The Zohar by Michael Berg

Meditation can be thought of as digesting wisdom – becoming it.

The utter one-pointedness that follows is meditation, which at its deepest levels is a pure communion between Self, Soul and Creator – a communion that occurs outside of Time altogether.  We become the still point in a turning world.  When thoughts are stilled and desires transcended, we realize the deathless being that we really are, and then everything appears as it truly is: infinite.

Angels are distinct energy components, part of a vast communication network running through the upper worlds.  Each unique angel is responsible for transmitting various forces of influence into our physical universe.

As a seed contains the entire flower, the original thought of creation contains the creation as a whole.

To draw the soul you desire, you need to become that level of soul yourself.

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben

When you know that trees experience pain and have memories and that tree parents live together with their children, then you can no longer just chop them down and disrupt their lives.

When trees grow together, nutrients and water can be optimally divided among them all so that each tree can grow into the best tree it can be.

Without bark the tree cannot transport sugar from its leaves to its roots.

Modern forestry targets a maximum age of 80 to 120 years before plantation trees are cut down and turned into cash.  Under natural conditions, trees that age are no thicker than a pencil and no taller than a person.

A mature beech tree can send more than 130 gallons of water a day coursing through its branches and leaves, and this is what it does as long as it can draw enough water up from below.

If trees are capable of learning (and you can see they are just by observing them), then the question becomes: Where do they store what they have learned and how do they access this information? After all, they don't have brains to function as databases and manage processes.

When trees are really thirsty, they begin to scream.  If you're out in the forest, you won't be able to hear them, because this all takes place at ultrasonic levels. 

A tree contains almost as much liquid inside it as we do.

Moss grows very slowly and takes decades to get established.

Beeches harass other species, such as oaks, to such an extent that they weaken.

Spruce store essential oils in their needles and bark, which act like antifreeze.

Dwarf trees on the tundra, which are sometimes trampled to death by travelers who don't even know they are there. It can take these trees a hundred years to grow just 8 inches tall.

We know less about the ocean floor than we know about the surface of the moon.

The older the tree, the more quickly it grows.  Trees with trunks three feet in diameter generated three times as much biomass as trees that were only half as wide.  So, in the case of trees, being old doesn't mean being weak, bowed, and fragile.  Quite the opposite, it means being full of energy and highly productive. 

Love, Medicine & Miracles: Lessons Learned About Self-Healing from a Surgeon's Experience with Exceptional Patients by Dr Bernie S Siegel

I have found only one bit of information that could help change you.  It is that you are mortal and will die some day.  Therefore, don't do things to not die but do things to enhance the quality of your life and you may be surprised by how long you do live.  Accept that you will die and make decisions about how you want to spend the limited amount of time you have.

Medicine still focuses on disease, giving it a failure orientation.  Its practitioners still act as though disease catches people, rather than understanding that people catch disease by becoming susceptible to the seeds of illness to which we are all constantly exposed.

The state of the mind changes the state of the body by working through the central nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system. 

Peace of mind sends the body a "live" message, while depression, fear and unresolved conflict give it a "die" message. 

One problem with cancer statistics is that most self-induced cures don't get into the medical literature…. A person who gets well when he isn't supposed to doesn't go back to his doctor.

Exceptional patients refuse to be victims.  They educate themselves and become specialists to their own care.  They question the doctor because they want to understand their treatment and participate in it.  They demand dignity, personhood and control, no matter the course of the disease.  It takes courage to be exceptional.

Hope is not statistical.  It is physiological.

Refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die.

Beliefs are a matter of faith not logic.

One of the most common precursors of cancer is a traumatic loss or a feeling of emptiness in one's life.

Emotional growth toward greater self-acceptance and fulfillment helps keep the immune system strong.

To become exceptional in caring for the body, one must take stock of the beliefs one has about it, especially those so ingrained that they're normally unconscious. 

Affirmation aids the body, fear is destructive.  Treatment chosen out of fear is unlikely to be helpful.

The most important thing is to pick a therapy you believe in and proceed with a positive attitude. 

We must learn to give fun a high priority in life.

Visualization takes advantage of what might almost be called a "weakness" of the body: it cannot distinguish between a vivid mental experience and an actual physical experience. 

We prepare our future by what we think and do each day.

People who always smile, never tell anyone their troubles, and neglect their own needs are the ones who are most likely to become ill.  For them, the main problem often is learning to say no without guilt.

People heal doing something they believe in, something that gives them hope. 

Our emotions don't happen to us so much as we choose them.

Resentments and hate are the obstacles that keep many people from clearing up their unfinished emotional business and achieving harmony with others. 

You create your own opportunities out of the same raw materials from which other people create their defeats.

Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp

I think a lot of these firms are failing with what they call quality control because they're not considering how the customer sees it.  And customers think primarily in terms of value.  They buy whatever gives them the most value for their money.

Quality doesn’t necessarily mean luxury.  It means giving customers what they expect, meeting customer's expectations every time.  That's performance, value.

We are only what we do, not what we say we are.

Profit was not a guide for a business decision but merely a confirmation of its result.

Happy Go Money: Spend Smart, Save Right and Enjoy Life by Melissa Leong

Mothers who took more than three years off earned 30% less than childless women at age 40, one Statistics Canada report says.

Scientists in neuroeconomics (the study of how we make economic decisions) break happiness into two types: 1. Life satisfaction: an evaluation of your well-being as a whole (the kind of happy where you're pleased with life in general).  2. Day-to-day mood: the highs and lows.

How happy are you on a scale of one to ten? Now think about how much money you have in the bank, your salary.  How much more money would you need to be a perfect 10?

Neighbours of lottery winners are more likely to declare bankruptcy within a few years of the big win.

Each American throws away 7.1 pounds of garbage every day and 102 tons in a lifetime.  At the end of our lives, we'd need one grave for our bodies, 1,100 for our trash.

To help you achieve maximum joy with your dollars, I'm going to suggest three types of things to spend on: 1. Experiences 2. Time Savers 3. Anticipation.  These things, according to research, will make you happier in the long run and give you a greater return on your investment.

A (not so) secret of mega-successful people: they continue to invest in themselves.

Buying anything that improves the way you spend your time is money well spent.

I often hear people say that they'd love to work with a financial advisor but they're waiting until they have more money put aside or until their debt is paid off.  That's like saying you'll hire a running coach after completing your first marathon.

Look at problems as solutions waiting to happen.

Debt is one of the biggest predictors of relationship strife.  Every 10-fold increase in consumer debt is associated with a  7% increase in the likelihood of divorce.

Open Heart, Open Mind by Tsoknyi Rinpoche

The basis of the Dharma is the transformation of the five poisons (ignorance, attachment, aversion, pride, jealousy, and their habitual tendencies). 

Often, when something external attracts your attention, it immediately activates a dormant tendency.  As a result of this, you believe that your experience is happening fully, 100% real, and everything is exactly as you perceive it:  solid, truly “out there”.  But really, the external is simply a trigger.  The external object may contribute only 5% towards causing the disturbance.  But when the habitual pattern is stimulated, even if only briefly, it proves the remaining 95% of the experience to come into being.  At this point, you can communicate with your habitual pattern.  Recite the following mantra: “It seems real, but it is not true.  It is not me.

Whole Detox: A 21-Day Personalized Program to Break Through Barriers in Every Area of Your Life by Dr Deanna Minich

Every one of us is a complex biochemical structure in which every factor affects every other factor in an endless synergistic loop.

Every time you have a thought or feeling, it is expressed biochemically, as a cascade of neurotransmitters, hormones, or cellular responses.  Therefore, your physical condition can have an enormous impact on your mood, your ability to think clearly, and your overall outlook on life -- just as your mood, thoughts, and beliefs can affect your physical condition.  Mind-body medicine isn't some mystical mumbo jumbo.  It's Human Biochemistry 101.

There isn't really any such thing as "body", "mind", "sensation", "emotion"--- those are just the names we've come up with to make sense of our experience.  What we really have, when we look at our human lives, is biochemistry:  one big interactive network of hormones, neurotransmitters, synapses, and glands whose job is to respond to the challenges and opportunities of our environment.  These responses all happen through electricity and chemistry, and all of them are always both physical and emotional.

A hormone is a signaling molecule that helps to regulate the body's physiology and behavior.  Hormones are produced by glands, which are part of our endocrine system.

[Hormones] are the middle, overlapping ground between what we usually think of as "mind" and "body".

Each system is based in an endocrine gland, moving from the base of the spine up to the crown of the head, and each one represents a nexus of anatomy, physical function, and biochemistry as well as a group of emotions, thoughts, and life issues.

If we don't meet our survival needs or feel safe, it's difficult even to think about anything else: we are constantly on edge until we feel rooted.

If we're going to be fully present in our body, we need to feel rooted, grounded, and safe.

The pituitary is sometimes called the inner eye, as it maintains surveillance over a wide range of activity throughout your entire biochemistry.

The Root [chakra] represents our relationship to the physical world: how we distinguish self from non-self and how we respond to threats to our physical survival -- safety, home, food, and money.

If we don’t have a basic sense of self-- what's good for us, what's bad for us, what supports our body, and what threatens it -- it's very difficult to feel safe.

These are all Root issues: adult identity, financial safety, ability to survive independently, and ability to take care of our loved ones. 

