"Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots."
-- Edward Bulwer Lytton
"Many people have sacrificed themselves for others, thinking when they sacrifice themselves they are being a good person. Wrong! To sacrifice yourself can only come from thoughts of absolute lack, because it is saying, 'There is not enough for everyone, so I will go without.' Those feelings do not feel good and will eventually lead to resentment. There is abundance for everybody and it is each person's responsibility to summon their own desires. You cannot summon for another person because you cannot think and feel for another. Your job is You. When you make feeling good a priority, that magnificent frequency will radiate and touch everyone close to you."
-- Rhonda Byrne, in "The Secret"
"It is spiritual pride to think that you are any further on the journey than anyone else. Even if this were true, it would not serve you to know it or claim it. What serves you is compassion for self, compassion for others. What serves you is knowing that each person has the lesson that is perfect for him and, if he learns it, there is no telling how far he will advance.
Don't think you have the capacity to make a correct determination of the spiritual progress of any individual, including yourself. You don't. You don't know. One who seems to be far behind can move ahead in a flash. And one who seems ahead can be seriously disabled. The whole idea of ahead and behind is meaningless, since you don't know where the starting line is or the finish line...You can look at others and think you understand, but you will just be kidding yourself. You have no idea what anyone else's life is about. Nor is it really any of your business to know."
-- Paul Ferrini, in "The Silence of the Heart"
"Even though change is constant and inevitable, we prefer to turn our attention-and a great deal of our attention-to preventing changes from happening in our lives. Suggesting to people that they initiate change and call upon the winds to pull their ship from its safe harbor into the moving seas is akin to asking them to sit on hot coals for the afternoon. Yet the truth is that healing and change are one and the same thing. They are composed of the same energy, and we cannot seek to heal an illness without first looking into what behavioral patterns and attitudes need to be altered in our life. Once those characteristics are identified, we have to do something about those patterns. This requires taking action, and action brings about change."
-- Caroline Myss, in "Why People Don't Heal And How They Can"
"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises ... in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate."
-- Francis Bacon
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be. You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-- Marianne Williamson
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