Patterns

"We are all constantly in a process of creating, sustaining or destroying the patterns that carry our life.  Often we suffer terribly because we resist these elemental needs.   Given our stubbornness and willfulness, we often find ourselves sorely stalled in the face of change."  Mark Nepo

Spirtual Adventure

"I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality.  Id didn't want to become anything more than my most vibrant, peaceful and grateful self.  I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world -a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me to overcome resistance, falseness and mistrust."  Elizabeth Lesser

Resistance

"Resistance won't kill you right away. No it won't, it slowly crimps the hose of life force, a little bit everyday so that we don't notice until one day we find we can barely get out of bed! Embrace change! Experience the new energy that gets released when we do." From the book "The Thank You Economy"

Pain vs. Suffering

"There will always be pain in life.   This is something we learn in life as we progress spiritually.  We also learn that if we resist pain, if we fear it, then we create additional pain, called suffering.  Our resistance to pain stands between us and full-emodied living; it keeps us at war with our problems and from making peace with life's dual nature."   Hazrat Inayat Khan

Social Change

"The first resistance to social change is to say it's not necessary."

Gloria Steinem

Suffering and Pain

"Pain is a given.  Suffering comes from our resistance to pain."  Stephen Levine

Spiritual Adventure

"I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality.   I didn't want to become anything other than my most vibrant, peaceful and grateful self.   I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world - a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me to overcome resistance, falseness and mistrust."  Elizabeth Lesser

Wholeness

"Most of us are dragged
toward wholeness
We do not understand
the breakdown of what has gone before.
We do not understand.
We cling to the familiar,
refuse to give up our habitual lives,
resist our growth.
We do not understand rebirth
do not accept the initiation rites.
Most of us are dragged toward wholeness."

Essence

‎"You are the sky. Everything else - it's just the weather." Pema Chondron

Problem Solving

"The answer to every problem is already wrapped in the problem itself.   I need only stop resisting, open wide to reality, and decode the message."  Elizabeth Lesser

River of Change

"We live in a river of change, and a river of change lives within us.   Every day we're given a choice:  We can relax and float with the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it.   If we go with the river, the energy of a thousand mountain streams will be with us, filling our hearts with courage and enthusiasm.  If we resist the river we feel rankled and tired and stuck in the same place."   Elizabeth Lesser

Practicing Dying

"Practicing dying means living as close to reality as we can in each moment.   It is the ultimate bravery.  The spiritual warrior stands undefended before the truth.   Every day you are given an embarrassingly rich array of opportunities to die to your resistance to what is so about yourself, your life, and those you share it with."  Elizabeth Lesser

Surrender

"Practice surrender not to your own fears, nor to the demands of others, but directly to love.  Do your best to feel through your own resistance as well as your loves."   David Deida

Surrender

"Surrender = letting go of your resistance to the total openness of who you are.   It means to open with no boundaries, emotional or physical, so you ease wide beyond any limiting sense of self you might have.   It means to love without limits.   It means to relax your guard so your lover can feel your core- authentic, unhidden, and undefended.  You practice to remain open and full, like the ocean.   Surrender is the doorway to the deepest possible sex."  David Deida

Suffering

"When suffering comes, we want to hide.   Yet the strange thing is; the more you resist, the longer it stays.  Gentleness helps you to stop resisting the pain that is visiting you.    When you stop resisting suffering, something else begins to happen.  You begin slowly to allow your suffering to follow it's own logic.   It wants to teach you something."   John O' Donahue