True Selves Quotes

Demons frighten us because we set ourselves up to be frightened. We are overly attached to our reputations and possessions. When we love and desire what we should be rejecting, we are in conflict with our true selves. That's when the negative energies catch us and use our weapons against us. Instead of taking up what we have to defend ourselves, we put our swords in the hands of our enemies and make them attack us. ~ Teresa Giudice

These brief weekly sessions helped to bring about valuable changes and health improvements in the participants. The motto was: we are all different and special, so we do not attempt to become like somebody else, but connect more deeply with our true selves. ~ Patrizia Collard

I'm inspired by people who are their true selves and use that to do good. ~ Matthew J. Fox

May your fingers never know a fist. May your ears never ring with the call of duty. Before this war is over, all men will have an opportunity to reveal their true selves. I welcome that opportunity. To be a hero requires difficult choices and sacrifice. Each man can respond only when the finger of bravery curls and beckons him forth. That finger, it beckons me, Hannelore. I feel it. ~ Ruta Sepetys

We don't need any self-help. We need our selves to stop helping those who don't let us be our true selves. ~ Saurabh Sharma

In the midst of overwhelming noise and distraction, the voice of story is calling us to remember our true selves. ~ Christina Baldwin

We all want to be someone else. And sometimes we succeed in convincing ourselves we can be.
But it doesn't last, and our true selves, broken and scarred, always win out in the end. ~ Sara Gran

We intend to hide our shortcomings, and the fear inside our hearts, but instead, we hide our beauty, our true selves. ~ Jo Ann Fore

If we hold tightly to anything given to us unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used we stunt the growth of the soul. What God gives us is not necessarily "ours" but only ours to offer back to him, ours to relinguish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, if we want to be our true selves. Many deaths must go into reaching our maturity in Christ, many letting goes. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Mom? What's that noise. Are you in a room full of ghosts? "No it's my Clairvoyant Certification Course. We're learning to connect with our true selves. ~ Katie Delahanty

People will always show their true selves in the end. ~ Leona Lewis

By putting the gift of yearning for God into every human being's heart, God at the same time draws all people made in God's image to God's self and into their own true selves. ~ Roberta Bondi

It is the main motivation of humankind to be free, to express our true selves and pursue our dreams without restriction - to experience what may be called Personal Freedom. ~ Brendon Burchard

Fake people are like costume jewelry: They look great for a while, then all of a sudden, their true selves 'Shine' thru. ~ Nitya Prakash

There are many other escapes from the empirical, external self, which might seem to be, but are not, contemplation. For instance, the experience of being seized and taken out of oneself by collective enthusiasm, in a totalitarian parade: the self-righteous upsurge of party loyalty that blots out conscience and absolves every criminal tendency in the name of Class, Nation, Party, Race or Sect.. Yet it is precisely these ersatz forms of enthusiasm that are "opium" for the people, deadening their awareness of their deepest and most personal needs, alienating them from their true selves, putting conscience and personality to sleep and turning free, reasonable men into passive instruments of the power politician. ~ Thomas Merton

Belonging nowhere, no one can tell who he really is. Who one really is depends on what world he belongs to. The secret multitudes who belong to no world, no way of life, no particular time and place, are the truly displaced persons: displaced from their true selves. They are not the disinherited: they are those who have disinherited their own selves. ~ Nelson Algren

Too many of us move through our lives with our true selves buried below layers of repressed emotion. With so much energy channeled toward sustaining the repression, there is little left over for the deeper questions. The consequences of our evasion are profound. Our stockpiles toxify into a cache of weapons that turn inward against the self: quick fix, long suffering. As Rumi said, "Most people guard against the fire, and so end up in it." This is the power of then. If we don't deal with our stuff, it deals with us. ~ Jeff Brown

It happens, I do not know how, that most of the proud never really discover their true selves. They think they have conquered their passions and they find out how poor they really are only after they die. ~ John Climacus

