The Dip: A Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin

Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.  Reactive quitting and serial quitting are the bane of those that strive (and fail) to get what they want.

The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery.

The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value.

It if doesn't cost you your life, it isn't a quest.

If you want to be a superstar, then you need to find a field with a steep Dip -- a barrier between those who try and those who succeed.  And you've got to get through that Dip to the other side.

If you're going to quit, quit before you start.

To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional.  Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can't help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it.

The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional.  Average is for losers…. Average feels safe, but it's not.  It's invisible. It's the last choice -- the path of least resistance.

Quitting is not the same as failing.  Strategic quitting is a conscious decision based on the choices that are available to you.

If the best you can do is cope, you're better off quitting.

If quitting is going to be a strategic decision that enables you to make smart choices in the marketplace, then you should outline your quitting strategy before the discomfort sets in.

The Buddha in Daily Life by Richard Causton

We might think of our environment as a screen upon which the effects of our karma are projected. From this viewpoint one is born into particular circumstances are result of causes one has made in the past.

Because you stirred the water, it became dirty --- but no matter how hard you stir, if there is no sediment the water will remain clear. In other words, they are not aware that the cause of their unhappiness lies within themselves and that they are merely experiencing the effect of that cause after it has been activated by someone else.

We suffer in direct proportion to our own inherent tendency to do so.

Anger is not just stamping and shouting, it is also resentment, critical attitudes, begrudging time and effort, as well as lack of gratitude, respect and sincerity.

Narrative Medicine: The Use of History and Story in the Healing Process by Lewis Madrona-Mehl

The path toward healing is also the path towards curing.  We can always heal but we cannot be cured.  

Story is the basic unit of psychology and medicine.  Everything humans do is in the form of a story, or a narrative.  All of the knowledge that we have is embedded in a story about how to use that knowledge. 

In psychology, it makes a lot more sense to talk about defective stories rather than to talk about defective people.  And so, instead of saying to someone, "Oh, I got anxiety disorder.  That's what makes me so miserable", a more productive thing to say is "I'm living stories that make me worry more than i need to.  Help me to change those stories so I don't have worry as much". 

Become aware of the stories you are living by. 

Part of the wisdom of Native North America, is the understanding that we need each other, that we can't function in isolation, that illness arises from disharmony in our relationships.

Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L Weiss

Wisdom is achieved slowly.  This is because intellectual knowledge, easily acquired, must be transformed into ‘emotional’, or subconscious, knowledge.  Once transformed, the imprint is permanent.  Behavioral practice is the necessary catalyst of this reaction.  Without action, the concept will wither and fade.  Theoretical knowledge without practical application is not enough.

Lighting the Seventh Fire: The Spiritual Ways, Healing, and Science of the Native American by F David Peat

The language of the Algonquin peoples was developed by the ancestors specifically to deal with subtle matters of reality, society, thought, and spirituality.  

Ceremonies and practices such as fasting, acts of sacrifice, dancing, ingestion of various preparations, dreams and visions all serve to refine the instruments of perception and allow direct contact with extended realms of reality.

Ceremonies are associated with acts of renewal, healing, and relationship to particular forms of knowledge.  The use of ceremony focuses the mind and creates a sacred space in which knowledge can be discussed.

The four winds are the animating powers and spirits or energies that bring about maturity, continuation, renewal and refreshment.

Within Indigenous science, thoughts are inseparable from language.  The language that is spoke is not simply a medium, or a vehicle for communication, rather it is a living thing, an actual physical power within the universe.  The vibrations of its words are energies that act within the transforming processes we call reality.  Moreover, each language is a link with the particular landscape in which a people live.

When people sit in a circle… they are creating physical vibrations within the universe and these vibrations evoke and bring into direct manifestation other vibrations, powers, or energies.

The Algonquin languages are rich in verbs, and the verbs themselves are similarly rich in their structure, with an intransitive verb [to die, to sleep] having as many as 350 endings, while a transitive verb [to see, to give] can have over 1200.

