“Most of us just haven’t learned to pay much attention to the countless hours of love, kindness, and care that surround us each day: a child at the store reaching for her mother’s hand, an elderly stranger at the park who smiles upon a young family, a grocery clerk who beams at you as she hands you your change.”  John Makransky

“Each activity you perform is an opportunity to observe the ways mind and body can work together and how they can sometimes conflict.  The mind can spend hours worrying about a simple task that will take the body only minutes to perform.  Although the music maybe long, the dance itself is short.”  Gary Thorp

“The heart of so many mystical disciplines is “Stay fully present.”  Learn to keep your spirit fully in focus, so that you know where you all of you is at all times.  Such a profound truth is one the mind cannot grasp, because the intellect cannot get this place called “now.”  Only a soul can travel there.  While it may sound easy to say, “Just detach and get on with your life,” there is nothing easy about it.  Holding your consciousness in the present time is the equivalent of entering a different but parallel dimension of reality.”  Caroline Myss

“Every moment in life is absolute in itself.  That’s all there is.  There is nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no future; there is nothing but this.  So when we don’t pay attention to each little ‘this’, we miss the whole thing.”  Charlotte Joko Beck

“Surrender isn’t about giving up.  Nor is it about laying back and going unconscious.  It’s about paying attention in a deeper way.  It’s about listening with every cell of our being.  It’s about watching to see what happens.”  Oriah Mountain Dreamer

“Transformation has little to do with intelligence, willpower, or perfection.  It has everything to do with honest humility, willingness, and surrender.”  Fr. Richard Rohr

“Awakening is not about me, it’s about something bigger.  It’s about the stream of consciousness that I am embedded in as a person.” Thomas Hübl

“The fact I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another’s, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual practices.”  Leo Buscaglia

“The spiritual path is not a sole endeavor.  In fact, the very notion of a self who is trying to free her/himself is a delusion.  We are in it together and the company of spiritual friends helps us realize our connectedness.”  Tara Brach

It isn’t the things that happen in our lives that cause us to suffer, it’s how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.”  Pema Chödrön