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"The upside of approaching spiritual practices like an experiment is that there can be no failure, only different outcomes. Whatever happens, you will learn about yourself and your relationship with the divine along the way."
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"If our mind remains freeze-framed by inhibiting and hampering habits, in an ever-changing world, we won't be able to get rid of that weird feeling of not belonging anywhere and not taking part in authentic life challenges. ['Not on the shortlist']"

"What defines you isn't how many times you crash but the number of times you get back."

"I wasn't ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn't that I wasn't right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn't right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn't come easy for, someone like me."

"It's hard to do," I said. Wes looked at me. "What is?" I swallowed, not sure why I'd said this out loud. "Get it right."

"For I have nothing to lean on, nowhere to call my home and there is nowhere I will go for Christmas to rest my head and touch familiar walls. I have no degree to show on paper or employment to take care of my health or the reassurance that I can pay my rent. And I have no right to complain because this is the road I choose and I built it myself, not really knowing where I wanted it to lead, but I have hope in all things ahead and behind and I am learning to let myself go. Forget my own ego and believe that what I am doing is grander than my very own self."

"For things I am not thankful for-experiences I would never volunteer to relive-I recognize how they have changed me. My depth of compassion and humility, the sincerity of my empathy and understanding, and the duration of my patience have all been refined by bitter suffering. I thank God for the lessons learned. I am a better person for it, but I still abhor those awful trials."

"If you couldn't sense heat, you'd not be alive. And if that heat never grew uncomfortable, you would never move. And if you were stagnant-unchallenged by unpredictable flares-you would never grow capable of shielding yourself from harsher flames. So yes, life was meant to drag you straight through the fire."

"If at first you don't succeed, you're doing it wrong. Learn from the experience. Try again, but with a different approach."
Explore more quotes by Gudjon Bergmann

"The building blocks of meditation are relaxation and concentration. If you cannot relax, you cannot meditate. If you cannot concentrate, you cannot meditate. No exceptions."

"Letting go of the past does not mean that we should try to forget everything that has happened to us and not learn anything from our previous thinking patterns and actions. Letting go simply means that we do not allow the past to control our current thoughts and actions."

"History has taught us that when understanding and tolerance are fostered, people of different faiths can live together in harmony. Regrettably, history has also taught us the opposite, that such states of equilibrium can quickly degenerate and succumb to rhetoric of anger and fear, sometimes leading to violence and even war. A balance of mutual respect and tolerance needs to be maintained through good works. Interrelations need continual nurturing."

"Stress - free moments certainly exist, but that is the extent of it. People, who have bought into the idea of a stress - free life, believe they should be happy and positive all the time. They have been sold a damaging falsehood. As the first sentence in M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled famously said: 'Life is difficult. Learning to deal effectively with life's difficulties, learning to manage the inevitable stress of life is attainable, while eliminating stress is not."

"Relaxation is, a state between waking and sleeping, where the body is completely still and the mind is allowed to flow freely from one thought to another, or alternately, a state in which the mind becomes inadvertently calm."

"Many people close themselves off from the world when they are under pressure. That is understandable. I have gone through periods when I didn't want to meet people because I didn't feel good about my situation in life and that made my life even more stressful. Remind yourself often about how much of an impact compassion and friendship can have on your life. You need to get out there, be compassionate and share your time and your life with your friends and other people that need your support. It's worth it on every level."

"By thinking mostly about everything that has gone wrong, is going wrong, and can possibly go wrong, the thinker is bound to end up in a lousy mental and emotional state."

"Once we got closer to the origins of these Eastern practices, we found that the monks and swamis were just as dogmatic and paternalistic, just as literal and conservative in their approach to spirituality as the Christian priests and ministers we were trying to get away from."

"Concentration is, a relaxed mental state, where the stream of consciousness flows in a single direction, either focusing on a phrase or mental picture, or alternately, a state in which the mind is alert and aware."

"Experifaith is distinctly different from storyfaith. It does not provide answers to life's big questions. Rather, it proposes a path of discovery through practice, where a person can come to his or her own conclusions. As such, it has more in common with the modern scientific method than storyfaith does, and, when practiced properly, experifaith is mostly verifiable within a community of practitioners."
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