If we can't say no to the demands of others, we might also find it hard to say no to the foods that don't really serve us.  The throat is a place of self-expression, but it's also the gateway for food to enter our body.  When we come from a place of healthy expression, speaking clearly and truthfully, and eating mindfully, we can more easily choose the foods that our body truly wants and needs.

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions by Guy Kawasaki

Jerks seldom enchant people.

For people to like you, they have to accept you.  For people to accept you, you have to accept them.

Competence is different from knowledge, because knowing is not the same as doing.  Competence means that you have progressed beyond knowing what to do, to doing what you know.

Light On Life by BKS Iyengar

As antennae pick up radio waves and transform them into sound through receiving sets, chakras pick up cosmic vibrations and distribute them throughout the body. 

We should not use truth as a club with which to beat other people.

Our unconsciousness increasingly becomes what we feed it.

When you resent the happiness of others, you lose even the little that you have.

The ego seeks power because it seeks self-perpetuation; it seeks at all costs to avoid its own inevitable demise. 

GOD is Generator, Organizer, and Destroyer. 

Let the goal be to reach Perfection, but be content with a little progress toward perfection every day. 

Pain comes to guide you. When you have known pain, you will be compassionate.

The pain is there as a teacher.

True health requires not only the effective functioning of the physical exterior of our being, but also the vitality, strength, and sensitivity of the subtle levels within. 

The highest point of yesterday should be the lowest point of today.

Indie Spiritualist: A No Bullshit Exploration of Spirituality by Chris Grosso

I have to be the bearer of bad news, but at this very moment, you and I, we’re dying.  

See clearly the futile nature of the fear behind the fear.  And here in lies a perfect opportunity to explore why we’re scared to take an honest look at the unpleasant things in our life.

You and I are equally as connected to this collective consciousness, regardless of the way we choose to pursue it (or even not pursue it), because we already are It.  Tat tvam asi, for non art that.  It’s not just a cool, cliché saying from the Upanishads, but a very sincere truth.

I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter by David Chariandy

We are not Muslim.  We do not face Islamophobia, the specificity and intensity of that bigotry, just as we are not Indigenous and so do not know that particular legacy of violence and survival.  But the fact is that I require little imagination to understand what it feels like to be considered dispensable by the powerful within a country.  To be viewed as unconnected to the fabric of Canadian society.

Slavery was conquered not by laws and grand strokes of pens but through the heroism of Black people themselves, through the bravest acts of rebellion and demand, through everyday tactics of care and creativity.

If there is anything to learn from the story of our ancestry, it is that you should respect and protect yourself; that you should demand not only justice but joy; that you should see, truly see, the vulnerability and the creativity and the enduring beauty of others.

Railway enterprises functioned like weapons against Indigenous peoples, cutting through ancestral lands, violating treaties, and decimating the ecosystems that Indigenous peoples relied upon.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. 

Mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow.

The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.

In 1972, fewer than 350,000 people were being held in prisons and jails nationwide, compared with more than 2 million people today. 

The concept of race is a relatively recent development. Only in the past few centuries, owing largely to European imperialism, have the world's people been classified along racial lines.  Here, in America, the idea of race emerged as a means of reconciling chattel slavery -- as well as the extermination of American Indians -- with the ideals of freedom preached by whites in the new colonies.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had abolished slavery but allowed one major exception: slavery remained appropriate as punishment for a crime.

Clinton -- more than any other president -- created the current racial undercaste.

Convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates in the united States.  Drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population.

There are more people in prisons and jails today just for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.

By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans-- or in every 31 adults -- were behind bars, on probation, or on parole.

In some states, such as Ohio, as many as 90 percent of children charged with criminal wrongdoing are not represented by a lawyer.

Once a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal, and privileges of citizenship such as voting and jury service are off limits.  It does not matter whether you have actually spent time in prison.

About as many people were returned to prison for parole violations in 2000 as were admitted to prison in 1980 for all reasons.  Of all parole violators returned to prison in 2000, only one-third were returned for a new conviction; two-thirds were returned for a technical violation.

Black men have been admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is more than thirteen times higher than white men.  The racial bias inherent in the drug war is a major reason that 1 in every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men.

The sense that black men have disappeared is rooted in reality.  The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2002 that there are nearly 3 million more black women than men in black communities across the United States.

Hundreds of thousands of black men are unable to be good fathers for their children, not because of a lack of commitment or desire but because they are warehoused in prisons, locked in cages.  They did not walk out on their families voluntarily; they were taken away in handcuffs, often due to a massive federal program known as the War on Drugs.

The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery.

Most people assume that racism, and racial systems generally, are fundamentally a function of attitudes.

The unfortunate reality we must face is that racism manifests itself not only in individual attitudes and stereotypes, but also in the basic structure of society.

All racial caste systems, not just mass incarceration, have been supported by racial indifference.

