Gary Zukav quotes:

The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.

We are becoming able to see the pursuit of external power for what it is and the futility of trying to escape the pain of powerlessness by changing the world. When we look inward, not outward, we can dismantle the parts of our personalities that have controlled us for so long - such as anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, superiority, inferiority.

Only choices made in love are compassionate. There are no exceptions. Do you have the courage to act with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome? If not, you have no ability to give or experience compassion. That is the shocking truth.

The next time you feel unworthy, inadequate or inferior, remember that these experiences have nothing to do with humbleness, any more than lowering yourself to connect with another individual has to do with humbleness. There are no lower or higher individuals in the perception of a humble person. There are only souls. There is only love.

Anytime new insight replaces an old assumption or a fossilized perception is the spring. New understandings sprout, new tolerances appear, and new curiosity draws you to previously dark places. Just as the sun shines earlier and longer in the spring, changes that seemed impossible appear to be possible with each new insight into your own health.

The loving parts of your personality have no trouble loving. That is all they do. You experience the loving parts of as gratitude, appreciation, caring, patience, contentment and awe of life.

Religions cannot change you. If you are angry, you will become an angry Muslim or Hindu. If you are righteous, you will become a righteous Christian or Jew.

Each solstice is a domain of experience unto itself. At the Summer Solstice, all is green and growing, potential coming into being, the miracle of manifestation painted large on the canvas of awareness. At the Winter Solstice, the wind is cold, trees are bare and all lies in stillness beneath blankets of snow.

Unworthiness is the inmost frightening thought that you do not belong, no matter how much you want to belong, that you are an outsider and will always be an outsider. It is the idea that you are flawed and cannot be fixed. It is wanting to be loved and feeling unlovable, or wanting to love and feeling that you are not capable of loving.

Love grounds you. It orients you. Love brings your awareness to others and yourself. Love opens your mind and heart to others and yourself. Love settles you and gives you balance.

We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives.

When two people in an intimate-couple relationship look at their interactions as opportunities to learn about themselves instead of change each other, they are infusing their relationship with the energy of spiritual partnership.

A new understanding of power is replacing our old understanding of power as the ability to manipulate and control. The old understanding of power has become counterproductive to our evolution. What used to be good medicine has become poisonous. Pursuit of the ability to manipulate and control now produces only violence and destruction.

A spiritual partnership is a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. Spiritual partners use their delightful experiences together as well as their power struggles to learn about themselves and change themselves.

The one characteristic of authentic power that most people overlook is humbleness. It is important for many reasons. A humble person walks in a friendly world. He or she sees friends everywhere he or she looks, wherever he or she goes, whomever he or she meets. His or her perception goes beyond the shell of appearance and into essence.

Caretaking is different from care giving. Care giving has no second agendas or hidden motives. The care is given from love for the joy of giving without expectation, no strings attached. It cannot be manipulated or discouraged because love cannot be manipulated or discouraged.

There is no other way to change something or someone for the better except to occupy it first. The only person you can occupy is yourself. That is why the only person who can change you for the better is you. Without your decision to change and your commitment to change, you will not change.

At the Summer Solstice, all is green and growing, potential coming into being, the miracle of manifestation painted large on the canvas of awareness. At the Winter Solstice, the wind is cold, trees are bare and all lies in stillness beneath blankets of snow.

Caregiving has no second agendas or hidden motives. The care is given from love for the joy of giving without expectation, no strings attached.

Caregiving requires the intention of love, caretaking requires the intention of fear. Not acting in anger when you are angry requires the intention of love.

The more you create authentic power, the more the characteristics of authentic power become yours, and the more meaning, purpose and joy enter your life.

The coming and going of the seasons give us more than the springtimes, summers, autumns, and winters of our lives. It reflects the coming and going of the circumstances of our lives like the glassy surface of a pond that shows our faces radiant with joy or contorted with pain.

When someone fears losing your affection, he or she will strive to keep it. Perhaps you have strived to keep someone's affection, too. Fear of loss is not love.

The first step is to distinguish the loving parts of your personality that are active from the frightened parts of your personality that are active - in other words, to learn to distinguish love from fear in you. The second step is to choose love, no matter what.

Anything that we do to make ourselves feel worthy and safe is a flight from the pain of powerlessness. Every pursuit of external power - every attempt to change the world or a person in order to make yourself feel valuable and safe - is a distraction from the pain of powerlessness.

Both the Winter and the Summer Solstices are expressions of love. They show us the opposition of light and dark, expansion and contraction, that characterize our experiences in the Earth school so that we can recognize our options as we move through our lives.