According to the psychosurgeons, we act more in keeping with our true selves in a dream than in any other situation, including the throes of orgasm and the moment of our deaths. Maybe that explains why so much of what we do in the real world makes so little sense. ~ Richard K. Morgan

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking our words more seriously and discovering their true selves. ~ Henri Nouwen

Still, there's a limit to how much we can control our self-presentation. This is partly because of a phenomenon called behavioral leakage, in which our true selves seep out via unconscious body language: ~ Susan Cain

That was the price of human civilization - to create it, they had to close down the door to their true selves. And so they are lost, that is how I understand it. And that is why they invented art: books, music, films, plays, painting, sculpture. They invented them as bridges back to themselves, back to who they are. But however close they get, they are forever removed ~ Matt Haig

Only by glaring into the depths of ones own reflection can we find our true selves. It is here where the mirrored voices of our souls speak and can be heard. ~ Paul Morabito

Sometimes it is only in our darkest hours that we show our true colours in life. ~ Anonymous

All those wasted and squandered years when I did nothing but go around looking inside myself until I ended up alone even though I was surrounded by people. But I paid attention only to what was happenstance about them - not their true selves. ~ Sigrid Undset

The imagination is not an escape, but a return to the richness of our true selves; a return to reality. ~ George MacKay

We do not look into mirrors, for example, to see our "true" selves, but to see what others are seeing, and what passes for inner reflection is often an agonizing assessment of how others are judging us. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

...A huge "army" of immature guys with blinders over their eyes, looking for UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, are going nowhere. Such men are all ending up to be eternal dating losers, because they are simply wasting huge amounts of effort, trying hard and hoping to find something that does not exist on the planet.
To achieve the goal of personal happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves first of all. We need to be brave enough and smart enough to look into the mirror at our true selves, without our comfortable masks of lies or hypocrisy.

LET'S FACE IT:
There are always reasons why we feel love for another person; we don't love someone for no reason at all. We love them for the qualities they possess, which we admire; for those amazing, bright emotions they evoke from within ourselves; for the love and care that we so acceptingly receive from them; and for what good feelings we experience being around them, etc.

Be HONEST with yourself! ~ Sahara Sanders

There's a word people in business use a lot: disruptive. The market can never be stable, the best it can be is falling apart in useful ways. Like the universe in general, really. To disrupt the market in your favour is now seen as being the ultimate achievement. Create a climate of absolute uncertainty, continual fear about enormous change, and you'll see people's . . . well, I was about to say 'true selves,' but they don't really have true selves, they're continually falling apart too . . . you'll see people concentrate on looking after themselves and their own, grabbing for familiar symbols. The right . . . brands, shall we say, can prosper hugely then, in the ultimate disruption. ~ Paul Cornell

When anyone gets devoured by drugs or alcohol, their souls are in hiding on another plane. Addictions are a kind of possession and to recover our true selves, we need help remembering who we really are. ~ Suzan Saxman

Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves. ~ Haruki Murakami

The inspired life is living life in deepest connection with our true selves, acting on what we truly need, want and desire, and basing happiness on what is in our control. ~ Elaina Marie

Oh! mothers aren't fair - I mean it's not fair of nature to weigh us down with them and yet expect us to be our own true selves. The handicap's too great. All those months, when the same blood's running through two sets of veins - there's no getting away from that, ever after. Take yours. As I say, does she need to open her mouth? Not she! She's only got to let it hang at the corners, and you reek, you drip with guilt. ~ Henry Handel Richardson

Everyone is supposed to be a combination of nature and nurture, their true selves shaped by years of friends and fights and parents and dreams and things you did too young and things you overheard that you shouldn't have and secrets you kept or couldn't and regrets and victories and quiet prides, all the packed-together detritus that becomes what you call your life. ~ Melissa Albert

