“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.” – Terence McKenna

“Tragedies do happen. We can discover the reason, blame others, imagine how different our lives would be had they not occurred. But none of that is important: they did occur, and so be it. From there onward we must put aside the fear that they awoke in us and begin to rebuild.” – Paolo Coehlo

“It isn’t cruelty or shame that characterizes the human race. It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.” – Gregory David Roberts

“To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is.” – Pema Chodron

“The sense of interconnectedness that can then arise…is a vision of reality structured very much like the holographic view of the universe, so that each being is at each node of the net, each jewel reflects all the others, reflecting back and catching the reflection, just as systems theory sees that the part contains the whole.” – Joanna Macy

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” – Pema Chodron

“You are born resourceful. It does not cost a dime to feel good. The human community is free. We can feel our love for one another without payment. Our bodies even unto themselves are fully equipped to offer us more pleasure than most are willing to endure. You need never buy back your self via training, relationship, membership, group, or teacher. No one else has ever had what you need: you have always belonged to your self. When you find yourself where you are, whatever you found "over there" will not matter so much any more.” – Gil Hedly

“When in spring the grayed trees and long frozen earth yield to brilliant green life pushing through the crust of hard bark and dull soil, the sad, the depressed, even the dead must rise. Life pushes off every form of slumber, sets the earth trembling underfoot, shakes stones from fixed places, and makes strangers of us all before the empty sting of death. When you see each other again, look upon one another as if for the first time, and marvel: life is quaking through us all.” – Gil Hedly

"Always in big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. You are undertaking the first experience, not of that place, but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of our essential loneliness, for nobody can discover the world for anybody else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes a common ground and a common bond, and we cease to be alone." – Wendell Berry

"This coming together and moving apart is what makes us aware that we are all, each of us, alone. And when I am fully with myself, it is almost enough. Almost. But when you hold my aloneness and I hold yours, when I know we will not hold the necessary silences against each other, I am penetrated by a greater intimacy, an intimacy with the Other, the Mystery that permeates everything, that penetrates and vibrates in my skin, your blood, my bones. It is what makes my breath and your breath the same breath, breathing us all into the next moment. It is here, where my solitude and yours sit side by side that I know this Other that is never completely other, that I meet the I that is not simply myself, that I am truly with the world." - Oriah Mountain Dreamer from the Dance