Authentic power is the real deal. You can't inherit it, buy it, or win it. You also can't lose it. You don't need to build your body, reputation, wealth, or charisma to get it.

The spring wakes us, nurtures us and revitalizes us. How often does your spring come? If you are a prisoner of the calendar, it comes once a year. If you are creating authentic power, it comes frequently, or very frequently.

The nonphysical law allows you to use nonphysical causes to create nonphysical effects and also physical effects. This does not mean that you are not in control of what you create. On the contrary! It means that you are entirely free to create what you want, provided you are aware of how the nonphysical law of cause and effect works.

The essence of a person is not the clothing she wears or the things he does. People who love them do not stop loving them when they change clothing or do other things. Your essence is not even your history, culture, race, or what you think and do. It is your soul.

Each time you choose not to act on a frightened part of your personality, you create authentic power - and you grow spiritually. The frightened parts of your personality come less frequently and with less intensity, and the loving parts fill more and more of your consciousness.

The characteristics of an authentically empowered personality are humbleness, clarity, forgiveness and love.

Everyone wants to learn the same thing from painful situations: how to avoid repeating them.

The requirements for our evolution have changed. Survival is no longer sufficient. Our evolution now requires us to develop spiritually - to become emotionally aware and make responsible choices. It requires us to align ourselves with the values of the soul - harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for life.

You experience your soul each time you sense yourself as more than a mind and body, your life as meaningful, or you feel that you have gifts to give and you long to give them.

No one can occupy your generosity except you. Who can occupy your patience when impatience roars through you? Who except you can choose not to act with judgment when all of your thoughts are judgmental? Your life is yours to live, no matter how you choose to live it. When you do not think about how you intend to live it, it lives you.

Compassion is loving others enough to say or do what is appropriate from an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome.

The pain of powerlessness is excruciating. It is the most painful experience in the earth school, and everyone shares it.

The choice that frees or imprisons us is the choice of love or fear. Love liberates. Fear imprisons.

We cannot control what emotions or circumstances we will experience next, but we can choose how we will respond to them.

Your life is yours to live, no matter how you choose to live it. When you do not think about how you intend to live it, it lives you. When you occupy it, step into it consciously, you live it.

Painful emotions show you what prevents you from creating harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for life.

Your intentions are your nonphysical causes that set energy into motion. They create a multitude of effects and, therefore, determine the experiences of your life. This is one of the most important things that you can know. It is also something that you can see for yourself is true.

The more aware of your intentions and your experiences you become, the more you will be able to connect the two, and the more you will be able to create the experiences of your life consciously. This is the development of mastery. It is the creation of authentic power.

The only way to become authentically powerful is to create authentic power. You cannot wish, want, or command authentic power into your life, although you can try.

Be mindful of the words that you use and the actions that you live and who you are and how it is you use your power. Keep clear at all times that you are what you say you are.

Eventually, you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.

The loving parts of your personality are content, grateful, patient, appreciative, caring, and more. They are interested in others. They do not judge others or themselves. They are not confined by fear. The more you experience them, the more you experience joy.

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of science. In other words, religion has become a matter of the heart and science has become a matter of the mind. This regrettable state of affairs does not reflect the fact that physiologically , one cannot exist without the other. Mind and heart are only different aspects of us.

You cannot find your soul with your mind, you must use your heart. You must know what you are feeling. If you don't know what you are feeling, you will create unconsciously. If you are unconscious of an aspect of yourself; if it operates outside your field of awareness, that aspect has power over you.

Your experiences are not limited to what you have created in the past

You don't have to fear this amorphous thing called grief or loss or anger or jealousy. You define it for yourself in the intimacy of your own experience for exactly what it is, and then it comes. In other words, by experiencing your emotions somatically, there is no boogie man to scare you.

Remind yourself that you are supported, that you are not going it alone upon this Earth. Dwell in the company of your Non-Physical Teachers and Guides.

Caregivers attract caregivers and live in a community of love. They are energized by their caring, fulfilled, and they love life. Caretakers attract caretakers and live in the company of resentful victims who see themselves as misused and are fatigued from constant giving with no return.

Changing the world begins with the very personal process of changing yourself, the only place you can begin is where you are, and the only time you can begin is always now.

What we think of as physical reality is an intermingling of appropriate realities, a fluid massive consciousness in which each of us exists independently of each other and yet coexists interdependently with each other.

The only event in the history of our species that compares with this one is Genesis. And this is a new kind of Genesis, the Genesis of our species into conscious awareness.

