Life happens for us, not to us

• Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if you do. Byron Katie
• In life, nothing happens to you. It happens for you. Rorion Gracie
• Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you. Jim Carrey
• You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‘Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.’ See the positive in negative events. Joel Osteen
• When you’re a child you’re the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They’re only ghosts furnished for you to talk to. John Steinbeck
• Life, in all its moods, and with all its twists, and turns, happens for us, not to us. Aimee Davies
• Life will never give us exactly what we want. But life will always give us exactly what we need. Suffering is a wakeup call to return to wholeness. Aimee Davies
• When you fight with the Universe, you are punching thin air and the Universe will remain undefeated every time. But the great news is that the Universe is inherently friendly. When you accept this, you realise everything is not happening to you but for you; for your growth, for your inspiration and for your awakening. And you can receive far more with an open hand than a closed fist. Inner joy is not about getting what you want but loving what you already have and what you already are. And inner freedom is about letting reality be as it is. Aimee Davies
• Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if you do. Nothing comes ahead of its time, and nothing ever happened that didn’t need to happen. Byron Katie

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We experience exactly what we are meant to

• What does God want to experience through you? Whatever it is that you’re experiencing right now.  Anthony Lambert
• Since everything in life is but an experience perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter. Long Chen Pa
• Wanting is what causes unhappiness. What do I want? Exactly what life brings. The experience I am having now. Anthony Lambert
• When you know that whatever you need is what you get, life becomes paradise. It’s the perfect setup. Everything you need, and even more than you need, is always supplied, in abundance.  Byron Katie
• How do I know that I needed a hit on the head? Because that’s what happened! No mistake. When you know that whatever you need is what you get, life becomes paradise. It’s the perfect setup. Everything you need, and even more than you need, is always supplied, in abundance.  Nothing ever goes wrong in life. Byron Katie

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Difficult experiences are designed to awaken us and develop us spiritually

• Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken. Scott McLeod
• I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken. Ram Dass
• Life is not here to make us happy. It is here to wake us up.  Eckhart Tolle
• Let whatever happens, be what needs to happen, so that I may awaken. Scott McLeod
• The dream we are living has absolutely no purpose other than our awakening. Tony Parsons
• Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it! Ram Dass
• Everything that occurs in your life is part of God’s plan to wake you up. Leonard Jacobson
• When experience is viewed in a certain way, it presents nothing but doorways into the soul. Jon Kabat-Zinn
• A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. Antoine de Saint- Exupery
• A spiritually-oriented person values all of life’s experiences and sees each one as an opportunity to evolve spiritually. David R. Hawkins
• If your grand purpose in life is to wake up, then whatever happens to you is good, for it can prod you into self- awakening. Vernon Howard
• When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one. Paul Brunton
• Everything within my life – without exception – is a revelation and expression of That which is the Source of my own inevitable Awakening. Metta Zetty
• That’s what every uncomfortable feeling is for—that’s what pain is for, what money is for, what everything in the world is for: your self-realization. Byron Katie
• There is no thought or situation that you can’t put up against inquiry. Every thought, every person, every apparent problem is here for the sake of your freedom. Byron Katie
• Whatever it takes for you to find your freedom, that’s what you’ve lived. Byron Katie
• When you realize that every stressful moment you experience is a gift that points you to your own freedom, life becomes very kind. Byron Katie
• Life happens and everything you need to enlighten yourself comes to you through life. Byron Katie
• At the soul level, we get precisely what we need in our lives for our spiritual growth. How we judge what we get determines whether we experience life as painful or joyful. Colin Tipping
• Becoming integrated and whole is the spiritual path. The body is your vehicle. Your job is to learn about yourself from your experiences and change yourself. This is spiritual growth. Gary Zukav
• Trouble and disease have a lesson for us. Our painful experiences are not meant to destroy us, but to burn out our dross, to hurry us back Home. No one is more anxious for our release than God. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment. Eckhart Tolle   
• At times God’s best pupils experience the most rigorous and continuous courses. Eventually those who prove to be men of Christ will thereby become distinguished alumni of life’s school of affliction, graduating with honors. Neal A. Maxwell
• The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out your attachment, your clinging, to pleasure, to pain, to fear, to all of it. And as long as there is a place where you’re vulnerable, the universe will find a way to confront you with it. Ram Dass
• I have known good and evil, sin and virtue, right and wrong; I have judged and been judged;  I have passed through birth and death,  Joy and sorrow, heaven and hell;  And in the end I realized  that I AM in everything and everything is in me.   Hazrat Inayat Khan
• As you become multi-sensory, you begin to see yourself as a soul first and a personality second. You begin to experience yourself as more than a body and more than a mind. and the circumstances around you as meaningful and designed for your spiritual growth. Gary Zukav
• Life is a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a wide variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. Yuval Noah Harari
• We make use of every experience. We need difficult and challenging experiences. We need all experiences, both sweet and bitter, especially bitter, to build spiritual muscle. You need it to grow more deeply into your being. If all experiences were light and fun, no one would wake up. Mooji
• Carl Jung, who concluded after a lifetime of study, that there is an inborn drive in the unconscious toward wholeness, completeness, and realization of the Self, and that the unconscious will devise the ways and means of bringing this about, even if they are traumatic to the conscious mind. David R. Hawkins
• Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru. Joko Beck
• Once we become conscious, even dimly, of the Atman, the Reality within us, the world takes on a very different aspect. It is no longer a court of justice but a kind of gymnasium. Good and evil, pain and pleasure, still exist, but they seem more like the ropes and vaulting-horses and parallel bars which can be used to make our bodies strong. Maya is no longer an endlessly revolving wheel of pain and pleasure but a ladder which can be climbed to consciousness of the Reality. Adi Shankaracarya
• Why do we fail? Is it because we are unlucky? Is it because we have not worked very hard? I s it because we have not invoked God’s Compassion and Blessings? Is it because God has accepted this failure as an experience He wanted to have in our life? Is it because God has granted this failure to us? Is it because God has willed that we should lose? No! not it is for a different reason that we experience failure. It is for the strengthening of our consciousness that, at times, God grants us defeat. Sri Chinmoy

