to live freely in all situations. People provide you with opportunities to cultivate patience and compassion.

You need not worry about other people deceiving you; your own thoughts do this just fine.

In daily life it is important to examine yourself: when you meet difficult situations, is your light shining outwardly or inwardly? Do you still have the urgency to try to explain yourself, justify your view, and get the last word? Do you see the mechanisms of your own vexations when they arise, or do you justify them?

When you encounter a difficulty in your life, an impasse, solve it. If you can solve it, it’s good.  If you can’t solve it, it’s still good, as it’s no longer your problem if you can’t solve it.  It’s only a problem when you solve it.

Why are you busying yourself living in somebody else’s projected dream of you?

All of your difficulties, anxieties, vexations, and challenges are created by the mind.  Yet you are wired up in such a way that you completely give in to your own construct.  In life you paint a tiger and become frightened by it.

Your responses reveal who you are, what you need to work on in practice.

When you don’t inject a self where there is none, every activity is like lightning—natural and free – and everywhere a path opens as soon as you take a step.

A path is only a path when you start walking.

Duality and opposition is how you live your life.

In your own life, please do not seek out answers from your teacher.  If you are uncertain about who you are or what the mind is, ask only to find it within yourself.  Question your own being.

Awakening is neither knowledge nor an experience.

The next time you have vexations, when someone presents you with a challenge or scolds you or wrongly blames you, in the moment, how will you react? … That’s practice.

When you say, “I’m this type of person, what prevents you from being that type of person? Words and ideas shape identities, self-image, and thereby limit your potential.  Yet following words and concepts, you make yourself into this or that.  The more you grasp them, the more you become bound by them.

Words are not the problem – they are just vibrations to your ears.  What makes them meaningful, personal, is your attachments.

People don’t need more doctrine or theories – they just need to remove all the props in their lives and come alive to all this.

People project their ideas on you, and you do the same to them.  You live in each other’s dream and don’t even realize it.

In life, you often create your own defeat.  If you have a fixed image of yourself, you ruin everything; you defeat yourself.  … Inevitably, you insert self-referentiality into the panoply of life – ruining everything.

Put down your own ideals and expectations; these are the props of self-attachment.

The fact is, if you grab a cheap cup, you cry poverty.  If you grab expensive things, you brag about being wealthy.  These constructs and narratives are not you.

You discover who you are in the midst of interaction.

It is true that you are already awakened…. But just knowing this is not enough.  You have to realize it personally.

All of life’s ups and downs are opportunities to realize your true nature.

You are already free. But knowing that is not enough. You have to live it.

They are a mirror reflecting your true nature.  The greater the obstacle, the clearer the reflection.

Native North American Religious Traditions by Jordan Paper

All quotes from Jordan's book

Cedar represents the healing and life-giving power of nature and is linked with Grandmother Bear, the primary theriomorphic spirit of regeneration and healing. 

Heart Yoga by Andrew Harvey and Karuna Erickson

All quotes from Andrew and Karuna's book

When you begin your practice, make sure you enter completely into the present moment.  In silence, tune into the voice of your heart and allow it to form an intention or prayer that will guide your practice. .. Whatever focus you choose or prayer you make, make it consciously and deeply, so that all your ensuing practice will unfold from this sacred place.

Your practice is a prayer, your expression of honoring your own life and honoring itself.

Embrace resistance with acceptance and practice anyway.

The universe, the mystics of all traditions tell us, is perpetually recreated out of infinite life-fire that is at once Being, Consciousness, and Bliss.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by JD Vance

All quotes from JD's book

Very few people, Mamaw told me, appreciate how unimportant your fist is when it comes to hitting someone.

Regular church attendees commit fewer crimes, are in better health, live longer, make more money, drop out of high school less frequently, and finish college more frequently than those who don't attend church at all.  MIT economist Jonathan Gruber even found that the relationship was causal: it's not just that people who happen to live successful lives also go to church, it's that church seems to promote good habits. 

There's something powerful about realizing that you've undersold yourself -- that somehow your mind confused lack of effort for inability.

One consequence of isolation is seeing standard metrics of success as not just unattainable but as the property of people not like us.

Social mobility isn't just about money and economics, it's about a lifestyle change.  The wealthy and powerful aren't just wealthy and powerful; they follow a different set of norms and mores.  When you go from working-class to professional-class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best or unhealthy at worst.