It is at the bottom where we find grace; for like water, grace seeks the lowest place and there it pools up.

Prayer is looking out from a different set of eyes, which are not comparing, competing, judging, labeling or analyzing, but receiving the moment in its present wholeness and unwholeness. That is what is meant by contemplation.

The ego hates losing – even to God.

If you stay in the mainstream of life, in other words, you let in the suffering of the world that invariably enters all of our lives by the time we're in our middle years, when we've experienced a few deaths and read a few headlines. Famine, poverty, abuse, you can't keep that all blocked out. If you let those things teach you, influence you, change you, those are the events that transition you without you even knowing it to become more compassionate. In other words, you hold onto your values, but you do it much more inclusively, humbly and in an open ended way. Suffering takes you there.

In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

Men must learn how to grieve, or they are inevitably angry or controlling, and they don't even know why.