“We don’t need to be perfect to do good deeds in the world, but we need to be sincere in our efforts.”
Source: Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides
“We are known to be anti-authoritarian, anti-institutional, and notoriously anti-religious—more likely to quote Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Monty Python, or Star Trek than the Bible.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“You can tend to a garden every day for 20, 30 or 40 years. But if one day you stop giving it loving attention and care it will rapidly deteriorate. Weeds will start to grow, and in a relatively short period of time the garden will become a jungle. On the other hand, it is much easier to turn things around and start cultivating the garden again if it has flourished in the past. The same is true with the human mind and respectively the actions we take every day. If we cultivate our life with dedication, positive thinking, and consistent actions, it will be much easier to turn away from destructive behavior, however far we stray away from our original course.”
Source: The Seven Human Needs: A practical guide to finding harmony and balance in everyday life
“Bridges are made with intention. They make it possible to go between two places that were previously difficult to access.”
Source: Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides
“Without action, we can relegate ideas about social harmony and bridge-building to the realm of wishful thinking.”
Source: Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides
“As acrimony gets a tighter grip on democratic society, good people can either sit on the sidelines, debilitated by angst and daily distractions, or they can overcome indecision and work towards harmony.”
Source: Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides
“We, the willing, should practice the art of lifting the ideological veil and seeing co-humanity everywhere.”
Source: Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides
“The seeds of care and empathy are built into every human being and a variety of soils and fertilizers will allow those same seeds to grow and flourish.”
Source: Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides
“Moral growth corresponds with people’s ability to see the world from an ever-increasing number of perspectives and act accordingly.”
Source: Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides
“Without a tapestry of caring, civilization would collapse into a chaotic every-man-for-himself battlefield.”
Source: Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides
“There is no such thing as a stress-free life. No evidence has ever been presented which suggests that a stress-free life can ever be achieved. Stress can be managed, relieved and lessened, but never eliminated.”
“Stress is a natural and normal part of being alive. Stress-free promises set people up for failure. Even when used with good intentions and accompanied by relevant and beneficial ideas and practices, the use of the words stress-free is still ill advised because the approach is infused with an erroneous idea that will never come to fruition. The stress-free idea has become a significant hurdle on the path to real stress management, which is the balance between using stress productively and relieving harmful stress symptoms.”
“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.”
“If you decide to focus on one thing at a time, instead of trying to solve everything at once, and just do that one thing, then you will feel a sudden decrease in stress.”
Source: Yes! You Can Manage Stress: Regain Control of Your Life Using the Five Habits of Effective Stress Management
“One myth that has become established in the self-development arena is that it only takes 21 days to form a new habit. This simply isn’t true in all cases. Sometimes it takes a shorter time, sometimes a longer time, and sometimes old habits are so hard to break that new ones never take hold.”
Source: Yes! You Can Manage Stress: Regain Control of Your Life Using the Five Habits of Effective Stress Management
“The worst possible approach to a problem is waiting until it becomes overwhelming or irreversible, and that is exactly what many people do. They put dealing with stress on the backburner until they start to experience all the worst symptoms of stress, and by then, it may be too late!”
Source: Yes! You Can Manage Stress: Regain Control of Your Life Using the Five Habits of Effective Stress Management
“Habits equal autopilot. Take brushing your teeth for example. Once that becomes a habit, you don’t have to write positive affirmations or remind yourself constantly to brush your teeth. It is simply a habitual part of what you do every day. That is why I emphasize the five habits of stress management, not the five rules or the five goals. If you make these five habits an essential part of your life, then you will be able to manage stress effectively.”
Source: Yes! You Can Manage Stress: Regain Control of Your Life Using the Five Habits of Effective Stress Management
“Everyone knows that a quick-fix usually doesn’t work, yet we have all been sold on the idea time and time again. Most of us would like to believe in miracle drugs and fast relief. The truth is that most of the quick fixes for stress focus on temporary relief from tension or pain. Temporary, as in, the problem will return with a vengeance. This doesn’t mean we should never take drugs to alleviate tension or pain, it just means that taking drugs is not a viable permanent solution; it’s just a temporary relief.”
