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"Sometimes I wonder how much of our suffering we allow or impose on ourselves simply in search of our worthiness to accept our own respect and appreciation."
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"One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary."

"Although it pains me to admit it, I am quite familiar with the holes in life. And this familiarity is due to the fact that I spend far more time in these holes than I spend on the paths that brought me to them."

"The saints have to 'drink poison' (worldly suffering) and the world has to 'drink nectar' (worldly pleasures). Because people are weak."

"Discharge [disposal of karma] is in nature's hands. That's why there is restlessness. That is why these are the pains of dependency [association]. There are such times man has to face that it becomes difficult for him to pass even one hour."

"As long as there is worldly life, one is going to attain physical body, and as long as there is a body, there will be worldly miseries and troubles."

"If you allow it, [suffering] can be the means by which God brings you His greatest blessings."

"The suffering that is there in this world is such that it will fall off (go away), but people give support to it."

"Someone may have a broken heart or someone may have a broken ego. Such people will have to suffer tremendously because of that."
Explore more quotes by Darrell Calkins

"It takes a relative amount of courage just to get out of bed each day. There are those who are stronger in their courage, and they help to compel us along a little further in the fulfillment of our faith."

"In an animal's or a plant's expression of imagination (let's leave out the rest for now, so we don't have to deal with the question of consciousness in, for example, minerals), there is always purity in the connection between need and evolution. That which is created is a response to reality and very specific, essential concerns. This then is the origin of the union between what is so and mysterious harmony-truth and beauty. The bridge between them is inspired intuition and the actions it causes. Or, imagination causes inspiration causes intuition causes beauty, which then causes imagination again."

"The subjective experience of intense pain ("That's all I can take) corresponds exactly to one's subjective experience in relation to truth ("That's all I can take)."

"Virtually everyone defines their identity-or constructs their belief of who they are-through their specific combination of desires and suffering. Or, desires obtained (apparent subjective success at the sacrifice of something else), desires unobtained (suffering), and desires still left as questions (to be obtained or not). And...most of the desires, and the suffering, are themselves by-products of others, established by society and the rules of each sect of society."

"If you are "playing too much or "working too much, you will have a reaction on the other side, which indicates your pace is off, too slow or too fast."

"There is an actual and palpable hierarchy of emotional, mental and physiological intensity that corresponds to the actual capacities and limitations of human beings. In other words, there does exist a real and definable scale of suffering, and of joy."

"The essential war within, and the cause of suffering, begins with the presumption that yearning, impulse and curiosity, desire and question, exist so as to end them. To attain, to acquire, to answer."

"On an even subtler dimension, clarity, intuitive knowledge and contentment are primarily determined by chemical and hormonal balances in the body and brain. Most of this is entirely manipulable through fairly simple physical exercises that anyone can do."

"We have been trained to feel shame and guilt basically as a means to cause fear and hesitation, to control behavior, or to oppress real freedom and joy. The origins of that are communal fear, jealousy and the desire for power over others. Consequently, many people have the addiction of using shame or guilt simply to avoid possibilities in life, and have, at the same time, a reason to avoid them-if you act spontaneously or feel joy, the result will eventually bring suffering, so you had better watch out, and don't ever forget the past shame and guilt."

"People generally believe that stress is responsible for depletion, but apathy and uninspired systematic repetition are equally responsible. Or rather, systematic repetition produces as much or more stress and anxiety as anything else."
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