Defeats

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We may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be.

Maya Angelou, The Art of Fiction, The Paris Review Interviews, vol. IV

A Sign of health in the mind

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A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us.

Donald Winnicott

Hope

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Hope is the pillar of the world.

African Proverb

Who we are

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Our being is silent, but our existence is noisy.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual practice

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The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it – exactly and completely.

Dainin Katagiri Roshi