We benefit deeply when we can find the grace in our suffering.

This dewdrop world Is but a dewdrop world And yet. -Basho

Ram Dass once said Kali will cut off your head to save your life. In my despair, I’m feeling that fierceness but sure hope that grace is also along for the ride.

So heartbroken and disillusioned. Hopeless. I know suffering is a teacher but will I awake through this or will this I spiral into the pain and never regain my joy? I really don’t know. I’d really believed such a nightmare would never happen to me but here we are. Hoped my karma would’ve saved me.

I guess it’s time to put up or shut up. My world is falling apart around me. Something I never expected. Let’s hope all these quotes really mean something and that all my sadhana of years will get me through the losses.

"Having a spiritual dimension in our lives means discovering ways to handle life's difficulties and generate peace, joy, and happiness right where we are, on this beautiful planet." -Thich Nhat Hanh

My wife is a teacher and doing an online training. Listening-in, I was so pleased to hear the trainer teaching pranayama techniques.

“Only this moment is real, this moment of loving awareness. The past and the future are all just thoughts.“ - Ram Dass

Needed to find a little spot for Maharajji at work today.

Sometimes the first step is to have the courage to let life happen. “Your life is a discovery rather than something being made up, scripted, or controlled by you. Even if you could stick to a script, it would not compare to what unfolds naturally.” - Mooji

If you ever doubt the effects of whatever sadhana you have done, maybe for years, please take time to consider that it might all have been just for this present moment. How much differently would you be handling this present trouble had you never practiced?

“When you do good to people, do it out of your nature. Forget about it, how they behave and their reaction towards you. It's up to them. Keep your mind free.” -Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

“Fear arises when you take the changing to be yourself. What can change is never secure. Know yourself as the unchanging, and fear loses its ground.”

Resentment has always plagued me as well as attachment to “what was”. This quote hits home. “If you keep the past alive within you, you will become dead to the present.” -Sadhguru

“A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless, than one that always verges on despair.” -Thomas Merton

“Negative thoughts are like thieves. If our attention gets diverted for even a moment, they steal our minds. So always be alert.” -Amma

"Education for life is spirituality. It helps us to gain a deeper understanding of the world, our mind, our emotions, and others." -Amma

“Be steadfast in the performance of your duty, O Arjuna, abandoning attachment to success and failure. Such equanimity is called Yoga.” -Bhagavad Gita 2.48

Always reminding myself when life feels overwhelmingly painful: “These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” -Rumi

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“All disturbance belongs to the mind and its endless commentary. Your nature is not affected by its noise. Abide as the quiet in which even disturbance is seen.” -Ashtavakra Gita

“You can make any human activity into meditation simply by being completely with it and doing it just to do it.” -Alan Watts

“When you don't know yourself, you think others can know you, but when you know what you are, you realise no one can know you. No one can grasp the magnificence of that which you truly are.” -Mooji

Not being stressed by life is to not be opposed to any sensation in your body in this very present moment.

"Why this haemorrhaging of energy trying to be special when you can simply be yourself?" -Mooji

“Let Silence be the art you practice. The quieter you become, the more you hear.” -Rumi

"When you drop all your ideas, fantasies and projections about who you are and remain completely empty, this is freedom." - Mooji

“Be free from desire and remain as the witness - this is the highest meditation.” -Ashtavakra Gita

“Your imperfections do not shock me, for I see myself with So many.” -St. Teresa of Ávila

"You need nothing to be happy - you need something to be sad." - Mooji

"I say, drop all your defenses. Anyone can make a mistake — even you. Do not defend your mistakes; just accept them and move on. When you are totally defenseless, that is when you will be completely strong." -Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

“Forget the past. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in the future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now." -Sri Yukteswar

"You have to make it sink deep into you that you are the source of your misery, you are the source of your Joy, nobody else, nobody else at all, nothing else at all but you.” -Sadguru

“Stop chasing what is running away. What is meant for you will come in its own time.” -Rumi

Today may have been one of the worst days of my life. Then I saw this quote: “God sees, God knows and God will fix everything.” -Neem Karoli Baba I like to believe the next message I needed came when I needed it.

“Three things are rare and attained only by grace: human birth, desire for liberation, and association with the wise.” -Adi Shankaracharya

"Be quiet in your mind, quiet in your senses, and also quiet in your body. Then, when all these are quiet, don't do anything. In that state truth will reveal itself to you." -Kabir

“You can plan for a hundred years. But you don’t know what will happen the next moment.” -Neem Karoli Baba

A river does not force its way to the sea. It does not worry about the rocks in its path. It does not stop flowing because the terrain gets difficult. It simply moves. It finds the path of least resistance, and follows it. Not because it is lazy. But because it trusts the landscape to guide it.

“You are ever free, yet you live as if bound by thought and form - who taught you this limitation?” -Ashtavakra Gita

“Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians - you are not like him.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“Thoughts appear without your command and disappear without your consent - why then call them yours?” -Ashtavakra Gita Sorry so many quotes from Ashtavakra lately. A new discovery for me and finding so much of value.

Even when we know better it’s easy to suppress our own feelings. Feelings are just what they are. We should neither deny nor solidify them.

“Meditation is not an act you perform, but the recognition of the awareness in which all acts arise and dissolve.” -Ashtavakra Gita

The models we cling to, even the most noble of them, separate us from liberation.

This week I ate meat for the first time in years. I did so because I feared I’d become attached to my sense of righteousness through it and to release attachment to a model I was trapped in. Thought of this: “You can’t push away the world. You have to enter it fully to become free.” -Ram Dass