Kathleen

“Like any skill, religion requires perseverance, hard work, and discipline. Some people will be better at it than others, some appallingly inept, and some will miss the point entirely. But those who do not apply themselves will get nowhere at all. Religious people find it hard to explain how their rituals and practices work, just as a skater may not be fully conscious of the physical laws that enable her to glide over the ice on a thin blade.”
― Karen Armstrong, The Case for God

“It seems both outrageous and irresponsible that so few mental health clinicians connect the epidemics of mental distress in industrial societies with the devastating impact of our suicidal destruction of our own habitat and ecocidal elimination of whole species. — Linda Buzzel and Craig Chalquist”
― Joanna Macy, Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects

“Francis Weller says, “The idea that you have to earn a living is a tragic way to think about being a human being.” Especially if that’s your only way of thinking about your one precious life. This is why the current state is a scandal. It’s not just because of what happened in the past. It’s because what happened is still happening. Karma is living energy that gets manifested in economics, politics, and the justice system.”
― Larry Ward, America's Racial Karma: An Invitation to Heal

“have you ever felt a threat to your ego? Ever felt stupid or embarrassed? In those moments your sense of self wasn't as secure as you thought it was, so you likely shifted and reinterpret the events to account for this unexpected change. This reinterpreting or reinvesting can happen in a variety of ways. You may do anything from discounting others (i.e., “their opinion is of no value”) to refocusing your identity another way (“well, I may not be as rich as they are, but I am much smarter!” or focus on how patriotic you are, or how spiritual, or any other prized pattern of the self that compensates for the area in which your ego felt threatened).”
― Chris Niebauer, No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism