The Authentic Career by Maggie Craddock

All quotes from Maggie's book

Many of your less-than-ideal feelings and reactions are important aspects of the authentic self, since they are wakeup calls about things that need to be changed in your life.

To be true to yourself, you need to embrace your less-than-perfect parts, or you will fall into the trap of behaving according to someone else's ideal of who you should be.

Fear lurks where we hide the things we don't want to know about ourselves.

To successfully focus your emotional energy, you must learn to trust your inner feelings and the power of your imagination. 

Trusting your internal urges is a natural process that comes from heeding your body's signals and clearing the blocks restricting your range of emotional experience. 

To achieve your career goals, you must be clear about what they are and why they are meaningful to you.

Some things in life are expensive financially, and others are expensive emotionally.   Almost anything is too costly if it comes between you and your ability to realize your full potential.

Our most deeply held values and beliefs are nothing more than our most emotionally saturated thoughts. 

Whenever we say to ourselves, "I should..." we are speaking out of an internalized belief system that reflects our inability to trust ourselves.

When you cut yourself off from the messages in your body, you are cutting yourself off from a flow of information and energy that can be vital to your success.

Our greatest vulnerabilities are the flip side of our greatest strengths.

Once you start to become aware of your authentic self, you will never allow yourself to become enslaved to the lie of your own unworthiness again. 

People who seem impatient with your challenges may have an urgent need to "fix" your problems so that the problems you are grappling with don't remind them of their own vulnerability.

Learning to think for yourself and to trust your inner knowing is the foundation of true success.  Trusting your internal wisdom helps you to understand the patterns of your life at a deeper level.

Practical spirituality encourages us to question everything.

Spirituality is about freedom, spontaneity, and connection to the core of our true natures. 

Understanding the power of silence is vital to focusing your personal power, in the safety of silence your authentic self can spread out and make itself known.

Our real self speaks to us through the people and events that come to us in the course of a day.

Beliefs are thoughts that have been saturated with our expectations and emotions.  It is through our beliefs -- those ideas about reality that are backed by the emotional fuel either of desire or dread -- that our authentic self is able to translate the terrain of our inner world into the physical reality of our life. 

Often beliefs hide from our conscious awareness by disguising themselves as "facts".  

The God-Powered Life by Rabbi David Aaron

All quotes from David's book

Don't confuse the Self (the soul) with the Me (the character), the part you play.

There is the Me, which is ego consciousness.  It is the character we play, and it includes our psychological clothing -- such as our thoughts and feelings -- and the physical sensations of our body.  The fabric of our character is woven out of our thinking, speaking, and behavioural patterns. 

Too many of us are living self-fulfilled prophecies about ourselves.  We think we are victims.

The time has come to courageously kill the petty character that is burying your incredible light.

Death shocks us into facing how easily our persona can be obliterated. 

An essential ingredient in the recipe for self-actualization is the ability to let go of ego and, when required, the freedom to act out of character. 

As difficult as it may be to believe, loneliness plays a vital role in achieving full self-actualization.... Loneliness is the key to living a life of love, empowerment, fulfillment, and happiness anchored in the Great Self.

Loneliness is a gift.  Ironically, it is the very gateway to extraordinary companionship.  All of us feel lonely at times.  We can deny it or pretend that we are not feeling it, or we can embrace it and let the loneliness lead us to an intensely deep realization of our intimate connection and fellowship. 

We can choose what we want, but we cannot choose whether or not to want.  Choice is not a choice.  Ironically free choice is forced upon us. What we choose is our choice, but that we choose is not our choice.

Most people think we can't see God because he is so far way in some other realm.  But the real reason we can't see God is because he is too close; closer than our very own eyeballs.  God is the Master Self. He is the Soul of our soul, and we are one with him -- although not the same as him.  There is a distinction between God and us, just as there is a distinction between the sun and its rays, but there is no separation. 

Daily living is a human/divine enterprise of shared thinking, feeling, and doing.

The sacred side of soul demands that we look for our existential value regardless of what we accomplish on earth.

Our creative side shines in times of victory and success, while our sacred side shines in times of defeat and failure.

The spiritual quest of our sacred side often begins when crisis sets in.

The quest of our creative side is dignity as achieved through creativity, productivity, and mastery.  The sacred side of our soul, however, is looking for something more: it is looking for completion and wholeness -- a feeling of personal adequacy and inner worth that is not dependent on achievement.

We may think we are independent, but the truth is that we are always serving something or someone.

One of the signs of maturity, adulthood, and higher consciousness is the ability to draw from the lessons of the past and to anticipate, predict, and plan the future.