I think of how sometimes God puts people together, maybe more often than we realize. We can disregard it, lie to ourselves, find the reasons why it's impractical. But something within the creation of them connects. I've been afraid of it. There is something fearful in revealing our true selves, allowing others to peer intimately inside. It takes such trust, and none of us are completely trustworthy. ~ Cindy McCormick Martinusen

Introspection makes our conscious motives and strategies transparent to us, while we have no sure means of deciphering them in others. Yet we never genuinely know our true selves. We remain largely ignorant of the actual unconscious determinants of our behavior, and therefore we cannot accurately predict what our behavior will be in circumstances beyond the safety zone of our past experience. The Greek motto "Know thyself," when applied to the minute details of our behavior, remains an inaccessible ideal. Our "self" is just a database that gets filled in through our social experiences, in the same format with which we attempt to understand other minds, and therefore it is just as likely to include glaring gaps, misunderstandings, and delusions. ~ Stanislas Dehaene

In many ways I wish I wasn't an actor dragging around the baggage from being one so that I could just devote my energies to encouraging people to find their true selves. ~ Dirk Benedict

We can't turn our true selves off and on situationally and expect them to carry and sustain us. Rationing creativity results in bipolarism of the spirit. Our creativity is also our life force. When we turn it off and on like a spigot, we start to become less and less able to control the valve. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

I've found that people reveal nothing of their true selves except within their art and their sin." ~ Dacey Sinnett, 'ROAM ~ Dez Schwartz

Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen. ~ Brene Brown

I was focused before - obsessed, really - with the appearance of perfection. But what did that ever bring me but pain? Pain and not seeing people for who they really are. If I ever get out of here, I'll look at people differently. I'll look for their true selves beneath the mask of their bodies. I'll look at soul. ~ Cheryl Rainfield

You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best - the sun to warm and the rain to nourish - to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that. 48 "In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you." THE WORLD IS NOT A STAGE ~ Eugene H. Peterson

..."Were hostages ever killed?"She shook her head. "Not until the end. When everything...fell apart. "All it needs,",she said, memories clouding her mind, "is the breaking of one rule, one law. A breaking that then no one calls to account. Once that happens, once the shock passes, every law shatters. Every rule of conduct, of proper behaviour, it all vanishes. Then the hounds inside each and everyone of us is unleashed. At that moment Withal" - she met his eyes, defiant against the grief she saw in them - "we show our true selves. We are not beasts- we are something far worse. There deep inside us. You see it - the emptiness in the eyes, as horror upon horror is committed, and no one feels. No one feels a thing." --Steven Erikson... Dust of Dreams ~ Steven Erikson

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need - but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need - within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves. ~ Alain De Botton

Hardly anything else reveals so well the fear and uncertainty among men as the length to which they will go to hide their true selves from each other and even from their own eyes. ~ A.W. Tozer

I wonder if we're only our true selves as children, before life starts to go wrong. ~ Eve Chase

In this jangle of causes and effects, what had become of their true selves? Here Leonard lay dead in the garden, from natural causes; yet life was a deep, deep river, death a blue sky, life was a house, death a wisp of hay, a flower, a tower, life and death were anything and everything, except this ordered insanity, where the king takes the queen, and the ace the king. Ah, no; there was beauty and adventure behind, such as the man at her feet had yearned for; there was hope this side of the grave; there were truer relationships beyond the limits that fetter us now. As a prisoner looks up and sees stars beckoning, so she, from the turmoil and horror of those days, caught glimpses of the diviner wheels. ~ E.M. Forster

SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME WE WILL NEVER FEEL loved until we drop the act, until we're willing to show our true selves to the people around us. ~ Donald Miller

Flexibility in a society allows change, so that all its members have the space to discover their true selves and grow to their potential. And if every person in a society achieves his true potential, society as a whole also achieves its true potential. ~ Amish Tripathi

I don't think. I react. My action is divorced from all emotion and logic. It isn't human or inhuman-it just is.
I believe that choices like these, made in absolute crisis, come from our True Selves, bypassing all experience and thought. These kinds of choices are the closest thing to fate that human beings will ever experience. ~ Daniel H. Wilson

