“There are many ways to dance with our difficulties.  Each one is a movement from unconsciousness to open attention.  We can study them, or we can just let them go.  We can transmute them and learn to make these energies a useful part of our practice.  When we are unable to do this, we can put them aside and later find a safe and supportive circumstance in which to work with them.  Beyond this, we can exaggerate them in our imagination to come to terms with them.  We can mindfully enact them.  All of these ways keep our practice growing, heartfelt, and alive.” Jack Kornfield (A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life”)

“Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience.  Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.” Byron Katie

“Sometimes, we may have expectations for our behavior or thoughts that are productive.  We may challenge ourselves to practice more compassion or to meditate for ten minutes a day because we know it makes us feel good, even if we’re ‘not in the mood.’  The issue isn’t having expectations, but where the expectations are coming from.” Sharon Salzberg (The Tyranny of Aspiration)

“One of the major causes of fear is that we do not want to face ourselves as we are.  So, as well as the fears themselves, we have to examine the network of escapes we have developed to rid ourselves of them.  If the mind, in which is included the brain, tries to overcome fear, to suppress it, discipline it, control it, translate it into terms of something else, there is friction, and that conflict is a waste of energy.”  Jiddu Krishnamurti (Freedom from the Known)

“… Whenever we can relate to fear rather from fear, our sense of who we are begins to shift and enlarge.  Instead of constructing a tense and embattled self, we can reconnect with our naturally spacious awareness.  Instead of being trapped in and defined by our experiences, we can recognize them as a changing stream of thoughts and feelings.  In these moments we have awakened from trance.”  Tara Brach (The Trance of Fear)

“My faith is not a checklist to complete.  It’s not an evacuation plan to make and it’s not a club to belong to.  It’s a current I surrender to that leads me again and again toward those I’ve been taught to fear so I can see them up close and fall in love.” Glennon Doyle Melton

“Kindness, patience and all these other qualities should not be understood as individual acts that we ‘do’, such as an ‘act of kindness’ or ‘patience in the moment.’  Eventually we awaken to the realization that these are graces that reside within us, subtly reshaping an act of kindness into a person of kindness.”  Carolyn Myss

“God refuses to be known intellectually.  God can only be loved and known in the act of love; God can only be experienced in communion.” Fr. Richard Rohr (Faith as Participation)

“One has to find out the meaning of living, not merely giving an intellectual significance to it, but looking at what it means to live. And one has also to go into this question of what love is, and what it means to die.  All this has to be examined in the conscious and the deep, hidden recesses of one’s own mind.” Jiddu Krishnamurti (Flight of the Eagle)

“While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die – – whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.” Gilda Radner