Quotes from Stephen Cope

3. Next (another good principle from Bede), "When you get a response, check it out." Check it out with friends, with mentors. Talk about it. This, says Bede, is a classic principle of guidance: Test the guidance. Real guidance will stand up to sustained testing. False guidance—which is usually just our own will trying to have its way—will not stand up to ongoing scrutiny.

4. Next comes a principle that I've discovered in my own life: "Once you do begin to get clarity, wait to act until you have at least a kernel of inner certitude." Wait to

5. Once there is "a flavor of certitude," says Bede, then "pray for the courage to take action." It's not uncommon for us to get to certitude and then realize that we don't really want to take the action. We're

at the heart of the unconscious mind there is a panoramic intelligence that is deeply connected with fundamental human consciousness.

6. Bede suggests a corollary to #5, and this is a suggestion that both Brian and I really liked: "Let go of the attempt to eliminate risk from these decisions and actions." The presence of a sense of risk is only an indication that you're at an important crossroads. Risk cannot be eliminated, and the attempt to eliminate it will only lead you back to paralysis. In important dharma decisions, we never get to 100 percent certitude.

OK: It's exactly the same teaching with aversion. Go into it. Go into your anger, your fear. Feel it in the body. Get to know it. Find the energy at its heart. Find the secret gift at its center. Don't be afraid. Let it wash over you. Know it.

One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.

Each and every person has the light of God within," she said.

God sees into my innermost heart and knows that as a man I perform most conscientiously and on all occasions the duties which Humanity, God and Nature enjoin upon me Ã¢â'¬Â¦

Willpower is the caveman approach to life.

see yourself as the smallest of the small. Then you can make room for the whole world.

human nature in general is revealed to each person through his own nature in particular.

Beethoven's music has changed my life. What has it given me? It has given me not only inspiration and hope, but a visceral way to work through my own neurotic conflicts—a path through my own inner tangles. Every time I play his sonata, I touch a part of myself that nothing else can reach. And afterward, I have the distinct feeling of having been sorted out.

Know your own bone: gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

A central pillar of his later teaching was that fearlessness is a prerequisite for nonviolence.

Because this principle is so important, and because Arjuna is so very likely to lose his tenuous grasp on it, Krishna reminds him over and over again throughout their dialogue. "The disunited mind is far from wise," he nudges. The mind "must overcome the confusion of duality.

the voices of the "buried life" only reveal themselves with utmost clarity when opened to the consciousness of a loved other.

He began to practice the mantra, chanting Rama, Rama, Rama over and over again to himself—both aloud and silently. The mantra eased his fear—

For a period of time after this discovery, Gandhi walked many miles each day, repeating the mantra to himself until it began to coordinate itself with the movement of his body and breath. The practice not only calmed him, but brought him into periods of bliss and rapture—and, as he said, "opened the doorway to God." Rama, Rama, Rama. Eventually, the mantra developed a life of its own within him. The mantra began to chant itself, arising spontaneously whenever he needed it.

The mantra becomes one's staff of life," he wrote, "and carries one through every ordeal Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Each repetition Ã¢â'¬Â¦ has a new meaning, each repetition carries you nearer and nearer to God.

The cultivation of this quality of "evenness" is a central principle of the Bhagavad Gita. It is called samatva in Sanskrit, and it is a central pillar of Krishna's practice. When the mind develops steadiness, teaches Krishna, it is not shaken by fear or greed.

The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work and Ideas. Vintage: New York, 2002

The whole of Chapter Six in the Bhagavad Gita is devoted to Krishna's teachings on this practice: "Whenever the mind wanders, restless and diffuse in its search for satisfaction without, lead it within; train it to rest in the Self," instructs Krishna. "When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.

Gandhi: The Essential Writings. Oxford University Press: London, 2008