Source: Yes! You Can Manage Stress: Regain Control of Your Life Using the Five Habits of Effective Stress Management
“If you have ever procrastinated and then found yourself energized to complete a task at the last minute, then you have used the beneficial aspect of the fight or flight response (not the procrastinating part, but the energizing part). You see, with all its negative long term effects, the fight or flight response still gives us energy, and if we know how to use that energy, then stress is potentially good, at least in the short term.”
Source: Yes! You Can Manage Stress: Regain Control of Your Life Using the Five Habits of Effective Stress Management
“Your fundamental assumption is wrong. You think you are this vehicle. This naked ape. Homo sapiens. I tell you, you are no more human than a driver is the car he is driving. You would never go to a junkyard to look for the driver would you?”
Source: The Meditating Psychiatrist Who Tried to Kill Himself
“These superhero and mythical stories have, in many cases, replaced Biblical stories as vehicles for communal myths, but they are hardly any better than ancient magical adventures tinged with mythical archetypes and the decidedly unnuanced black-and-white struggle between good and evil.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Being positive all the time is such a catchy idea, and it’s easy to preach. I guess that’s why it is popular. But life reveals itself in successions of up’s and down’s and if you plan to be positive all the time you will definitely fail.”
Source: Empowerment Basics: Becoming a Better Version of YOU without Competing with Others
“You are here and you can’t escape it. Thoughts about why you came to be here and a poor-me mentality will not help you to resolve the situation. You cannot avoid being here now, in this present moment, in this unfortunate predicament. Your choices, lack of choices, or accidental events, have led you to this moment. That cannot be changed no matter how much you think about it. The only things that can be changed in this present moment are your thoughts and actions right now. Take a deep breath and totally accept this moment.”
Source: Yes! You Can Manage Stress: Regain Control of Your Life Using the Five Habits of Effective Stress Management
“If people can be around each other doing co-human things—i.e., things that everyone does, such as eating food, helping others, creating, talking about the weather, etc.—and not feel threatened, anxieties are reduced, empathy is increased, trust is built, and perceptions are changed.”
Source: Co-Human Harmony: Using Our Shared Humanity to Bridge Divides
“For reasons unknown, the philosophical aspect of the yoga movement has had to make way for the yoga fit revolution; today’s image of a yogi is a slender and scantily clad young female doing postures on the cover of a bestselling magazine, whereas the older image was of an Indian man with long beard sitting in a cave wearing a loin cloth.”
Source: Living in the Spirit of Yoga: Take Yoga Off the Mat and Into Your Everyday Life
“Despite an ever increasing diversity when it comes to yoga brands, there are only four major paths in yoga and they have the same end goal; enlightenment. The end goal can be likened to the top of a pyramid. Even though people may start climbing the pyramid from different sides, at the end they will reach the same goal and thusly achieve unity.”
“One of the hallmarks of great teachers is that they rejoice when their students surpass them. Encouraging an atmosphere of questioning and inviting people to grow within your classroom isn’t necessarily easy; which must explain why people who want to create cults or die hard followers discourage questioning in general. They would rather have people reciting their dogma than asking hard questions.”
Source: Create a Safe Space: An Inspirational Guidebook for Yoga Teachers Who want to Further Serve their Students
“Stay within the confines of your chosen topic. If you start to stray away from your topic and find an urge to showcase everything that you know, resist that urge. Remember that you are writing a book, not the book.”
