A Quote by Orison Swett Marden

Every experience in life, everything with which we have come in contact in life, is a chisel which has been cutting away at our life statue, molding, modifying, shaping it. We are part of all we have met. Everything we have seen, heard, felt or thought has had its hand in molding us, shaping us.
No reason to get angry at anybody for slapping you literally or figuratively. It's just nature unfolding perfectly and obviously that slap is part of my process that is shaping me as I become all I'm becoming. I'm sure this understanding will be a big help to us in our yoga practice and also as a teacher. More than anything though, it will affect the way we look at everything in our life, which affects how we respond to things.
A good education is that which prepares us for our future sphere of action and makes us contented with that situation in life in which God, in his infinite mercy, has seen fit to place us, to be perfectly resigned to our lot in life, whatever it may be.
The whole life-effort of man is to get his life into direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain life, cloud life, thunder life, air life, earth life, sun life. To come into immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power and a dark sort of joy. This effort into sheer naked contact, without an intermediary or mediator is the root meaning of religion.
There is a powerful force within us, an un-illuminated part of the mind - separate from the conscious mind that is constantly at work molding our thought, feelings, and actions.
Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such
Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them." "Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it." "Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization." "The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.
This vast life - the real, interior one in which we remain linked to the dead (because the dream inside us ignores trivialities like breath, or absence) - this vast life is not under our control. Everything we have seen and everyone we have known goes into us and constitutes us, whether we like it or not. We are linked together in a pattern we cannot see and whose effects we cannot know.
A lover of what is looks forward to everything: life, death, disease, loss, earthquakes, bombs, anything the mind might be tempted to call 'bad.' Life will bring us everything we need, to show us what we haven't undone yet. Nothing outside ourselves can make us suffer. Except for our unquestioned thoughts, every place is paradise.
My mother gave me a piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. The correction was the meat, the substance. And then she would sandwich that, sandwich that with another piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. That was very important in shaping and molding our morality, our understanding of ourselves, making sure that we didn’t think we were better than or less than anyone, feeling no more worthy or no less worthy than anyone else.
We rejoice in God since he has taught us that every thing which is true in us, is but a faint expression of what is in him. And thus all our joys become to us the echo of higher joys, and our very life is as a dream of that nobler life, to which we shall awaken when we die.
I have been in an experience where I thought everything that I had hoped for in my life was taken away from me, and I had to redefine what mattered.
We never pray against our government or call down curses on them. Instead, we have learned that God is in control both of our own lives and the government we live under. God has used China's government for His own purposes, molding and shaping His children as He sees fit. Instead of focusing our prayers against any political system, we pray that regardless of what happens to us, we will be pleasing to God.
Love does not terrify me. But the going away of it does. I have been made terribly aware of how everything can be wrenched away from you and your life torn apart. If I had known very secure nights all my life, if I had never seen or felt the fear of being tortured or deported or blown up into a million pieces, then I would not fear it.
Whenever education and refinement carry us away from the common people, they are growing towards selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow people is not God's refinement.
I believe that everything has a purpose and that everything a person does will come back to haunt or save him. Life is like a mirror in which everything we do is reflected back to us. We might not be able to recognize the reflection, and at times the image may be hidden. We may take years to see it or it may not even be visible during our lifetime. But it all comes around in the end. Space is as infinite as our actions are timeless. We are all part of the same invisible story, all travelling in a single continuum.
Life is a building. It rises slowly, day by day throughout the years. Every new lesson we learn lays a block on the edifice, which is rising silently within us. Every experience, every touch of another life on ours, every influence that impresses us, every book we read, every conversation we hear, every act of our commonest days, adds something to the invisible building.
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