English… is a language for the eye, while an Algonquin language is a language for the ear.  When he has to speak English instead of mic maq, Sa’ke’j feels that he is being forced to interact with a world of objects, things, rigid boundaries and categories in place of a more familiar world of flowing processes, activities, transformations, and energies.  …While the surface world of objects and material things can easily be identified by the eye, it is the ear that must deal with the more subtle levels of flux, transformation, and reality behind appearances.  The English language… does little more than mimic what the eye can do far better by giving emphasis to names and objects, while the Algonquin family of languages complements the eye’s abilities by addressing a world of sounds and energies.  … To the Algonquin people, language is not a duplication of sight, but a compliment to it.

In English we have the general category of “fish”, which is the result of classifying, in terms of differences and similarities, the various creatures that live in the water.  It therefore becomes convenient within our minds to gather together objects of different shapes, sizes and colors and treat them all as members of the one category “fish”.  The Algonquin family of languages, for example, does not make use of such categories or boundaries in thought.  Rather, it is concerned with processes that are happening in the water and with the peoples’ relationships to such processes. 

The Hopi worldview… does not contain a sense of movement or advancement of time.  Rather, there is a notion of process whereby the manifesting enters the manifest and, at the edge of this process, the Hopi language is able to talk about things that are on the verge of coming into manifestation.  Possibly this leading edge of manifesting could be compared to that split second of no return when you are about to sneeze, or when the words within your mind are about to enter into physical speech.  Although we in the west have a perception of our intention to act, this is not reflected in our language.  Imagine what it would be like to think and speak within a language that focused upon the movements of your thoughts, feelings, desires, will, and intentions; on the way intentions move into physical action, the ways in which things come into physical existence around you, and the movement between subjective and objective reality.  [expective and inceptive]A complex and highly subtle worldview is enfolded within the Hopi language.  If a person does not speak the Hopi language, there would be a considerable barrier to understanding and to experiencing this reality.

Certain objects contain great power and even to speak about them would involve the use of names and words that connect a person to potent forces and energies.

Masks are living beings… no one would think of displaying radioactive isotopes in their living rooms, yet people quite happily put Iroquoian masks on walls… but these masks … are replete with powers to transform themselves into different forms.  Their powers can shift a person’s life out of balance.

“All my relations” means that The People have entered into alliances and contracts, have obligations to fulfill, and must at times make sacrifices.  Harmony is present when everyone, human, animal, plant, and planet, fulfills their obligations and goes about their proper business.

An elder who had taken some young Native men from a mental hospital fishing.  He spent the day simply being with hem and afterward said that if they had been living in traditional ways they could have become great healers. The young men had spontaneously broken the limited bounds of our everyday reality but no longer had the support of their society, nor did they possess the language, songs, and ceremonies that would help them navigate.  They were lost, confused, and frightened to find themselves in a disorienting world of voices, beings, powers, and energies with no access to the indigenous science of this navigation.

Our natural tendency is to warn, help, teach, instruct and improve.  However… in the native world, you cannot “give” a person knowledge in the way that a doctor gives a person a shot for measles.  Rather, each person learns for himself or herself through the processes of growing up in contact with nature and society; by observing, watching, listening and dreaming.

Coming-to-knowing, entering into a relationship with the spirits, powers, or energies of knowledge, is a process that must continue throughout a person’s life.

Healing is the activation and renewal of spirit in the individual and the group.

The plants, herbs, pieces of bone, feathers, and fur found in a medicine bag allow people to come into contact with a much wider reality that includes the various animating spirits within the world.

Language = the vibrations that invoke the powerful energies of the cosmos.

Within indigenous science, however, language has a power all its own and to speak it is to enter into an alliance with the vibrations of the universe.

Within indigenous science, to say something is to create an objective event and release a process of energetic vibrations that enter into relationships with the other powers and energies of nature.  Thus, since every sound is an event of significance, a person must take responsibility for whatever he or she says.