True happiness does not mean you are upbeat all the time.

There is nothing to look forward to in the future that this moment cannot offer you.

The holy life is a committed life -- a life focused with undivided attention on living...purpose, which is to freely choose to do good for the sake of goodness, to love for the sake of loving.  

In truth, we don't give love or make love -- we simply reveal it.

It takes more than just an attitude for the service-driven life to become a path to personal fulfillment.  We need a daily spiritual fitness plan to get our souls in shape and get to work. 

God, who is complete and beyond time, does not act out of futuristic considerations of benefit or personal gain.  Embodying this truth we become godlike in the fullest way.

People want to be happy and are looking for the magic formula.  Marketers know this, and they bombard us daily with promises for a better life.

People are looking for happiness in all the wrong places.  And they will never find it because happiness is not something your find outside; it lies within -- within your soul.

You cannot find happiness.  Happiness does not just happen; rather, you have to learn to be happy in whatever is happening.

A service-driven life does not offer any dispensations from the challenge of life.  It does not promise an easy life; it promises a purposeful and meaningful life.

Ironically, the service-driven life, while leading us to true happiness, makes us more susceptible to sadness.

The path to true happiness is to embrace your soul's sadness and discontentment. 

True seekers never want to find God, they want to feel that they are always finding God, and there is always more to find.

People confuse painlessness with happiness.  But the key to happiness is to embrace the sadness of the soul craving for purpose and meaning.

The secret to fulfillment and happiness is to embrace the emptiness and the sadness of the soul and give voice to our soul's yearning.

Emergence by Derek Rydall

All quotes from Derek's book

Your tomorrow is an extension of God’s today.

This didn’t mean that my life had to fall apart, just that I had to be willing to let it; I had to let go of attachment, of my ideas of what should or shouldn’t be.

Imagination may take us on a journey to the edge of our known self, but for a true vision that evolves us to the next level (whether personally, professionally, or societally), we must cross the border of our conditioned mind and enter an uncharted frontier that can only be navigated through the sight of our soul.

Emergination is an inside-out process that transforms you into the person you must be to handle the next phase of growth with ease, grace, and integrity.

Trust that what you need to receive and remember, you will, and that even if you don’t remember, there’s valuable work being done in the deeper recesses of your consciousness.

True change – whether in your inner world, outer world, or the world at large, requires you to go beyond your known self, beyond the stories of your life, beyond all the excuses that have held you back, and tap into that realm where your higher vision exists.

The experience of the senses is an expression of mental and spiritual activity, not a reality in itself. We don’t see or hear because we have eyes and ears; we have eyes and ears because seeing and hearing are aspects of consciousness.

Our body doesn’t actually feel – the mind does, the phantom limb phenomena illustrates this. When someone loses a limb, they’ll sometimes still feel pain or itching in the missing limb and reach into empty space to scratch an appendage that is no longer there. The whole world “out there” is a movie we’re projecting on the screen of our mind.

When we don’t consciously identify with what we don’t know, the ignorance remains unconscious and can manifest as anxiety, procrastination, and all manner of self-sabotage.

Life doesn’t always appear to be so generous to us.  When this happens, it’s not personal.  The universe is just reflecting how we’re thinking about or treating ourselves, such as “undeserving” or “not good enough”. 

The more you give from an awareness of having, the more you have to give.

Sometimes acting as if something is true activates something inside of us that really is.

Action is the evidence of belief and the mechanism by which we anchor it on earth.

Action is belief in work clothes.

Act from where you want to be, not from where you are.

Act from who you want to be, not from how you feel.

Do you want to know what you really believe so you can start from a place of honesty and authenticity and build upon that foundation? Don’t merely look at what you’re thinking, saying, affirming, or praying; look at what you’re doing, especially under pressure.

The urge to correct something is a form of resistance to what is.

Problems are symptoms of a particular state of consciousness.

To evolve, we must take our attention off the problem and place it on the opportunity.

Rather than focusing on the obstacle, you need to look beyond it to where you want to go.  And because energy flows where your attention goes, it will cause you to think, say, and do things that put you back on the road to success.

Many people believe that if they don’t “feel like it”, there’s a legitimate reason not to act.  But it’s no reason at all; it’s an unexamined false belief. It also shows up in less obvious but equally pernicious self-talk like, “I’m just not inspired”, or “I don’t have the energy”.

When we “do it any way”, we have a direct experience that shows that we really are the source of power in our life.

What you think and feel can only determine what you do if you let it.  On their own, your thoughts and feelings have no power.

There’s no such thing as being stuck, there’s no such things as “can’t”.  “Can’t” is just a filter the ego puts up to stop your growth.  It’s a limited belief.