Your soul is that part of you that always strives for harmony, toward cooperation, toward sharing, toward reverence for life and as you choose, in each moment, to align yourself with harmony, or at least not to create more disharmony in the situation you're in, then you are consciously choosing to align yourself with your soul. You are consciously moving toward authentic power.

When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what you are doing...you are doing what you were meant to be doing.

The pains that you suffer, the loneliness that you encounter, the experiences that are disappointing or distressing, the addictions and seeming pitfalls of your life are each doorways to awareness. Each offers you an opportunity to see beyond the illusion that serves as the balancing and growth of your soul.

Every decision that you make either moves you toward your personality, or toward your soul. Each decision you make is an answer to the question, 'How do you choose to learn love?', 'How do you choose to learn authentic empowerment-through doubt and fear, or through wisdom?'

Humbleness, forgiveness, clarity and love are the dynamics of freedom. They are the foundations of authentic power.

The development of physics in the twentieth century already has transformed the consciousness of those involved with it. The study (of modern physics) produces insights into the nature of reality very similar to those produced by the study of eastern philosophy.

If your thoughts are thoughts that draw low-frequency energy current to you, your physical and emotional attitudes will deteriorate, and emotional or physical disease will follow, whereas thoughts that draw high-frequency energy current to you create physical and emotional health.

Lack of self-worth is the fundamental source of all emotional pain. A feeling of insecurity, unworthiness and lack of valueis the core experience of powerlessness.

Emotional pain of any kind is a reminder to stop and look inside.

With each choice that you make to align yourself with the energy of your soul, you empower yourself. Authentic power is built up step by step, choice by choice. It cannot be meditated or prayed into being. It must be earned.

Being harmless means being so strong, so empowered, that the idea of showing power through harm is not even a part of your consciousness.

Allow yourself to experience what it is to learn step by step the freedom that comes from being unattached to the outcome, but operating from an empowered heart.

There is not one soul on this planet, whether it is a person living in Ethiopia, or in Florida, or in Canada, whose life is not as complex and as rich as your own.

The decisions that you make and the actions that you take upon the earth are the means by which you evolve.

When you strive for perfection, you compare different versions of what could be instead of being present with what is. Perfectionism is an attempt to inhabit an imaginary world in order to avoid experiencing the world in which you live.

An authentically empowered person is humble. This does not mean the false humility of one who stoops to be with those who are below him or her. It is the inclusiveness of one who responds to the beauty of each soul. ... It is the harmlessness of one who treasures, honours and reveres life in all its forms.

Spiritual Partnership ... The new female and the new male are partners on a journey of spiritual growth. They want to make the journey. Their love and trust keep them together. Their intuition guides them. They consult with each other. They are friends. They laugh a lot. They are equals. That is what a spiritual partnership is: a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth.

Before it incarnates, each soul enters into a sacred contract with the Universe to accomplish certain things. It enters into this commitment in the fullness of its being. Whatever the task that your soul has agreed to, all of the experiences of your life serve to awaken within you the memory of that contract, and to prepare you to fulfill it.

How does your heart respond to the thought that the Universe is alive and compassionate and that with it and with other souls of great power and Light you learn through the process of co-creating the reality that you experience?

The hardest times to choose love become the very times that you can most grow spiritually.

We have much to do together. Let us do it in wisdom and love and joy. Let us make this the human experience.

It is not until you have the courage to engage in human relationships that you grow.

Knowledge is power, and for each level of knowledge, you are held responsible for how you use it.

Clarity is the perception of wisdom and the ability to see the soul in action in the physical world. It turns pain into suffering and evaporates fear. Clarity allows you to see the world of physical matter for what it is, a learning experience that is created jointly by the intentions of the souls that share it.

Look at yourself as someone who is reaching for healing, and at the complexity of what needs to be healed. Do not think that you exist alone without other human beings of equal complexity.

When you have an emotional reaction to what you see, you are judging. That is your signal that you have an issue inside of yourself - with yourself - not with the other person. If you react to evil, look inside yourself for the very thing that so agitates you, and you will find it. If it were not there, you will simply discern, act appropriately, and move on.

The human emotional system can be broken down into roughly two elements: fear and love. Love is of the soul. Fear is of the personality.

Eventually, you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is. The journey may take many lifetimes, but you will complete it. It is impossible not to complete it. It is not a question of if but of when. Every situation you create serves this purpose. Every experience you encounter serves this purpose.

When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose and meaning. Life is rich and full. We have no thoughts of bitterness. We have no memory of fear. We are joyously and intimately engaged with our world. This is the experience of authentic power

Practice moderation in all things except love.