Language was created by the ancestors as a direct connection to nature.  Words link man to the inner meaning of things.  There are stories of a time when humans and animals spoke freely together.  Deep within the hidden recesses of indigenous languages the words of power can still be found that will enable people to communication with the life around them.

A people who can speak to rocks, and hear their voices, must clearly treat rocks as being animate in their language.

Our problem is that we are used to living in a world of objects, so when the question of animation comes up we immediately look at the rock, or try to discover whether it has special characteristics that make it alive.  But in the Algonquin world, animation is the primary reality and the particular manifestations, the rocks, are less important.  Like young children excited with a birthday gift, we focus on the wrapping paper and forget about the present inside.

Capture: Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering by Dr David A Kessler

Depression involves a continual focus on negative thoughts, experiences, memories, and feelings to the exclusion of all else -- a kind of inverse learning.  As a person narrows his or her attention, focusing on only the most negative stimuli, the mind slowly devours itself.

If your threat circuitry is overly responsive, you become hypervigilant.  The neural circuitry becomes sensitized, so perceived threats generate larger responses.

Depression is an exercise in torment that is entirely focused on the self.  Any lasting solution requires a redirection of attention elsewhere.

All the Rage: Buddhist Wisdom on Anger and Acceptance edited by Andrea Miller

The results of ignorance -- greed, hatred, and delusion -- are the real causes of conflict, not particular people, political parties, or countries.  So while there may be people who we could name -- and blame -- as culprits, we would all be better served by recognizing ignorance as the true enemy. (Andrea Miller)

Forgiveness isn't about condoning harmful behavior but, rather, attending to our own hurt there thereby recognizing that the person who harmed us also hurts. (Andrea Miller)

In the way that a gardener knows how to transform compost into flowers, we can learn the art of transforming anger, depression, and racial discrimination into love and understanding.  (Thich Nhat Hanh, Chapter: Sowing the Seeds of Love)

According to Buddhist psychology, our consciousness is divided into two parts, like a house with two floors.  On the ground floor there is a living room, and we call this "mind consciousness".  Below the ground level, there is a basement, and we call this "store consciousness".  In the store consciousness, everything we have ever done, experienced, or perceived is stored in the form of a seed, or a film.  Our basement is an archive of every imaginable kind of film stored on a video cassette.  Upstairs in the living room, we sit in a chair and watch these films as they are brought up from the basement…. We spend so much of our time watching these films, and many of them are destroying us. Learning how to stop them is important for our well-being.   (Thich Nhat Hanh, Chapter: Sowing the Seeds of Love)

If we water our wholesome seeds carefully, we can trust that our store consciousness will do the work of healing.   (Thich Nhat Hanh, Chapter: Sowing the Seeds of Love)

We live in forgetfulness, looking for happiness somewhere else, ignoring and crushing the precious elements of happiness that are already in us and around us.  (Thich Nhat Hanh, Chapter: Sowing the Seeds of Love)

How we react to any given situation depends on our outlooks, our attitudes and assumptions, and our emotional habits -- our modes.  Our mode of the moment organizes our entire state of being, shaping what we seek out, notice. (Tara Bennett-Goleman, Chapter: The World of Modes and Why They Matter)

A dysfunctional mode does not doom us.  These are learned habits: so with reparative learning, we can alter them.  (Tara Bennett-Goleman, Chapter: The World of Modes and Why They Matter))

Both worry and fear focus our attention on some imaged event or experience in the future.  (Toni Bernhard, Chapter: Five Habits of Mind that are Obstacles to Waking Up)

If your meditation is like the garden in winter and you think you've eradicated all the weeds of negative emotion, just wait for the spring. (Carolyn Gimian, Chapter: Anger is a Poison)

The pain and anxiety we experience in our lives are equal in proportion to the size of our self-importance. (Dzigar Kongtrul, Chapter: The Other Side of the Fence)

