Words of Wisdom from Ana Forrest

First of all, this lady's a riot—a very wise and spiritual riot. In between telling stories from her horrific childhood and her path to healing through yoga, I've really enjoyed her unabashed way of looking at absolutely everything in life.

Here are a few of my favorite Ana Forrest "words of wisdom" from her book so far:

"I encourage you to take this wild and exciting path of Truth Speaking because it's unfathomably rich. It's also risky. But what are you risking? All the facades that make your life dull and boring and complacent. By speaking the truth, we learn the difference between our authentic self and our facade. If we put our little masked self out there, the horror is that other people might accept and end up making love to it, while we starve and die of neglect behind it. It's much richer to interact genuinely with the world."

"A lot of our culture's Judeo-Christian beliefts are conditioned against desire. We're taught that to make ourselves so-called better people, we must behave altruistically, which in this case means always putting others first and neglecting our own desires. A lot of us are taught this so we better fit into the fabric of society. No wonder we have so much difficulty discerning our heart's desire; we have to cut through a lot of well-intentioned yet stupid teaching to find out what it is. But if we learn to follow our heart's desire and can get through the initial blowback, if we're taught to follow our Spirit's calling, how could that not be a tremendous gift to our family and community? Yes, sometimes following our heart's desire leads us into some crazy-ass places, but that's just part of it."

"Meditation is simply a way to shift the gears of the mind. We think a lot. And we think that's the only gear that the brain has, but it's more like first gear in a six-gear car. Many people think the goal of meditation is to shut down the mind. Not so; that just sets you up for war. Meditation is about exploring and teaching your mind to do something different; that's much more friendly than saying, 'I'm gonna shut you up!' It's not about putting yourself to sleep; it's about awakening, especially awakening parts of you that have never been asked to awaken before."

"We have the same problem in our culture as we do in our bodies: we take in too much that's non-nutritive, whether it's junk food or junk information, and we attempt to be fed by it. We pour in so much information, so much food, and our bodies and minds and emotions get constipated, clogged, overloaded. What the hell is an energy drink, and what is our cell tissue going to do with it? Of the information we take in, how much of it can we actually live on and how much is crap? There's nothing wrong with crap, but it's an end product. Literally: eat shit and die".

And this is only from the first 133 pages, I can only imagine what's in store for the next 127...