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Difficult experiences awaken latent powers within us

• Most people have come to prefer certain of life’s experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness. Rachel Remen
• The goal of the human experience is to transform ourselves from beings who long to attain power in the physical world to beings who are empowered from within. Caroline Myss
• If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be. John Heywood
• Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward. Henry Ford

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Difficult experiences help us to learn and grow

• Experience is the teacher of all things. Julius Caesar
• We learn of great things by little experiences. Bram Stoker
• Everything that happens in life is there to aid our spiritual growth. Scott Peck
• Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. Helen Keller
• A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never return to its old dimensions.
• It’s not the volume of our experiences, but rather what we learn from each one. Raam Dev
• Am I showing up for this experience? Accept it.  Learn from it.  Use it. Geraldine Evans
• Everything in life has something to teach you and it is all for your growth. Michael A. Singer
• The Holy Spirit sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home. A Course In Miracles
• Every single moment of every single day of your entire life is part of the curriculum. Ziad Masri
• If it is happening in your life, it is because it is there to teach you something. Donnalynn Civello
• I believe that there’s a lesson in almost everything that you do and every experience. Oprah Winfrey
• All of life’s experiences are teachers in some sense, challenging us to grow and evolve. David Emerald
• Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. Aldous Huxley
• The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one’s life. Dalai Lama
• Life is the only real teacher. It offers many experiences…. But the lessons of experience are hidden.  Dan Millman
• Every situation, every moment, provides the opportunity for self- growth and development of your character. David Reynolds
• Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience. Denis Waitley
• You see, you learn from all your bad experiences, so they’re really positive. It’s all part of the cosmic knowing. Nina Hagen
• God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way. S. Lewis
• The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time. Ben Okri
• Wisdom is not to be obtained from textbooks, but must be coined out of human experience in the flame of life. Morris Raphael Cohen
• This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Sivananda
• Essence loves undesirable experiences as much as it loves desirable ones, sometimes even more because of their potential for growth. Gina Lake
• The purpose of your life is to enjoy and learn from your experiences. You were not put on Earth to suffer. You’re not helping anybody by being miserable. Michael Singer
• Each time we confront some intense difficulty, we know there is something we haven’t learned yet, and the universe is now giving us the opportunity to learn. Susan Jeffers
• Your life is a multipart series of all your experiences – and each experience is created by your thoughts, intentions, and actions to teach you what you need to know. Oprah Winfrey
• Scared and sacred are spelling with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation. Alan Cohen
• To find deep meaning and purpose, look at your entire life as what it rightfully is: a curriculum. Your life, and everything that happens in it, is your curriculum in this university-level education. Ziad Masri
• Life is a conspiracy to shower you with a nonstop feast of interesting experiences, all of which are designed to help you grow your intelligence, shed your pretensions, and master the art of ingenious love. Rob Brezsny
• Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. A Course in Miracles
• Every life experience, no matter how “tragic,” contains a hidden lesson. When we discover and acknowledge the hidden gift that is there, a healing takes place. Life events are opportunities to grow, expand, experience, and develop. David R. Hawkins
• Man learns through experience, and the spiritual path is full of different kinds of experiences. He will encounter many difficulties and obstacles, and they are the very experiences he needs to encourage and complete the cleansing process. Sai Baba