When you say you can’t, what you’re really saying the majority of the time is “I won’t”.

No matter how far from your destination, you can always take another step in its direction, even if the step takes place in your mind first, then your emotions, then your body.  There’s always a next step.

The sad fact of the human experience is that most people lead lives of quiet desperation, never saying yes to the yes within them, waiting for some perfect or safe condition to finally act upon their deepest desires – a condition that never comes.

You don’t experience reality; you experience your perception of it.

Everything is conspiring for your good, awakening your deeper potential, and preparing you for greater things.

You can’t heal life by repressing it, you can’t have more life by rejecting it, and you can’t live more fully if you’re at war with it.

Whatever’s missing is what you’re not giving.

If we want to heal the situation once and for all, we must make a distinction: are the emotions of pain suffering coming from what we’re thinking, feeling, and projecting onto the person or situation? Or are they coming from the actual conditions of the situation?

Just as the oak is already in the acorn, everything we’re meant to be and all we need to fulfill it is already in us – a perfect pattern and divine purpose.  And, like the oak from the acorn, when the conditions are right, this innate potential naturally emerges.

It’s a trick of the ego to keep you the same while convincing you you’re changing.

The seed you started as already contained the material and mechanics of its fulfillment – and the fulfillment of everyone and everything that evolves from your life.

You don’t need to convince people who aren’t willing or interested….. You just need to say the course.

Just as a single acorn contains endless forests, the seed of your being contains all the ideas, contributions, and impact your life will ever make.

The collective consciousness of separation, limitation, and self-preservation has created a false sense of self and a deep disconnect from the seed of our true nature.

The acorn and its oakhood are perfect ideas that will always emerge when the conditions are right, so, too, will you.

You can’t heal what you don’t feel, and you can’t get where you want to go until you’re honest with where you are.

If we’re not living consciously, our ego will use every trick in its playbook to keep us the same, all while making us think we’re changing, convincing us we can’t, or just dulling our senses.

The ego’s job is self-preservation, often at any cost.

The only way to evolve is to go to a higher level.  And the only way to go to a higher level is to access the evolutionary impulse beyond the conditioned mind.

Money is rarely, if ever, the issue, even when it is.

The life you’ve been trying to make happen is already happening inside you, but it needs you to be conscious of it and congruent with it.  You don’t get what you want in life; you get who you are in consciousness.

The source within you doesn’t bring more into your life; it pulls more life out of you.  The result is what appears to be more things coming to you but is really more of you emerging.

When you practice any goal-achieving technique that starts from a premise that you’re broken or lacking or something is missing, your growth is determined by the level of your current self-image – the picture you have of yourself that is make up of your perceptions, fears, or past traumas as well as the stories you tell yourself and the characters you play in those stories.  At best, this creates superficial improvements.

When we recognize that everything we need is already within us and begin to reconnect to that feeling of innate wholeness and perfection – the way we felt toward that baby—we lay the foundation for the Law of Emergence to operate a process that is about becoming (or, rather, revealing) more of who you truly are, unleashing your infinite, often imprisoned potential.

When you cultivate your inner conditions, your next evolutionary stage will unfold organically.  And because your next stage is already within you, it will arrive whole, bringing with it everything needed for it fulfillment.

As you realize you’re already who you’re meant to be and you already have the thing you want, your process will become more about self-realization.

It’s also important to understanding that self-realization is not a straight line.

The key is to not become attached to or overly identified with any practice or condition.

Locked up in the seed of your soul is not just an image, calling, or pattern of potential; it is the fully realized Self, formed in the invisible dimension of your being.

Your soul is your soil, and if you generate the right inner conditions – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – your seed will have the right nutrients to thrive.

In order to allow your greatest good to express itself in the most powerful way, you must identify less as a limited human self that is trapped in time and instead tune in to the boundless eternal self within.  

Once we know we’re already whole and that everything we need is within us – including love, respect, validation, power, wealth, and health – we realize there’s no reason to demand, fight for, or fear the loss of any of this.

To the extent that you identify with the part of you that is changing – the human self – you create resistance to the part of you that is emerging – the true Self – much in the way an acorn would if it identified with its shell instead of the oak.

Stop trying to make it happen and instead make it welcome.

All About Love by bell hooks

All quotes from bell's book

Men theorize about love, but women are more often love's practitioners.  Most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often feel we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it.  

Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure. 

When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. 

Care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving. 

To embrace patriarchy, they must actively surrender the longing to love. 

While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. ... We do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed.  Usually, secrecy involves lying.  And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust. 