If we hope to return to the rate of incarceration of the 1970s -- a time w hen many civil rights activists believed rates of imprisonment were egregiously high -- we would need to release approximately four out of five people currently behind bars today.  Prisons would have to be closed across America.

The U.S. spent a record $185 billion for police protection, detention, judicial and legal activities in 2003. 

The overwhelming majority of incarceration -- 75 percent-- has had absolutely no impact on crime, despite costing nearly $200 billion annually.

Come to Your Senses: Demystifying the Mind Body Connection by Stanley H Block

To be present in the moment, you need only come back to your senses.

The identity system disembodies you. … Both loops begin with a thought.  The natural loop shows how thoughts, remaining free of any interference, generate natural functioning and unified mind-body connection.  In the Identity System loop, the same thought is trapped in the depressor/fixer cycle and impairs functioning and disrupts mind-body connection. 

When you are present in the moment, your Identity System rests.  As soon as you are pulled away from the moment by a thought, your Identity System is active.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be.

Grief is different. Grief has no distance.  Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.  Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of "waves". 

The way you got sideswiped was by going back.

Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed.

Grief turns out to be a peace none of us know until we reach it.

Tantra of the Yoga Sutras: Essential Wisdom for Living with Awareness and Grace by Alan Finger and Wendy Newton

On its own, citta does not have any form or movement.  It is the energy field or matrix in which all of the mind's movements arise.

Yoga is the process of becoming aware of the fact that we're in a movie theater looking at a screen with projections on it. 

The word "klesha" is often translated as "error, distortion, or mental affliction".  In fact, the word comes from a Sanskrit root meaning "to twist", and it refers to what happens to the mind as it comes to be exposed to the world of the senses.  The "affliction" is the twist the mind puts on experience that confuses our awareness of ourselves as pure consciousness.  Avidya is when the mind starts to think that its own "twisted" perception of reality is all that is.

Karma works by a pattern of chain reaction. The kleshas ["twisted" perceptions] motivate actions, and the resulting reactions are experienced in this life or a future life, generating new kleshas.

All life's experiences create suffering.  This is because all experiences in life are subject to the constant shifting of the gunas, the primary forces of nature.  Our experiences create reactions in us, and these reactions, which are the vritti [activity of the mind], lead us back into the cycle of consequences.

When the buddhi loses touch with Spirit for whatever reason, it can get stuck in repetitive, reactive patterns that are caused by memory and the ego's need for stability.  This is called dukkha.  Dukkha is what we call "suffering", and it is optional because we have the potential, through yoga, to reconnect with Spirit.

Asana prepares the body for working with the breath; quiet and controlled breath helps us to withdraw the senses, which helps us focus the mind.

The eight limbs [of yoga] are both a sequential system and a holistic practice.

The yamas are principles of self-regulation that help us to deprogram the habitual patterns that mind develops in its misguided attempts to find security.

When you recognize a challenge and accept it as your karma, you can stop struggling with it and start living in alignment with your dharma. 

"Karma" refers to the activities and experiences of your life.  It is all the challenges you face and the actions you take in response to those challenges.

"Dharma" refers to the structure of your life, including your family, nationality, cultural milieu, national skill set, and other circumstances, all of which give rise to your path and purpose in life. 

Discipline without surrender only leads back to struggle.

Pranayama has three phases:  the inhale, which brings energy into the body; the exhale, which moves energy out of the body; and retention or pause, which develops energy within the body.

The ego has to let go of the thought that it is in charge of things, including the practices and the effects of the practices.  As soon as we say, "I meditate, I receive the benefits, I am powerful because of the practice," we have lost our connection to the experience, and we are just doing tricks for show.

We do not own the power of what arises in this most subtle aspect of the yoga practice.

By doing samyama on udana vayu (the type of energy that flows up and out , away from the earth), one becomes light and gains the ability to walk over mud, thorns, and objects of that nature.  This leads to the possibility of levitation.

By doing samyama on samana vayu (the type of energy that creates heat, fire, and metabolism), one develops tejas, a protective magnetic radiance around the body. 

Samyama is the pathway by which we harness and focus that power back into our psychic centers, the chakras, to transform the patterns that bind us.

When we are in a state of samadhi, everything is perceived as it is, without any influences from mental activity.  It is natural, in samadhi, to perceive this reality as a succession of moments and possibilities.  When we practice samyama or these moment-to-moment changes, we perceive our own background consciousness, and at the same time, we witness the moment when actions start to arise. 

The stories that arise in our lives are the karma that we are here to experience.

Samskaras, or karmic impressions, that are linked with memory persist and manifest at some point in the future, whether in a different time or place or even in a different life.

Karma exists outside of time and creates the samskaras that drive us in time.

As long as there are samskaras, there will always be the desire for life to manifest.

Karma motivates consciousness to manifest as life, so if we are living, we have karma to work out.