“When spirit comes into form, it has the potential to become confused, and when it does, we experience negative emotions and we act on them. We have to remember that our true spiritual essence isn’t just goodness; it isn’t just happiness. It’s everything and nothing. There isn’t a force outside our spiritual essence. There’s nothing but God, as the mystics have told us. Everywhere you look, there’s God. Everything you feel, there’s God feeling. All of it. We’re taught and we’re conditioned that God is only the good stuff, that God or spirit or whatever you call it is a ‘good guy,’ and all the painful stuff comes from some other source called ‘the devil’ or ‘evil’ or samsara. But really, that’s just splitting the world up into bits. That’s a childish way to understand the divine. If we really want to be awake, if we want to allow suffering to end, we have to open up our very idea of what God is, what spirit is. We have to realize that spirit is an infinite potential that includes everything. And all of our lives are proof that our spiritual nature contains everything at once -- that we can become clear or confused, that we can act loving or cruel. How we act and feel depends on how awake we are, and how much we experience that silence, that peace, within.”

~ Adyashanti