Your emotional reactions to the evil you encounter and your judgments of it show you what you need to change in yourself. Changing those parts of your personality that judge, react in fear, and cannot love into acceptance, fearlessness, and love is the journey you were born to make.

Can you be compassionate even to those who have no compassion? If so, there is no finer karma that you can create.

Reverence is an attitude of honoring life. Reverence automatically brings forth patience. Reverence permits non-judgemental justice. Reverence is a perception of the soul.

The opposite of love is not hate. It is fear.

When our actions create discord in another person, we, ourselves, in this lifetime or another, will feel that discord. Likewise, if our actions create harmony and empowerment in another, we also come to feel that harmony and empowerment.

Evil needs to be understood for what it is: the dynamic of the absence of Light. It is not something that one should prepare to battle, to run from, or to outlaw.

Medical treatment is emergency care for symptoms that have developed over a long period of time. The symptom is the flower on a plant. Treating the symptom is picking the flower, while the plant remains untouched.

Trust allows you to give, Giving is abundant. Trust allows the experience of bliss. Bliss is awakefulness. Trust allows you to laugh. Laugh at the richness, the beauty and the playfulness of the universe. Apply consciousness to this process and all roads will lead to home.

Ponder the depth and the power of loyalty-the ability to serve and support a cause greater than yourself.

A power struggle collapses when you withdraw your energy from it. Power struggles become uninteresting to you when you change your intention from winning to learning about yourself.

Temptation is a dress rehearsal for a karmic experience of negativity.

Judging is a preemptive attack against that which you most desire - intimacy and acceptance - that is launched before you can be rejected or refused.

It is possible that scientists, poets, painters and writers are all members of the same family of people whose gift it is by nature to take those things which we call common-place and to 're-present' them to us - the world - in such ways that our self-imposed limitations are expanded.

The purpose of romantic relationships is to encourage you to grow spiritually. Romantic relationships can do this because they are interactions in which you come to see those parts of yourself that are constructive, healthy and creative. You see them because you project them onto someone else.

Nonsense is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality...Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense.

There is no difference between acute schizophrenia and a world at war.

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.

Love is the ability to live your life with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome, the ability within yourself to distinguish within yourself between love and fear and choose love regardless of what is going on inside yourself or outside. This is self-mastery or authentic power...that means you become clear, forgiving, humble and loving... you are grounded in harmony, cooperating, sharing and reverence for life.

The club that kills can drive a stake into the ground to hold a shelter. The hands that build bombs can be used to build schools. The minds that coordinate the activities of violence can coordinate the activities of cooperation. When the activities of life are infused with reverence, they come alive with meaning and purpose.

You cannot, and will not, encounter a circumstance, or a single moment, that does not serve directly and immediately the need of your soul to heal.

Our experiences of the Solstice depends entirely upon where we are when it occurs. Neither Solstice encompasses everyone. Neither can. The Solstices stand forever opposed, literally at the two poles of our Earth and experiences.

The worst thing you can do for love is deny it; so when you find that special someone, don't let anyone or anything to get in your way.

The first step toward spiritual growth is to become aware of your emotions.

Spiritual growth requires the development of inner knowing and inner authority. It requires the heart, not the intellect.

The new female is not limited in any way. She yearns to give the gifts she was born to give, and she does what is necessary to give them. Where her heart leads, she goes. No one defines her role for her. She is on a spiritual journey. Authentic Power is her destination.

Trust allows you to give. Giving is abundant. As you give so it shall be given to you. If you give with judgment, limitation and stinginess, that is what you will create in your life - judgment, limitation, and stinginess.

When the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping, a threshold is crossed. What seemed unthinkable becomes thinkable.

Subatomic particles do not just sit around being subatomic particles. They are beehives of activity.

Every subatomic interaction consists of the annihilation of the original particles and the creation of new subatomic particles. The subatomic world is a continual dance of creation and annihilation, of mass changing into energy and energy changing into mass. Transient forms sparkle in and out of existence, creating a never-ending, forever newly created reality.

Intuition is a walkie-talkie between the personality an the soul.

The great soul is the person who has taken on the task of change. If he or she is able to transcend fear, to act out of courage, the whole group will benefit and each one, in his or her own life, will be suddenly more courageous, though they may not see how or why.

Each moment is a moment of choice ~ a time to leave the old, the limited, the restrained, and the contracted for the new, the unbound, and the liberating potential that expands before you.

Be aware of emotional toxins as well as physical toxins. Be aware of what you are thinking. Clear yourself at the end of every day. Try not to go to bed angry or distressed or anxious or jealous or envious.