Favorite Inspiring Quotes
Experience
Commentary by Peter Shepherd

“Experience is a cruel teacher, it gives the exam first and then the lesson.” ~ Unknown
Difficulties are opportunities to better things; they are stepping stones to greater experience. Perhaps someday you will be thankful for some temporary failure in a particular direction. When one door closes, another always opens.
“All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.” ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
As Albert Einstein said, "The only source of knowledge is experience." He further said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."
“Past is experience, present is experiment and future is expectation. Use your experience in your experiments to achieve your expectations.” ~ Lily Annabelle Boon
As Tom Krause said, "There are no failures - just experiences and your reactions to them."
“A mind that is stretched by experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” ~ Oliver Holmes
As David L. Weatherford said, "We enjoy warmth because we have been cold. We appreciate light because we have been in darkness. By the same token, we can experience joy because we have known sorrow."
“When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that is love. And between these two, my life turns.” ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nothing and everything at the same time, two sides of a golden coin... the big Zen paradox that has fooled thinkers for millennia, because it can only be experienced. It is the insight of enlightenment, beyond duality. We are spirit, not a material thing, and simultaneously we are not separate from any physical thing, nor from each other. Both spirit and the universe are simply expressions of Love.

Here’s some further reading on this theme...
Well-Being and the Old System ~ by Kenneth J. MacLean
The co-creative potential of 7 billion human beings is powerful enough to create a new reality in a very short time. The function of mass media is to keep alive the memes that perpetuate the old system. Essentially, mass media influences the minds of the people to continue to create the old reality. It's almost funny to think that "reality" has no substance at all, other than the substance we collectively co-create. But once the thought templates of a population change, physical reality will begin to change. Continues...