The more we know, the more we can resolve; while the more we reject, the more we alienate ourselves from our experience.   (Dzigar Kongtrul, Chapter: The Other Side of the Fence)

Summon up all your strength and let yourself feel how strong the tendency is, without rejecting it or giving in to it.   (Dzigar Kongtrul, Chapter: The Other Side of the Fence)

For most people, full-blown anger isn't a daily occurrence.  But milder forms of anger -- which occur whenever we are slighted, disrespected, frustrated, or in any way thwarted in what we expect or desire in a given moment -- do rise up everyday.  It seems anger isn't just one emotion among others; it's basic.  Because we organize the world around our self-interest, naturally wanting things to go our way, and because, just as naturally, the world and other people usually don't cooperate with this understandable if unrealistic request, we are likely to be at least a little angry a lot of the time. (Norman Fischer, Chapter: Acupressure Point of the Heart)

The closer you look at anger, the clearer it is that anger is deceptive. (Norman Fischer, Chapter: Acupressure Point of the Heart)

Anger is actually a cover-up for some other powerful emotion that we don't want to face, usually fear, grief, or sorrow.  (Norman Fischer, Chapter: Acupressure Point of the Heart)

The mountain of suffering in the world can never be lessened by adding yet more bitterness and hatred to it. (Christina Feldman, Chapter: Compassion for Those Who Cause Suffering)

Just as suffering can be the forerunner of bitterness and despair, it can equally be the forerunner of a deeper wakefulness and the first steps on a path of healing.  (Christina Feldman, Chapter: Compassion for Those Who Cause Suffering)

Facing the immensity of the suffering in the world, you come to see the pathways that are open to you.  You can align yourself with hatred, bitterness, and division, joining the perpetrators of pain in their nightmare.  Or you can learn to open, to commit yourself to healing.  (Christina Feldman, Chapter: Compassion for Those Who Cause Suffering)

Your mechanisms of self-protection are endlessly provoked to the surface.  (Christina Feldman, Chapter: Compassion for Those Who Cause Suffering)

To find a pathway through anger, you are asked to take the first step of releasing blame.  Blames binds you to the unending song of resentment; it can paralyze you.  You replay the story in an endless loop, blaming those who misuse power, those who abuse the vulnerable.  The continued retelling of the story can become a substitute for action.  (Christina Feldman, Chapter: Compassion for Those Who Cause Suffering)

It is our enemies that awaken our hearts.  (Christina Feldman, Chapter: Compassion for Those Who Cause Suffering)

Tolerance cannot be built overnight; like raising a child, it asks for perseverance and dedication, even in the face of tantrums and outrage.  (Christina Feldman, Chapter: Compassion for Those Who Cause Suffering)

Equanimity and tolerance ask you to meet your own demons of aversion, self-righteousness, and prejudice.  (Christina Feldman, Chapter: Compassion for Those Who Cause Suffering)

Compassion is born of your commitment not to bar anyone from your heart.  (Christina Feldman, Chapter: Compassion for Those Who Cause Suffering)

Forgiveness is about loosening our hold on the one thing we most want to hold on to -- the suffering of resentment. (Ezra Bayda, Chapter: Forgiveness in Our True Nature)

To free ourselves, each of us will have to say, "These cycles of suffering and retribution stop here, with me.  I refuse to pass this suffering on to my children". (Jack Kornfield, Chapter: The Practice of Forgiveness)

When we deny our experience, we are always moving away from something real to something fabricated.  To live by this web of legend will always harm us.  The truth may be difficult to open to, but it will never hurt us.  (Sharon Salzberg, Chapter: Developing the Compassionate Heart)

The goal of our spiritual practice is to be able to understand, to be able to look without illusion at what is natural in this life, at what is actually happening for others and for ourselves. (Sharon Salzberg, Chapter: Developing the Compassionate Heart)

