Have you ever stopped to consider the number of choices you make daily Paradoxically speaking, every time you have a choice to make, and you don't make it, by default, you are making a choice not to make a choice, which is, of course, a choice. You have no choice in the matter. This is an important question because the more conscious you are about your choices, the more likely it is you will end up where you want to be at the end of your stay on this planet.

— Dennis Merritt Jones

Have you ever taken yourself a bit too seriously, thinking that who you are is actually defined by what you look like, how much talent you have (or don't have), how well known you are (or aren't), or how much money you have (or don't have)? Those are all "garments and labels" you wear during the course of your stay here on this planet, but it's not who you are. At the end of the day, when it's all said and done, you will turn all of that back in just like a car you had on lease.

— Dennis Merritt Jones

Herein lies the paradox: If you want more of whatever it is you desire, you have to first prove to the universe that you are capable of having it by developing a consciousness that affirms there is no shortage of it. The only way to do this is by creating a vacuum or space for it to be received, and the only way you can create a space for it to be received is by letting go of what you do have, trusting that the universe knows what it is doing. That's the law of circulation in action.

— Dennis Merritt Jones

If we were to excavate the deepest recesses of our consciousness, we would discover many beliefs about ourselves that are simply not true and that may never have been true... We may have defined ourselves in a limiting way based on our history and the opinion of others...and we stay stuck there because we fail to recognize there is a door right in front of us providing another opportunity to redefine who we are today.

— Dennis Merritt Jones

If we were to excavate the deepest recesses of our consciousness, we would discover many beliefs about ourselves that are simply not true and that may never have been true. Yet we live from these beliefs as if they were true because we have never identified them clearly enough to question them, to challenge them.

— Dennis Merritt Jones

Inherent in every living thing is an insatiable hunger, the innate desire to express life by freely and fully being “what” it was uniquely created to be. To personalize this, consider the possibility that there was a time when you were a “what” before you were a “who.” If you can wrap your mind around that possibility, then, the question to explore is, what were you before you became a who—and why did you become who you uniquely are when there are so many other “who’s on the planet you might have been? While this may seem like a bit of a paradoxical tongue twister, it is the quintessential question that requires exploration if you are to follow your true North Star back to your point of origin, where you’ll find your authentic self waiting to weave itself into the fabric of your human life today and every day.

— Dennis Merritt Jones

In Zen, there is an old saying: The obstacle is the path. Know that a whole and happy life is not free of obstacles. Quite the contrary, a whole and happy life is riddled with obstacles-they simply become the very stepping-stones that help lift us to a new perspective. It is not what happens to us in this life that shapes us, it is how we choose to respond to what happens to us.

— Dennis Merritt Jones

It can be very seductive to tell our story to others who will listen because, let's face it, who doesn't love to 'commiserate' (in this context, meaning to share their misery) with other like-minded people. It justifies our attachment to the drama. The interesting thing about telling our story over and over is that it becomes even more deeply ingrained in our minds each time we tell it, and the universe delights in keeping whatever we claim as our story alive.

— Dennis Merritt Jones

It is clear we exist in an abundant living Universe that knows no restriction—only the impulse to eternally expand with no limits or boundaries, perpetually becoming more of what it is and can ever be—star-stuff. . . Life, pushing out by creating light and matter from within itself, shaping and giving form to itself, exquisitely clothing itself in an infinite and unique number of ways.

— Dennis Merritt Jones

Life probably does not hand us any more visceral experience of how we mistakenly define ourselves than by means of our physical body. From the day we were born, the message we received from the world was that we are our body. This was the first great lie we were given by means of the collective consciousness of humankind, which has always valued itself from the outside in.

— Dennis Merritt Jones