Quotes from Anne Rudloe

To do that, we first learn to pay attention, to be fully present in each moment and aware of the nuances of life. It takes a while, but every bit of improvement in this skill is a wonderful gift we give ourselves each day. And it's done by relaxing, not by forcing.

The more you talk about It and the more you think about It, the further from It you go; stop talking, stop thinking and there is nothing you will not understand.

A journey through all the nooks and crannies of the human experience, spiritual inquiry is the effort to connect with a larger reality, to master the self and its endless puzzles and boundaries. It's the never-ending asking, What is this? What's the point?

it is training to develop the courage, patience, and willpower necessary to do what is required in any situation regardless of whether it is difficult or easy, or what personal likes or dislikes arise in dealing with it. This training teaches us how to cope with major life crises—cancer, death of a loved one—the unpleasant things that are absolutely unavoidable.

Watching the tiny shrimp and snails on the sea whips, I realized that those moments between birth and death are exactly what we have in life. If we just pay full attention to each of them as we live it, the universe will tell us what it's about. And I strongly suspected that it was as much about sea whips and snails as it was about humans.

Normally we try to avoid what we don't like. However, in a retreat, if we stay, we begin to see how our mental reactions actually make things harder or easier. The process highlights how opinionated and self-centered we are in familiar activities and how much we like to stay in comfortable routines. We resent being corrected as we make mistakes in learning the apparently arbitrary rules, and then we see how easily our egos are affronted.