Master your responses to external events--don't attempt to control them.

There are no insignificant relationships. Every experience that we have contains purpose and meaning. Each event, each person in our lives embodies an energetic fragment of our own psyche and soul. Our individual spiritual task is to recognize and integrate all of them into our awareness so that the greater pattern of our mission can shine forth in its full dimensions.

I don't ever want to humiliate a human being, and I don't want the fear of being humiliated to participate in my thoughts.

Spiritual maturity is measured not by the sophistication of a person's opinions, but by their genuineness and the courage necessary to express and maintain them.

Someone asks me what's my practice? I don't want the fear of being humiliated to have authority over me. I don't want it to come near me. I don't want it to have a voice in my decisions. I don't want it to be anywhere near me. What's my practice? That one. I don't ever want to humiliate a human being, and I don't want the fear of being humiliated to participate in my thoughts.

To feel the suffering and then to know the pain of the unnecessariness of it. That right there has me in its grip. The only way through that is serious prayer. I can't get through it any other way. I've got to believe that that's making a difference somehow. I can't see the difference, but I've got to believe it does, because in some way it lets me sleep at night. My only other alternative is to become angry, and I can't go that direction.

Grace is a power that comes in and transforms a moment into something better