We define masculinity in very narrow way. Masculinity is hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak
a hard man, ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The mind is a mass of contradictions and conflicts. We lie to make others trust us. We hide our true selves in the pursuit of intimacy. We chase happiness in ways that drive happiness away. When we're wrong we fight the hardest to prove we're right. Caught ~ John Verdon

Prayer, true prayer, does not allow us to deceive ourselves. It relaxes the tension of our self-inflation. It produces a clearness of spiritual vision. . . . It saps our self-deception and its Pharisaism. . . . So by prayer we acquire our true selves."242 ~ Timothy J. Keller

We seem to have entered precariously into a kind of totalitarianism that actually abhors free speech and punishes people for revealing their true selves. In other words: the actor's dream. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

So often we speak of finding our callings, when often our callings find us. We can choose to honor or ignore them; to fight or embrace them. When we allow love to guide our thoughts, we are open to their gift. When we allow fear to arise and dictate our direction, we deny ourselves and the world the gift of our true selves. ~ Sharon E. Reed

Goddess does not want us to imitate some ideal of perfection, but to be our true selves. ~ Deborah Harkness

Longing for our idealized images of life separates us from our true selves and from our true callings. ~ Stephen Cope

When we do align with it, we thrive. And when we do not, we suffer. This is not "punishment." It is merely the Law of Cause and Effect. With each thought we think, we either align with universal love, or we disconnect ourselves from it. Whichever is our choice determines whether we then feel connected to, or disconnected, from our own true Selves. ~ Marianne Williamson

Do you know why God invented writers? Because he loves a good story. And he doesn't give a damn about the words. Words are the curain we've hung between him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don't strin for the perfect sentence. There's no such thing. Writing si guesswork. Every sentence is an educated guess, the readers as much as yours. ~ J.R. Moehringer

True happiness starts in the core of our true selves as a constant, a guidepost, a default, and a strength that shines from the inside out. ~ Elaina Marie

There are many different experiences that cause girls to relinquish their true selves. In early adolescence girls learn how important appearance is in defining social acceptability. Attractiveness is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for girls' success. This is an old, old problem. Helen of Troy didn't launch a thousand ships because she was a hard worker. Juliet wasn't loved for her math ability. ~ Mary Pipher

Our lives are the Journey we take to find our true selves! ~ Alyssa Gonzalez

We think sometimes we're only drawn to the good, but we're actually drawn to the authentic. We like people who are real more than those who hide their true selves under layers of artificial niceties ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross

People pretend to be other people because they have never thought of their true selves ~ Sunday Adelaja

Within alpinism's narrow framework we seek transcendence and relentlessly pursue what remains hidden from us on flat ground: our true selves. ~ Steve House

Beyond the shadows of our doubt lies an ocean of extraordinary possibilities; things that could have been or could be; if we had the faith to see them through. Our doubts betray and deflect us from our true selves and deprive us of our chances to love, to achieve, to trust, or to know what we're truly capable of…all because we confide in our fears rather than endeavor towards our rightful providences. ~Jason Versey ~ Jason Versey

Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves. ~ Carol Lynn Pearson

In a world trying to increasingly isolate us from our environment and our true selves, books are our route to freedom, and to each other'. ~ Matt Haig

I've come to believe in some kind of afterlife. A return to our true selves, a spirit self. We're just in this physical body till we go back to spirit. ~ Kent Haruf

Revelations help us accept the things we need the most, expose the secrets we so desperately try to hide and illuminate the dangers all around us. But more than anything, revelations are windows into our true selves... of the good and the evil and those wavering somewhere in between. But they have the ultimate power to destroy all that we cherish most. ~ Emily Thorne

Like Gnostics, contemporaries feel alienated from their roots and are seeking to overcome the alienation. They are seeking new outlets for their unconscious. Where Gnostics feel cut off from the outer world, contemporaries feel cut off from the inner one. Contemporaries do not, like Gnostics, project their alienation onto the cosmos; through Jungian psychology they seek to discover their true selves within rather than outside themselves. They alone, then, have the chance fully to overcome their alienation. ~ C. G. Jung

Generally, the longer it takes for us to make a decision, the greater the disconnect between our current experience of life and our true selves. ~ Elaina Marie

We discover our true selves in love. ~ Thomas Merton

Parenthood has the power to redefine every aspect of life - marriage, work, relationships with family and friends. Those helpless bundles of power and promise that come into our world show us our true selves- who we are, who we are not, who we wish we could be. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

He was not a likeable figure but then when you are a part of a family, you cannot wish to see someone wither away even when you dislike him. He is a part of your blood, he and all his idiosyncrasies. There is always a tinge of warmth in the corner of your heart, reminiscent of the good times spent together. Then there are always those moments, when you wonder why everything turned out so different. When you wonder what possibly could hold people together, if not the fact that they come from the same blood? Or are we just not born to be that way? Craving to be something that we cannot be, each with our own false ceilings to hide our true selves? ~ Amit Sharma

We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Avatars are a way to express our true selves, our most heroic, idealized version of who we might become. ~ Jane McGonigal

Choice is the key, because human beings are the only creatures who can choose to evolve, who can shape their destiny. Furthermore, we have been given the gift of "self-awareness," which allows us to step back into our true selves to observe and use our brains to create the world we wish to live in. ~ Deepak Chopra

We are not as some people like to assume nowadays 'just being real' by embracing passively the sinful, fallen versions of ourselves. Quite the opposite really: our true selves were, from the beginning, intended to resemble the example which was then set by Christ Jesus; hence God wants to restore us to how we would have been had original sin never once befell. ~ Criss Jami

We are not inviting - we are guarded. Most of our energy is spent trying to hide our true selves, and control our worlds to have some sense of security. ~ John Eldredge

We only meet the God within our true selves through suffering. We seek the wilderness because in this solitude we can hear ourselves more clearly. ~ Jim Crace

One way to find greater fulfillment in our work or career is to start with being. That is, be who we inherently are -- strong, creative, joyful, balanced, worthy, loving, free, powerful, wise, beautiful beings. This means letting go of the insecurities and feelings of unworthiness we carry around. Letting go of the need to control, or the desire to be small and hide. It means putting aside the masks we sometimes wear to help us feel important or safe. It means getting down to our true selves. ~ Kristi Bowman

Ultimately the body will rebel. Even if it can be temporarily pacified with the help of drugs, cigarettes or medicine, it usually has the last word because it is quicker to see through self-deception than the mind. We may ignore or deride the messages of the body, but its rebellion demands to be heeded because its language is the authentic expression of our true selves and of the strength of our vitality. ~ Alice Miller

The most important question for every client is "W X ho are you?" I'm not as interested in an answer as I am in teaching a process that the girl can use for the rest of her life. The process involves looking within to find a true core of self, acknowledging unique gifts, accepting all feelings, not just the socially acceptable ones, and making deep and firm decisions about values and meaning. The process includes knowing the difference between thinking and feeling, between immediate gratification and long-term goals, and between her own voice and the voices of others. The process includes discovering the personal impact of our cultural rules for women. It includes discussion about breaking those rules and formulating new, healthy guidelines for the self. The process teaches girls to chart a course based on the dictates of their true selves. The process is nonlinear, arduous, and discouraging. It is also joyful, creative and full of surprises. ~ Mary Pipher

Now comes the hour to choose between being acceptable to others or being acceptable to one's own self, for we must kill our true selves off in order to survive. ~ Morrissey

Sometimes we represent our weakness as if it were bad. We don't think it's okay to be weak ... We have been injured in many ways and our real self houses all of the evidence of those injuries. The pain, the brokenness and the emotional underdevelopment we all possess is part of who we really are. ~ Henry Cloud

