"If life goes naturally, beautifully, if there are no life-negative teachers, if there are no politicians and priests to distract you – then nearabout the age of forty-two, exactly as sexual maturity comes, comes meditation maturity. Nearabout the age of forty-two, one starts feeling to fall inwards. Near the age of fourteen, one starts falling towards the other, becomes extrovert. Love is extroversion; relationship is to think of the other. Meditation is introversion; meditation is to think of one's own self, of one's own center.

"Between the age of fourteen and the age of forty-two there comes a change. By and by one lives life, knows what love is, knows its fulfillment and its frustration, knows its joys and its sadness, knows its beauty and its ugliness, knows that there are moments of great ecstasy and then great valleys of darkness. Then one starts by and by moving towards his own self, because to depend on the other can never be really ecstatic. If your joy depends on the other, that joy can never have the quality of freedom in it. And a joy which does not have the quality of freedom is not much joy. If your are dependent on the other, then there is a limitation.

"And the joy that comes through love is momentary. You can meet with the other only for moments, and then again you are separate and you fall apart. Just in the middle of it you fall apart. Just for a moment you become joined together. Then one starts thinking. "Is there a way to become one with existence and never to fall apart again?" That's what meditation is. Love is joining with existence through another person for only moments. Meditation is getting joined together with existence eternally. "Yoga" means to join together.

"This has to happen somewhere in the deepest core. And then there is joy and then there is freedom. And then there is bliss and there is no dark valley following it. Then happiness is eternal, then celebration is eternal."

From the very early morning, when you feel life awakening, when you feel that the sleep has gone, the first thought must be of this saturation ― now the Divine is opening, coming back out of sleep, not you. So Hindus, who have been one of the most penetrating races in the world, will start their first breath with the name of God. Now it has become a formality and the essential has been lost, but this was the root of it ― that at the moment you become alert in the morning you must not remember yourself, you must remember the Divine. The Divine must become the first remembrance ― and the last, at night, when you are falling asleep. The Divine must be remembered: he must be the first and the last. And if he is really the first in the morning and the last at night, he will be with you the whole day, in the middle also. 

Defeat is something that happens to you. What you do after it is your choice. You can either give up, become discouraged, or become more determined than ever. 

Compromise doesn't mean sacrificing half the time. It means finding a solution that wasn't what each person had first imagined for themselves, but feels good and satisfied with overall.

O good Jesus, thou has bound my heart in the thought of thy name, and now I can not but sing it; therefore have mercy upon me, making perfect that thou hast ordained.
   – RICHARD ROLLE

When you are walking is one of the best times to repeat the mantram, especially if you walk briskly. The rhythm of your footsteps, the rhythm of the mantram, and the rhythm of your breathing all harmonize to soothe and invigorate the body and mind. Breathing is closely connected with your state of mind. People who are tense or angry breathe rapidly and irregularly; those who are calm, loving, and secure breathe smoothly, slowly, and deeply. A brisk walk helps to make your breathing rhythm deep and even, and the mantram will help to calm your mind.

If you have a situation arise that goes poorly, think of what you would have done instead, then let it go as your lesson. When the situation shows up again at a different time with different names and faces attached, do what you would have done the last time in hindsight. Lessons have to be learned before they can be put into practice. Recognizing your role in situations and how you can act differently will release you from patterns that you've learned just don't turn out well.

Always A River To Cross

There is always a river to cross;
Always an effort to make
If there’s anything good to win,
Any rich prize to take.
Yonder’s the fruit we crave,
Yonder the charming scene;
But deep and wide, with a troubled tide,
Is the river that lies between.

For the treasures of precious worth
We must patiently dig and dive;
For the places we long to fill
We must push and struggle and strive.
And always and everywhere
We’ll find, on our onward course,
Thorns for the feet and trials to meet
And a difficult river to cross.

For the rougher the way that we take,
The stouter the heart and the nerve;
The stones in our path we break,
Nor e’er from our impulse swerve.
For the glory we hope to win
Our labors we count no loss;
Tis folly to pause and murmur because
Of the river we have to cross.

So, ready to do and to dare,
Should we in our places stand,
Fulfilling the Master’s will,
Fulfilling the soul’s demand;
For though as the mountain high
The billows may war and toss,
They’ll not overwhelm if the Lord’s at the helm
When the difficult river we cross.

-unknown