Quotes about Lessons

"Sometimes God allows a relative or fellow worker to cause us problems in order to exercise our patience and humbleness; however, instead of being grateful for the chance God gives us, we react and refused to be cured.  It is like refusing to pay the doctor who is giving us a shot when we are ill."

Father Paisios Eznepides (+1994)

Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time.

If your life's story were written, would you read it?

Life is what you make it will your story have a peak, a conflict, suspence, action, a climax, and a conclusion? Or will you live your life keeping it safe and never taking any risks?  Ask yourself: if your life story were written, would you read it?

Life is a Book of Riddles, with the Real Lessons Writ Small in its Margins.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.       

Though we can't always see it at the time,
if we look upon events with some perspective,
we see things always happen for our best interests.
We are always being guided in a way
better than we know ourselves.

Swami Satchidananda

You don't always have to do what's RIGHT.... Just don't do what's WRONG

"Unless one fully experiences one's humanity, one will have to experience earth again and again. One will have to repeat the lessons offered here upon the earth. It is possible that one need not have to reincarnate. However, many don't live up to their full potential because they're afraid of death. I want to emphasize here that only the body dies. People get too attached to their physicality. However, they have to. One's consciousness of the physical must be fairly strong in order for the soul's desire to continue. The more we feel our humanity, the more help we can give and the more joy we can create."

We're being trained through our incarnations--trained to seek love, trained to seek light, trained to see the grace in suffering.

Life brings you exactly what you need.

Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them. You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

Strength is not ust victory, but the ability to fail with integrity and take tfe lessons of losing and weakness as oportunites to learn.

David Brainerd-saturday april 10 1742

oh, that al my late distresses and awful apprehensions might prove but Christ's school to make me fit for greater service, by teaching me the great lesson of Humility!

Here are some sample poems from the book:

The Way I Walk

Look.  I have trekked a lifetime,
The path behind is gone.
See.  Darkness behind me,
But before me wakes the Dawn.
Know the Path is endless,
And truly just begun.
And I have walked with no one,
Yet I am not alone.
The Way I walk is Home.

                                       [March 1, 1973]

Music

Music is a friend to me --
A playful thing, a fantasy.
A night of darkness becomes light.
A day of fear is made all right.
Anything I want to see
Is brought to me through harmony
                                    of Music.

Music can be sadness,
Music can be love.
Music can be gladness
And the strength to rise above.
In this life we seek a key --
A magic thing to set us free.
In a cage with bars of glass
Happiness is all we ask.
Many stars won't shine for me,
But I'm anything I want to be
                                    with Music.

[SONG, December 31, 1981] 

Let Go!

I've asked myself a thousand times,
Why?  Why must this be?
The suffering, injustice, a world in agony.
People live from day to day
In loneliness untold,
Praying for some miracle,
Or happiness, or gold.
As I see their misery,
Their sorrow, and their woe,
A little voice speaks soft to me,
"You've seen it, now let go."

I've asked myself a thousand times,
Why must I feel such pain?
I've tried to live a life that's true,
Yet meet with much disdain.
I give to others who gladly take
'Till nothing's left for me,
And I ask my God within,
Why?  How can this be?
Have I not felt suffering,
Felt agony, and woe?
A little voice then comes to me,
"You've felt it, now let go."

I've asked myself ten thousand times,
And now the meaning's clear.
The world is not a paradox,
The answer is right here.
The lure of earthly fortune
Is empty as the air.
The Way within holds all the Light,
To It, the world cannot compare.

And though I live within this world
Of folly and of woe,
I know full well the lesson here:
Let Go!  Let Go!  LET GO!

[December 4, 1982]

"There should be no suffering for any creature except for what they accept for themselves."  That was a thought to ponder.  Spirit Woman explained that each individual soul on the highest level of our being could, and sometimes did, select to be born into an imperfect body; they often came to teach and influence the lives they touched.  Spirit Woman said that members of the tribe that had been murdered in the past had selected prior to birth to live their life to the fullest but, at some point in time, to be a part of some other soul's enlightenment test.  If they were killed, it was with their agreement on an external level and only indicated how truly they understood forever.  It meant the muderer had failed the challenge and would be tested again someplace in the future.  All diseases and disorders, they believe, have some spiritual connection and serve as stepping-stones if Mutants would only open up and listen to their bodies to learn what is taking place.

"We are weak," Dan said. "We are weak for alcohol.  Just like white people are weak for owning things."  He turned to me.  "But those weaknesses are gifts, just like our strengths are gifts.  Weaknesses make us strong, because they make us stand up to ourselves."

It is not easy for a man to be as great as a mountain or a forest.  But that is why the creator gave them to us as teachers.  Now that I am old I Iook once more toward them for lessons, instead of trying to understand the ways of men. They tell me to be patient.  They tell me I cannot change what is, I can only hope to change what will become.  Let the grasses grow over our scars, they say, and let flowers bloom over our wounds.

It's not that "today is the first day of the rest of my life," but that now is all there is of my life.