Keeping people in a constant state of lack, in perpetual desire, strengthens the marketplace economy.  Lovelessness is a boon to consumerism. 

To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others. 

When we see love as a combination of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility, we can work on developing these qualities or, if they are already a part of who we are, we can learn to extend them to ourselves.  

The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low self-esteem. 

Living consciously means we think critically about ourselves and the world we live in. 

Work that enhances our spiritual well-being strengthens our capacity to love. 

When we work with love we renew the spirit; that renewal is an act of self-love, it nurtures our growth. 

A commitment to a spiritual life requires us to do more than read a good book or go on a restful retreat. It requires conscious practice a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act. 

Awakening to love can happen only as we let go of our obsession with power and domination. 

Living ethically ensures that relationships in our lives, including encounters with strangers, nurture our spiritual growth. 

The choice to love is a choice to connect. 

The need for instant gratification is a component of greed. 

Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified.  To know genuine love we have to invest time and commitment. 

When the practice of love invites us to enter a place of potential bliss that is at the same time a place of critical awakening and pain, many of us turn our backs on love. 

When greedy consumption is the order of the day, dehumanization becomes acceptable. 

When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. 

The practice of love offers no place of safety.  We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. 

Self-help books that are anti-gender equality often present women's overinvestment in nurturance as a "natural", inherent quality rather than a learned approach to caregiving.  Much fancy footwork takes place to make it seem that new age mystical evocations of yin and yang, masculine and feminine androgyny, and so on, are not just the same old sexist stereotypes wrapped in more alluring and seductive packaging.  

To practice the art of loving we have first to choose love -- admit to ourselves that we want to know love and be loving even if we do not know what that means. 

Love is an action, a participatory emotion.  Whether we are engaged in a process of self-love or of loving others we must move beyond the realm of feeling to actualize love. 

When we commit to true love, we are committed to being changed, to being acted upon by the beloved in a way that enables us to be more fully self-actualized. 

Love empowers us to surrender. 

Prayer provides a space where talking cures. 

To know compassion fully is to engage in a process of forgiveness and recognition that enables us to release all the baggage we carry that serves as a barrier to healing. 

Judging others increases our alienation. 

When we judge we are less able to forgive. 

Estrangement from the realm of the senses is a direct product of overindulgence, of acquiring too much.  This is why living simply is a crucial part of healing.  As we begin to simplify, to let the clutter go, whether it is the clutter of desire or the actual material clutter and incessant busyness that fills every space, we recover our capacity to be sensual. 

Love does not lead to an end to difficulties, it provides us with the means to cope with our difficulties in ways that enhance our growth. 

Woundedness is not a cause for shame, it is necessary for spiritual growth and awakening. 

All individuals who are genuinely seeking well-being within a healing context realize that it is important to that process not to make being a victim a stance of pride or allocation from which to simply blame others. 

Everything terrible is really something helpless that wants help from us. 

Being loving does not mean we will not be betrayed.  Love helps us face betrayal without losing heart. 

On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

All quotes from Jeff's book

The biggest mistake is the belief that intelligence is defined by intelligent behavior.

When you don't know how to proceed, often the best strategy is to make no changes

until your options become clear. 

All your brain knows is patterns.  Your perceptions and knowledge about the world are built from

these patterns. There's no light inside your head. It's dark in there.  There's no sound entering

your brain either.  It's quiet inside.  In fact, the brain is the only part of your body that has no senses

itself.  A surgeon could stick a finger into your brain and you wouldn't feel it.  All the information

that enters your mind comes in as spatial and temporal patterns on the axons.

Patterns are the fundamental currency of intelligence.

All our knowledge of the world is a model based on patterns.... There is no such thing as direct

perception.... The brain is in a dark quiet box with no knowledge of anything other than the

time-flowing patterns on its input fibers.  Your perception of the world is created from these

patterns, nothing else.

The brain does not "compute" the answers to problems; it retrieves the answers from memory.

Thoughts and memories are associatively linked, and random thoughts never really occur.  Inputs

to the brain auto-associatively link to themselves, filling in the present, and auto-associatively link

to what normally follows next.  We call this chain of memories thought.

Our brains use stored memories to constantly make predictions about everything we see, feel

and hear.

Your brain makes low-level sensory predictions about what it expects to see, hear, and feel at

every given moment, and it does so in parallel.  All regions of your neocortex are simultaneously

trying to predict what their next experience will be.

We like to say seeing is believing.  Yet we see what we expect to see as often as we see

what we really see.

If you spend some time observing yourself, you can begin to understand that your perception

of the world, your understanding of the world, is intimately tied to prediction.  Your brain has

made a model of the world and is constantly checking that model against reality.