If one gets into an argument, and it does not come out the way one wished it would have done, one does not have to pretend to compromise while withholding one's true feelings. One may yield the position gracefully. One my rest, and return to witnessing what is happening.

 - John Heider, modified from his, "The Tao of Leadership"

According to this teaching, there is nothing you need to become. There is nowhere you need to go. There is nothing you need to accomplish. There is nothing for you to realize. There is no project for you to realize. You are already what you wish to become. When we ask a rose or an orchid, “Why are you here? What is your purpose?” The flower might answer, “I am here to make life more beautiful. I am here to bring you joy.” But the flower could also answer, “I am simply here. I am here to just be here. To be is already enough.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh, founder of the Plum Village Tradition of engaged buddhism

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

- Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology, from his "The Psychology of the Unconscious."

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons or property will be safe.

- Frederick Douglass, American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman, in a speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C., April, 1886.

Stay together, friends.
Don't scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made
of being awake.

The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away,
weeping.

That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness
rolls through a dry riverbed looking
for what it thinks it wants.

Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.

- Rumi, 13th Century Sufi poet, mystic and teacher

Before the world becomes one, before the people become one, before your beliefs become one, people will go crazy. But not until you understand that God is in all breath, in all that breathes, then it will become one. One faith.

- Grandmother Rita Pitka Blumenstein, the first certified traditional doctor in Alaska and a member of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers

We know from the practice of experiential therapy that it is possible to purge from our unconscious undigested memories of emotional and physical pain from our infancy, childhood, and later life by fully experiencing them. This, together with ensuing positive experiences that become available in this process, frees us from the distorting influence of past traumas that make our daily life inauthentic and unsatisfactory.

- Stanislav Grof, a Czech-born American psychiatrist and principal developer of transpersonal psychology, from his book, "The Cosmic Game, Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness"

Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved through co-operation and compromise, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that from the universal view all beings are equal in importance, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in the universal scheme of things - these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the desire to live usefully and walk humbly through life.

- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, adapted

We may become aware that worldly concerns and distractions keep us trapped in samsara, and we may feel an intense desire to be liberated from it. Then we find ourselves at the meeting point of two paths: one leads to liberation, and the other to the lesser destinies of samsara.

- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist

The solution is to become your own loving parent. You will find  freedom to express all the hurts and fears you have kept inside and to free yourself from the shame and blame that are carryovers from the past. You will become an adult who is imprisoned no longer by childhood reactions. You will recover the child within you, learning to accept and love yourself.

The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation. Feelings and buried memories will return. By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly move out of the past. We learn to re-parent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect.

- "The Loving Parent Guidebook - The solution is to become your own loving parent"