"This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. If you bring the right earnestness to your homemade ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God.

So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night breeze on the palms of my bare feet. This kind of thing - a spontaneous handstand - isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands; we can stand on them if we want. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands."
- From "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert


"One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night" - Kahlil Gibran

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. " Marianne Williamson

"Destruction before creation" -Joseph Campbell

"What do sad people have in common? It seems they have all built a shrine to the past and often go there and do a strange wail and worship. What is the beginning of happiness? It is to stop being so religious like that." Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

"My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon" - Chinese Proverb

"This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you. Whereever your eyes and arms and heart can move against the earth and sky, the Beloved has bowed there; our Beloved has bowed there, knowing you were coming." - Hafiz