To view life compassionately, we have to look at what is happening and at the conditions that gave rise to it.  (Sharon Salzberg, Chapter: Developing the Compassionate Heart)

Compassion is the spontaneous wisdom of the heart.  It's always with us.  It always has been and always will be.  When it arises in us, we've simply learned to see how strong and safe we really are. (Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Chapter: Survival of the Kindest)

As their hearts became kind, their environment became safe.  (Noah Levine, Chapter: Kindness Changes Everything)

Everyday Energy Boosters by Susannah Seton and Sondra Kornblatt

Meditation wasn't designed as an energy restorer, but that certainly is one of the side effects.  Because it allows your brain to produce more alpha and theta waves, which are at a slower frequency than our "paying attention" beta waves, it actually restores your mind.

People need one half hour of natural sunlight a day to keep the brain producing the correct amount of serotonin, the feel-good hormone. 

Most clutter consists of things you aren't sure you really want.  Clutter is a pile of indecision. 

Being tired spaces you out: you can't absorb information, you escape in daydreams, you need a break.  You can counter that spaciness and have more focus and attention if you get centered in your own body.

"Lazy" is a judgment we too often use when we mean "overwhelmed".

The Dalai Lama says to practice meditation when you don't need it, so the habit will be there when you do.

Delaying taking care of yourself can make you sick.

Acceptance is the power behind moving forward.

Worry is a toned-down form of fear.

The Chinese character for busy is a combination for the characters for heart and death -- meaning staying busy will ultimately kill you.

Emotional Rescue by Dzogchen Ponlop

Besides the hidden emotions running on constantly beneath the surface of your awareness, there’s a stream of fleeting thoughts that runs right along with them. 

You have to let it come to let it go.

How many of the qualities I see in a person really belong to the person and how many are just my projections?

When you’re in risky emotional territory, there’s nothing more important than being kind to yourself.

Your baggage is not better or worse, it’s just yours.

Your emotions – freed from your anxieties, fears, and labels—are the energetic expression of your vast human potential for happiness, creativity, and compassion.

Compassion is not a mild, generalized feeling of, Gosh, isn’t that a shame? It’s a powerful and compelling response to the suffering of others that wants to ease the suffering.

You’re asked to pay attention, to observe, to see.  What are you asked to see? Yourself, your habits, what you’re feeling.

The mind can never just settle down and feel at ease.

If you limit your compassionate activities to people who are easy, attractive, and full of fun, then whatever you do, whatever actions you perform, may not necessarily be genuine compassion.

When we’re present in our life, we have an opportunity to discover who we are with all our confusions and suffering, and who we are beyond the confusion and pain.  The alternative is to avoid direct contact with our experience to hang out in a buffered world that doesn’t quite soothe or inspire.  As human beings, we seem to want both – we long for what’s real, for adventure and meaning but we also want to be comfortable. 

This is not about recognizing what kind of thoughts we’re having.  It’s about discovering what our emotions are at their very core.

Emotions get their power from a simple but deep-seated source: our lack of self-knowledge.

Gradually, you discover that your emotions themselves are the doorway to the freedom you’re looking for – they open the way for you (instead of holding you back).

All emotions – whether we view them as good or bad – have a single essence that’s beyond good or bad.  No matter what they look like on the surface or how you judge them, emotions – at their core – are basically positive…. Before an emotion escalates to a fever pitch or you’ve managed to chill it out, there’s a basic energy that gives rise to it.  This energy runs through all your emotions – good, bad, or neutral.  It’s simply an upsurge that’s been stimulated by something in your environment.

Learn to recognize the moment when you’ve tripped mentally and are knocked off balance….. Then watch how, in your very next moment, all of the habitual reactions kick in.

You can make a commitment to being awake and engage with your life, or you can just close your eyes and hope for the best.

To discover your basic attitude, your starting point, try looking at what you instinctively do when an emotion pops up.

You have to be willing to feel, even when you want to shut down.

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.