“… 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

“I wanted a perfect ending.  Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle or end.  Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.” Gilda Radner

“Liberation does not come when you conquer your ego, silence it, or through repression and denial get it to behave ‘properly.’  Liberation comes when we release our attachment to the habitual conditioned nature and structure of our temporary egos.” Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi (Liberation)

“You need to be able to gather yourself to yourself and have a capacity for solitude before you can turn to someone else and really hear what they have to say.  If not, you turn to someone else and you’re projecting onto them who you need them to be for you and you can’t hear who they really are.” Sherry Turkle (Solitude: Are Our Smartphones Trapping Us in Anti-Social Bubbles)

“It has been said that it’s the space between the bars that holds the tiger.  And it’s the silence between the notes that makes the music.  It is out of the silence, or ‘the gap’ or that space between our thoughts, that everything is created, including our own bliss.” Dr. Wayne Dyer (Getting in the Gap)