Source: The Author's Blueprint
“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.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“For example, the call for equal rights has perverted into “let’s all be the same.” Male and female biological differences are discounted, because “male” and “female” are considered “outdated social constructs,” and while that is partially true, the social construct stance becomes clear reductionism when it totally discounts clear differences in male and female biology (i.e., androgyny is not the same as equality).”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“This stance makes no distinction between (1) the pluralistic standpoint of making sure people have equal rights and (2) the act of co-dependently making sure not to hurt anyone’s feelings, however irrational they may be. We need to stop that nonsense. Getting your feelings hurt, quite frankly, is the price of living a in a free society.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“The pre-rational view of spirituality is irrational because it is based on pre-rational worldviews, such as the magical, the belief that individual thoughts and actions directly influence the outside world (“If I dance, it will rain”); and the mythical, which is belief in unverified dogma, a worldview that usually includes a belief in an external power that can be asked to change outcomes (“If I pray to Jesus, he will intervene in my life”).”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Western spiritual seekers began picking and choosing from Eastern philosophies based on their preferences. Wanting to get away from myth and dogma, they mixed and matched, shook and stirred, mashed and meshed, blended and juiced . . . and in the process, well, they lost their way. They created a number of philosophical inconsistencies.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“In essence, oversimplification tends to take a partial truth and make it all powerful.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“... we are all guilty of oversimplification at one point or another. It’s an enticing idea. It fulfills our need for instant gratification. We find one thing and scream, “Eureka!” We found IT—the one thing that explains it all. The only trouble is that it never works. We are more likely to squeeze gold from our coffee grinder than we are to meet with success when adopting an idea that has been simplified beyond recognition.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Walk into any church, and you will see people swimming in a sea of emotions (everything from shame and guilt to love and ecstasy). That may be the reason some people think that the more emotional they are, the more spiritual they are. But, as we will explore later in the book, undiluted spirituality has little to do with emotions, and what little it does have has more to do with emotional growth than feelings of elation.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“... both spiritual teachers and preachers fall into the trap of using imprecise, emotional mumbo jumbo—if you can’t define it or explain it, then it’s mumbo jumbo—to connect with an audience. The audience reads into it what they want, and it makes for good theater.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“The spiritual-but-nonreligious movement is largely driven by charismatic authors and speakers who attract like-minded people to their workshops and intensives.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“... in the latter half of the twentieth century, postmodernism upended everything. Universal truths were no longer accepted. “Truth” (postmodernism loves quotation marks) was instead a social construct that depended heavily on cultural context. Nothing was either true or false, but was instead open to interpretation.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Prior to postmodernism, it was all but impossible to claim that one was a cultural Christian, Jew, or Muslim. There was no such thing. Now, being culturally religious is a widely accepted stance.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“By exclaiming that “there are no absolute truths” the postmodern stance is also claiming that the statement it just made is an absolute truth—trying to have it both ways, rejecting absolutism with absolutism.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Such public shaming is rampant and sometimes appropriate, but unfortunately, in recent years, shaming has morphed into coordinated reputation murders, and anyone who is slightly insensitive or not PC enough can be led to a public character lynching without due process.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Today, religious fanatics and scientific rejectionists flourish under the protective wing of postmodernism, claiming that theirs is just one more valid viewpoint—a form of mental aikido (using the opponent’s strength against him).”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Saying, “I don’t agree with you,” or going so far as to say, “I think your belief structure is childish,” does not amount to persecution. Insensitivity is not the same as harassment or oppression.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“We attend a postmodern meeting, and everyone leaves happy because everyone at the meeting was able to express himself or herself, even if no decisions were made. We give equal awards to our kids so nobody feels left out. Our news media is more concerned with the question, “How did that make you feel?” than any other.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“It is almost impossible to get anyone with a postmodern slant to say “I think” and stand by what follows, without making sure that the person listening understands, “Of course, there are other things to consider.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“The term trans-rational is emblematic of a worldview within which rationality is included and transcended, not repressed or dismissed.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“This tendency to defend a belief structure is true in all cases, even the rational. Never underestimate our ability to convince ourselves of what we wish to be true, especially if we have invested time and money in our beliefs.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“...rationality can easily unveil the futility of life and lead to depression—as the stereotype of the extremely smart, but world-weary, educated man (often portrayed as a detective, philosopher, or doctor) suggests. As such, the rational worldview has its limits.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
“Only direct experience of the peaceful internal state will remove doubt and provide enlightenment—not in a spooky, out-of-this-world kind of way, but in a rational, let’s-turn-on-the-lights sort of way.”
Source: More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality