Out of Suffering

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

—Khalil Gibran

To Reach My Destination

If I can’t change the direction of the wind but I can adjust the sails to always reach my destination.

—Jimmy Dean

To Try And Fail

I think you have to try and fail because failure gets you closer to what you’re good at.

—Louis C.K.

Pleasure And Pain

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

—Alan Watts

How To Be Proactive

I find it’s often helpful to take a day and recognize any areas in your life where there is a feeling or sense of insecurity and to notice how much it might disempower you. Then to identify one small step or action you are able to take to release the insecure feeling, observing whether or not you are proactive or passive. Part of healing requires energy that is proactive, so take a good look at your life and you might, even if just slowly you might be able to better it. It can be hard but it can be done!

—Jonathan Harnisch

Do Not Lose Hope

Don't lose hope, no matter what.

Jonathan Harnisch

Ideas To Inspire

To examine the doubts we have about our present way is a highly intelligent act.

Anyone weary of stumbling in the dark has taken the first step toward walking in the light.

The one supreme power that will guarantee personal happiness is personal right thinking.

Inner light shows you want to do with yourself all day long, making everything comfortable.

Acquired beliefs and cosmic facts are as different as pebbles and diamonds.

Please people and you achieve nothing, but please your real self and you start a miracle.

Feel the need for something different, and then let it grow by having affection for it.

Cosmic wisdom reveals why unhappy events happen, after which they cease to happen.

You are not required to listen to anyone who demands, “What are you doing about my problems?”

Even if all your friends and relatives do not know how to live rightly, you can surely know.

No one is more qualified than you to discover the true treasures of your inner kingdom.

The very nature of your essence is confidence, so why seek this virtue outside of essence?

Freedom from painful decisions is a happy is a happy result of discovering who you really are.

Truth has its reasons for acting as it does, and every one of them is for your benefit.

Calm command can replace agitation as surely as sunshine can replace a storm.

All good things come to anyone who refuses to be intimidated by his or her own despair.

By eliminating the sheep in his or herself, a man or woman gives psychic wolves nothing to prey upon.

Welcome higher facts without understanding them and in time you will understand.

Truth does not hurt; rather, it is our resistance to its message that causes pain.

When a frantic world tries to carry you away, remind yourself that you need not go.

Self-knowledge creates an inner state in which you are valuable to yourself in a new way.

The feeling of being in danger from oneself fades with the application of higher facts.

Be aware of how people insist upon draining your energy, and then quietly refuse it.

Heartache can be conquered because a higher part of you is free and apart from heartache.

It is a bright day when we see that cosmic facts are as practical as a recipe for baking bread.

Reflect often on the interesting idea of getting out of you own way.

We attract events, which correspond, to our nature, so a higher nature will attract higher events.

One thing that is always right is your eagerness for something higher than yourself.

Most people merely rearrange their problems, but with self-insight you can end them.

By seeing what we fear to see we shatter one of the pillars supporting the haunted house.

Wrong action in the past is corrected perfectly by right action in the present.

Living from mere ideas causes self-concern, which is cured by living from essence.

Real courage consists of departing from the false while not yet knowing what is true.

We learn to love the light by seeing clearly what the darkness does to us.

One day you will look calmly at a fear and say to it, “You have shaken me for the last time.”

We can either hear what we want or we can hear the rescuing truths.

Starting now, never again permit hard or disapproving facial expressions intimidate you.

A quiet mind knows the answer, which means we must cease to fight anxiously for the answer.

Living from your real nature is the same as doing something worthwhile with your life.

If you are now reading this line, you have a rich opportunity to make everything new.

[Excerpts paraphrased by Jonathan Harnisch from the various works of Vernon Howard.]