To know God begins with knowing ourselves, our true selves, whom we uncover as we make choices that help us step beyond the influence of the ego. ~ Peter Santos

We talk about the disappointments of early adolescence - the betrayals by friends, the discovery that one is not beautiful by cultural standards, the feeling that one's smartness is a liability, the pressure to be popular instead of honest and feminine instead of whole.
I encourage girls to search within themselves for their deepest values and beliefs. Once they have discovered their own true selves, I encourage them to trust that self is the source of meaning and direction in their lives. ~ Mary Pipher

By out-talking or bad-mouthing people, some get hoisted by their own petard, ultimately. When their sense of shame makes them crawl back to the open, they can only recover through a convalescing remedy of humbleness. After an exhausting journey throughout the scorching desert of disgrace, they come to know how to be reborn from themselves. This rebirth allows them to recognize their true selves and to become relatable again. ("Waiting for emancipation") ~ Erik Pevernagie

The dark emotions everyone hid in their depths weren't all of who they really were. They weren't their true selves. ~ L.J.Smith

Rilke wrote in one of my favourite books [Letters to a Young Poet], "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." It takes courage to live as our true selves; especially when doing so can be faced with such unkindness. But I believe the more we show of ourselves, the more we make space for positive change in the world. I feel so grateful I get to be a part of a series that is contributing to that change. ~ Elise Bauman

We are either becoming more of our true selves or drifting into a false self. In ~ Jeff Goins

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.
Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

If God gave it to me," we say "it's mine. I can do what I want with it." No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of - if we want to find our true selves, if we want real Life, if our hearts are set on glory. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Humans lived for several million years as fully wild beings: only in the last 10, 000 did we invent agriculture; only in the last couple of centuries did we invent industry. We are a species that has spent 99 per cent of its history as hunter-gatherers. We haven't had time for our unconscious minds and our unconscious needs to have changed. If you like, our souls have not changed, and this is true whether or not we believe that we have them. ~ Simon Barnes

We are taking the time to consider the Hungarian case for a simple reason: to show that constitutional limits on a central government's power do not by themselves necessarily produce political accountability. The "freedom" sought by the Hungarian noble class was the freedom to exploit their own peasants more thoroughly, and the absence of a strong central state allowed them to do just that. Everyone understands the Chinese form of tyranny, one perpetrated by a centralized dictatorship. But tyranny can result from decentralized oligarchic domination as well. True freedom tends to emerge in the interstices of a balance of power among a society's elite actors, something that Hungary never succeeded in achieving. ~ Francis Fukuyama

Even though we are always with God, a person who lives within the false human mind only has what is within his illusionary false mind. Man does not know God because God's mind does not exist within the human mind. ~ Woo Myung

I believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect, true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with Christianity; and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the Christian standard, and not Christianity by any other system. ~ John Lord

No matter what activity or practice we are pursuing, there isn't anything that isn't made easier through constant familiarity and training. Through training, we can change; we can transform ourselves. Within Buddhist practice there are various methods of trying to sustain a calm mind when some disturbing event happens. Through repeated practice of these methods we can get to the point where some disturbance may occur but the negative effects on our mind remain on the surface, like the waves that may ripple on the surface of an ocean but don't have much effect deep down. And, although my own experience may be very little, I have found this to be true in my own small practice. So, if I receive some tragic news, at that moment I may experience some disturbance within my mind, but it goes very quickly. Or, I may become irritated and develop some anger, but again, it dissipates very quickly. There is no effect on the deeper mind. No hatred. This was achieved through gradual practice; it didn't happen overnight.'

Certainly not. The Dalai Lama has been engaged in training his mind since he was four years old. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

It is true that some liberals and humanists, along with the laid-back Danes, deny the existence of evil. This is largely because they regard the word 'evil' as a device for demonising those who are really nothing more than socially unfortunate. ~ Terry Eagleton