“Spiritual unfoldment takes place through experience of such opposites as pleasure and pain, success and failure, virtue and vice. Both extremes are equally necessary for the fulfillment of life, although they appear to be in direct opposites of each other. In fact, from a larger point of view, the opposites of experience turn out to be complementaries rather than contraries. They appear to be clashing incompatibles only for the mind that cannot transcend them. They are like diametrically opposite points on the circumference of a circle. If you pursue any point on the circumference, the path through it will necessarily lead to its diametrically opposite point…..
… The opposites of failure and success need each other.”
– Beams from Meher Baba
“My research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself of yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. How does this happen? How can a simple belief have the power to transform your psychology and, as a result your life?
Believing that your qualities are carved in stone – the fixed mindset – creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.”
“I’ve seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves – in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships.”
“There’s another mindset, in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you are secretly worried it’s a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you are dealt with is just the starting point for development. This growth-mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.”
– Dr. Carol S. Dweck
“How do you know you are conditioned? What tells you? What tells you that you are hungry? – Not as a theory but the actual fact of hunger? In the same way how do you discover the actual fact that you are conditioned? Isn’t it by your reaction to a problem a challenge? You respond to every challenge according to your conditioning, and your conditioning being inadequate will always react inadequately.”
– J. Krishnamurti
“Daniel Goleman, the father of emotional intelligence, describes the effect of mindfulness for focusing the mind’s cognitive abilities. As Goleman says in his new book, Focus, “One way to boost our will power and focus is to manage our distractions instead of letting them manage us.”
“Increasingly, companies see mindfulness training as a competitive advantage. Aetna, the nation’s third largest health insurer, partnered with Duke University to study meditation and yoga. Researchers found these practices decreased stress levels by 28%, improved sleep quality (20%), reduced pain (19%), and improved productivity 62 minutes per employee per week. Aetna is now offering similar programs to all employees as well as its insured customers.”
– Bill George, Harvard Business School