• You planned it all. You are the writer of this play. You are also its director, the actor, and the audience. It’s only when you get caught up in the role of the actor and forget that it’s just a role that life seems to be scary and fear becomes warranted. Ziad Masri
• What I know for sure is that your life is a multipart series of all your experiences- and each experience is created by your thoughts, intentions, and actions to teach you what you need to know. Your life is a journey of learning to love yourself first and then extending that love to others in every encounter. Oprah Winfrey
• God sends to you those experiences you need, that you might profit by them. If you run away from those lessons, you will still have to learn them sometime, somewhere else. Every experience is a good teacher if you learn from it; but it is a tyrant if you abuse that opportunity with resentment and nonunderstanding. With right attitude, life is very simple and very easy. Paramahansa Yogananda
• How do you know how to be perfect? You do not know how to be perfect; you learn how to be perfect. It is the spiritual work that one does daily which awakens your world on the path to perfection. The world begins to reflect how to be perfect by experiences and actions, going on and around you all the time. These are the things that cannot be taught in books, as there are too many variances in behaviour and personality. The tough lessons of love and friendship happen throughout our own lives and we must seek to find the lessons of life hidden deep within all interactions. Swami Sai Premananda

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… including the experiencing of failing and making mistakes

• You need to screw up to learn. You need to experience to create greatness. Laurie Faria Stolarz
• There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them. Tom Krause
• We’re not making mistakes. We’re making experiences. Dan Bergstein
• You will be wounded many times in your life. You’ll make mistakes. Some people will call them failures but I have learned that failure is really God’s way of saying, “Excuse me, you’re moving in the wrong direction.” It’s just an experience, just an experience. Oprah Winfrey
• You must learn to stop thinking in terms of beginnings and endings, successes and failures, and begin to treat everything in your life as a learning experience instead of a proving one. Guy Finley
• Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience. Denis Waitley
• I do not recognize these as defeats. They are but interesting experiences of life. They are valuable stepping stones to success. Walter Russell

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Therefore, do not regret difficult or unpleasant experiences

• To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.  Oscar Wilde
• I think we all wish we could erase some dark times in our lives. But all of life’s experiences, bad and good, make you who you are. Erasing any of life’s experiences would be a great mistake. Luis Miguel
• Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience. Victoria Holt
• If I were to begin my life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more. Jules Renard
• Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. Auguste Rodin
• To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul. Oscar Wilde

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Embrace each and every experience of life

• I’m just going to embrace every experience. Hope Solo
• Everything is a once in a lifetime experience. Kobi Yamada
• Each minute of life should be a divine quest. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Life experience is not something to be denied, but to be celebrated. Madeleine M. Kunin
• Don’t sit and wait. Get out there, feel life. Touch the sun, and immerse in the sea. Rumi
• I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world’s variety and uniqueness. Maya Angelou
• Use each experience you encounter to awaken, and enlighten yourself. This is the key. Shinjo Ito
• Savour: To enjoy an experience slowly, in order to enjoy it as much as possible. Cambridge Dictionary
• Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. Denis Waitley
• Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. George Bernard Shaw