introspection

God whispered, "You endured a lot. For that I am truly sorry, but grateful. I needed you to struggle to help so many. Through that process you would grow into who you have now become. Didn't you know that I gave all my struggles to my favorite children? One only needs to look at the struggles given to your older brother Jesus to know how important you have been to me.

I wandered in the streets, what with the noise the people made, the number of the coaches, the running of the footmen, the swaggering of great courtiers, and the thrusting aside of everybody, many a time I longed to be back among the sheep again, for fear of losing my peacefulness of spirit.

Q: Why do I love thee, O Night?A: Because you know I will never answer.

Nothing is more visible than things hidden; Nothing is more manifest than things minute; Therefore, the superior man should be aware of his aloneness

I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all--and the foundation for our collective survival.

I sleuth, you know. For a hobby. Harmless outlet for natural inquisitiveness, don't you see, which might otherwise strike inward and produce introspection an' suicide. Very natural, healthy pursuit -- not too strenuous, not too sedentary; trains and invigorates the mind.

Learning to let go is not giving up! It is simply passing the burden to a better fighter, so you can fight another day. (God)

Learn to observe your emotions without needing to act or distract yourself from them. Within that stillness your truest most vulnerable thoughts will arise and it is these thoughts that will show you where your healing work must begin.

Every day I wake up and ask myself, __ow can I accept myself and others more fully?

Isn__ it funny how we make rational excuses for being out of alignment? We say, __ell, this ____ and that ____ happened, so it makes perfect sense for me to be feeling like this ____ and wanting to do this ____._ Yet, to this day, I have never met a happy person who adheres to those excuses. In fact, each time I _ or anyone else _ decide to give in to __ational excuses_ that justify feeling bad _ it__ interesting that only further suffering is the result. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Sure, we can go there and make choices that dim our lights_ and that is fine; there certainly is purpose for it and the contrast gives us lessons to learn_ yet if we__e aware of what we are doing and we__e ready to let go of the suffering _ then why go there at all? It__ like beating a dead horse. Been there, done that_ so why do we keep repeating it? Pain is going to happen; it__ inevitable in this human experience, yet it is often so brief. When we make those excuses, what happens is: we pick up that pain and begin to carry it with us into the next day_ and the next day_ into next week_ maybe next month_ and some of us even carry it for years or to our graves! Forgive, let it go! It is NOT worth it! It is NEVER worth it. There is never a good enough reason for us to pick up that pain and carry it with us. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Unforgiveness hurts you; it hurts others, so why even go there? Why even promote pain? Why say painful things to yourself or others? Why think pain? Just let it go! Whenever I look back on painful things or feel pain today, I know it is my EGO that drives me to __o there._ The EGO likes to have the last word, it likes to feel superior, it likes to make others feel less than in hopes that it will make itself (me) feel better about my insecurities. Maybe if I hurt them enough, they will feel the pain I felt over what they did to me. It__ only fair! It__ never my fault; it__ always someone else__. There is a twisted sense of pleasure I get from feeling this way, and my EGO eats it right up. YET! With awareness that continues to grow and expand each day, I choose to not feed my pain (EGO) or even go there. I still feel it at times, of course, so I simply acknowledge it and then release it. I HAVE power and choice over my speech and actions. I do not need to ever __o there_ again. It__ my choice; it__ your choice. So it__ about damn time we start realizing this. We are not victims of our impulses or emotions; we have the power to control them, and so it__ time to stop acting like we don__. It__ time to relinquish the excuses.

To read in the service of any ideology is not to read at all. The mind's dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western canon can bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude.

The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.

Reading, writing, listening to music, skipping rope, flying kites, taking long walks along the sea, hiking in the crisp mountain air, all serve a joint purpose: these self-initiated acts free us from the drudgery of life. These forms of physical and mental exercises release the mind to roam uninhibited, such collaborative types of mind and body actions take people away from their physical pains and emotional grievances. A reprieve from the crippling grind of sameness allows personal imagination to soar. Imagination, a form of dreaming, is inherently pleasant and restorative. It is within these moments of personal introspection stolen from the industry of surviving that humankind touches upon the absolute truth of life: that there must be something more to living then merely getting by; the fundamental human condition thirsts for a way to improve upon the vestment that shelters our self-absorbed lives.

Sometimes the reason God doesn't show up to win your battles is because he already put inside of you the power to end it.

We must clean the lens of our hearts to see the state of our souls. However, too often the former is too dirty to even know that the latter exists.

When the world is worth nothing, then heaven is worth something. I leave every Christian to judge by his own experience, whether we do not overlove the world more in prosperity than in adversity (374) [.]

To attempt to know myself __part_ from God is to choose to know nothing more than __ part_ of myself.

I do feel that I__e managed to make something I could maybe call my world_over time_little by little. And when I__ inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I__ a weak person, that I bruise easily, don__ you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It__ like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere.