Richard Heilbrunn

“We’re continually being thrown of balance if we try to preserve an exclusively positive spiritual image of ourselves and maintain a life of peace and harmony. We do not want our neatly patterned existence to be abruptly interrupted because it sends our spiritual identity into a freefall. The strategic effort to defend ourselves from the rawness and unpredictability of life is the invitation to make peace and reconcile ourselves with the shadow side of life.”
― Ira Rechtshaffer, Mindfulness and Madness: Money, Food, Sex And The Sacred

“The fruitional aspect of mindfulness practice is when we finally stop wanting others to be different than they actually are. This”
― Ira Rechtshaffer, Mindfulness and Madness: Money, Food, Sex And The Sacred

“No matter what the practice or teaching, ego loves to wait in ambush to appropriate spirituality for its own survival and gain.”
― Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

“Meditation is an expression of tender courage. It suggests that it is refreshing to meet the nakedness of situations with your own nakedness, here and now. Outside of nowness we fail to genuinely appreciate our lives because we are struggling to survive in time, projecting ourselves into the future or attempting to resolve the past.”
― Ira Rechtshaffer, Mindfulness and Madness: Money, Food, Sex And The Sacred