The conjunction of effort, concentration and balance in asana forces us to live intensely in the present moment, a rare experience in modern life.

Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.

Today, the ideal male is the gay man and the ideal female is the worker female, the woman who can work in a coal mine just like all the other men.

Why does everyone cling to the masculine imagery and pronouns even though they are a mere linguistic device that has never meant that God is male?

If we go somewhere on foot, we know the way perfectly, whereas if we go by car or airplane, we are hardly there at all. It becomes merely a dream.

Rather than allowing our response to an even affect our breathing, we can learn instead to let our breathing change our relationship to the event.

It is in an artist's real interest to congratulate herself more often: not out of narcissism, but in her role as her own dear friend and advocate.

If, because of anxiety and self-doubt, you procrastinate and only think about working, you'll feel more exhausted than if you'd created for hours.

Abstraction is itself an abstract word and has no single meaning ... Every word in our language is abstract, because it represents something else.

One of the strongest motives for wishing to work on yourself is the realization that you may die at any moment - only you must first realize this.

We don't always know what makes us happy. We know, instead, what we think SHOULD. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail.

You do not need to work to become spiritual. You are spiritual; you need only to remember that fact. Spirit is within you. God is within you. (67)

Doubt comes to the door in darkness, pretending to be alone and in need of your compassionate ear. But if you let him in, he'll bring his friends.

When writing becomes too dominant, it gets leached of its own power. We spend more and more time writing and we have less and less to write about.

Government is supposed to lead by example in many cases. Government that's not particularly caring and is hands-off is not particularly inspiring.

Questions appear real for as long as you consider yourself to be a person. When you realize you are the impersonal presence, all questions vanish.

It is true that veganism is a serious issue, but there should be fun involved. Why do anything if it doesn't bring some joy at the end of the day?

All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!

Because religion has such a compelling hold on the deep psyches of so many people, feminists cannot afford to leave it in the hands of the fathers.

All the creatures are pleased by loving words; and therefore we should address words that are pleasing to all, for there is no lack of sweet words.

Developing confidence is like watching the sun rise. First it seems very feeble and one wonders whether it will make it. Then it shines and shines.

Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of extreme impulse, but the area in-between is very fuzzy.

You are sitting on the earth and you realize that this earth deserves you and you deserve this earth. You are there - fully, personally, genuinely.

Talent is so loaded a word, so full to the brim with meanings, that an artist might be wise to forget about it altogether and just keep on working.

I never expected to write a book about a slum in Ireland that was going to catapult me, as they say, into some kind of - onto the best seller list.

I had moments with my father that were exquisite - the stories he told me about Cuchulain, the mythological Irish warrior, are still magical to me.

The cruelest form of death, I have no doubt, is not physical death. Rather it is that public death which comes from the killing of ideas about God.

The tools of 'The Prosperous Heart' help people to embrace the life that they actually have, where they often find that they already have 'enough.'

We create the world we live in. If we want to change what we don't like in the world, we must start by changing what we don't like about ourselves.

Never be in debt. Never reside near enemies. Never trap your body through disease. Never forget the Lord with his consort who resides in the heart.

Yoga allows you to rediscover a sense of wholeness in your life, where you do not feel like you are constantly trying to fit broken pieces together.

The breath must be enticed or cajoled, like catching a horse in a field, not by chasing after it, but by standing still with an apple in one’s hand.

You use the body as a medium to bring the mind back to the brain. Perfect married between body and mind. Then, you can knock the door to the spirit.

The power of a king lies in his mighty arms; that of a brahmana in his spiritual knowledge; and that of a woman in her beauty youth and sweet words.

If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time.

The artist's task is to become a successful eccentric, a strange but wise duck able to venture out of solitary confinement and mingle among society.

I don't believe in happiness anyway... it's too much of an American pastime, this search for happiness. Just forget happiness and enjoy your misery.

We had nothing, no television, no radio, nothing to get in the way. We read by the streetlight at the top of the lane, and we acted out the stories.

Your mood doesn't really matter. Some of the best creative work gets done on the days when you feel that everything you're doing is just plain junk.

Everything is happening spontaneously, and the witnessing of it is also happening spontaneously. Everything is already happening in natural balance.

I admire hard-bitten, wisecracking realism of Ida Lupino and the film noir heroines. I'm sick of simpering white girls with their princess fantasies.

Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?

Men who shrink from penetration of the female body are paralyzed by justifiable apprehension, since they are returning to our uncanny site of origin.

Daytime soap operas, which I used to adore, have been declining in quality and importance for over a decade, and I gradually stopped monitoring them.

If feminism has receded in visibility and prestige, it is precisely because its vision of life's goals and rewards has become too narrow and elitist.

we must continue to be open in the face of great opposition. No one is encouraging us to be open and still we must peel away the layers of the heart.

Trust your Heart. Value its intuition. Choose to let go of fear, and to open to the true and you will awaken to the freedom, clarity and joy of Being

The ideal you seek and hope to attain will not manifest itself, will not be realized by you, until you have imagined that you are already that ideal.

As we explore the soul, it is important to remember that this exploration will take place within nature (the body), for that is where and what we are.

Backbends are to be felt more than expressed. The other postures can be expressed and then felt. Like in meditation each person has to feel backbends.

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