Agapi Stassinopoulos Quotes

If you're going to live in the anxiety of the surface of this world, you're never going to find the depth, the source. If you want calmness, you've got to go deeper.

One of the most powerful sayings I have come across is by Imam ash-Shafi'I, "My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and that what misses me was never meant for me."

Treat yourself as if you were someone inexpressibly dear to you.

It gives me such hope that each one of us can contribute to make this world a better place.

My greatest life lesson has been to not wait for the opportunities to come to me. I realize how important it is to be proactive and to create the opportunities myself.

We are all born with an open heart, but at some point as we are growing up, things happen in our lives where we start to shut down, like rejection, not fitting in, wanting approval, judgments, comparisons, and criticism of others.

We are living in an inspiring and unimaginably large universe. Contemplating the immensity of our cosmos can make you feel very small and insignificant. But think about it. You have 37.2 trillion cells in your body. There is vastness outside you and vastness inside you. You are connected to this mystery, you are a microcosm of the universe, and every aspect of your life benefits from the universe's provision.

The world can only seem a safe place when we feel safe inside.

Some people are introverts and if they don't have enough time for themselves, they don't feel right. And extroverts don't feel right with too much alone time. There are those who need walks in nature or they feel depressed. Your linchpin is the pin that makes the wheel go. If you lose it, the wheel falls apart.

I think I have an awareness inside of me that we are all the same, that basically we are all part of that one heart.

No matter who you are, you have a giant self.

We forget that our bodies are the most valuable, precious thing we have and take that miracle of life for granted.

I draw strength from spirit, from the divine light. I draw strength from the love my sister and I have for each other, from my nieces, Christina and Isabella, and the true friendships I have in my life that are based in being real with each other and mutual love and support.

What I learned from comparisons and jealousies is that they point to where you haven't filled your cup or owned your gifts. They point to where you are not yet 100% you. We know that when you are fully engaged in doing what you're doing and your heart and creative spirit are involved, you couldn't care less what anybody else is doing.

You wake in the morning and proclaim yourself to be the bearer of goodness. "I will bring good. I will attract good. I will create good. Good things happen to me, and my life is good." You start to move into the track of goodness, and that becomes a place of abundance, a place of rest, a place of relaxation, and a place of trust.

My mother found a way out of a little one-bedroom apartment in Athens, Greece to bring Arianna to Cambridge to study economics and bring me to the Royal Academy in London with very few financial resources and no connections. She didn't know anybody in England, but she found a way. Her love for her daughters and seeing what they could be, motivated her and gave her the chutzpah, the courage, to break down barriers. When you have the motivation of love, you will find the way.

We all have something that centers us in our lives. That linchpin is something that when we don't do enough of it, we start to feel off center.

Be generous with your heart! The more we spontaneously give, the more connected and enriched we will feel. What if we use each other as our living temples, and put our best offering foot forward to see what direction life points us? I believe that if we live in a state of offering - even if we think we have nothing to offer - life blesses us and we feel more at peace with who we are and what we have.

In our heart, we are all the same and I think that belief makes me open up, reach out to others, and bring my own warmth and loving to them. I am very grateful that I have found a way to express what means so much to me, which is that caring for one another.

We are not just these three-dimensional bodies walking around. Our unconscious communicates and other people pick it up and they come to our rescue, or a spirit comes to our rescue.

If your own strong ego clashes with other strong egos, you not going to get anywhere. I studied psychology and learned about the many parts of us that we need to integrate so we don't walk around feeling disconnected: personality, soul, ego. If you do feel disconnected, you need to ask which part is feeling that way. Your ego is there to boost you up, if recognized and used correctly.

Unbinding the Heart means to really look at the areas in our lives where we withhold our own love from our self and others.

Let's say you're auditioning for a part or you're going for a job you really want. You have to go in with a sense of self or you're not going to get the job. You need your ego to get what it is that you want to make things happen in your life.

I also draw strength from so many people that I meet through my speaking engagements and my life and when I feel the joy that gets ignited when kindred spirits are together. It gives me such hope that each one of us can contribute to make this world a better place.

I still work that expectation/disappointment cycle all the time. I think it is part of the human nature and I think the most important thing is not to judge it. We are human and we do have expectations and a lot of our expectations are often not met. It is a process of learning how to be kind and compassionate and loving to ourselves when we don't get the things we want when people, circumstances, and opportunities don't match our expectations.

I think the most important thing is how long do we stay in the disappointment. When my mother would see us wallowing in disappointment she would say, "change the channel." So I replace the disappointment with a new direction of where I wanted to go and how I wanted to feel. Also, when something isn't coming my way, I believe it was not meant for me.

I think I have an awareness inside of me that we are all the same, that basically we are all part of that one heart. When I am with people, I feel there is a part of me that knows a part of them because we are beyond our personalities, our emotions, and our thoughts.

When something isn't coming my way, I believe it was not meant for me.

Unbinding the Heart really means to bring awareness to those areas we have restricted in our hearts and start to let go, open up, and practice staying open no matter what happens or doesn't happen.

Separation can make us feel helpless and powerless, like we have no control. To withstand this negative force, we must return to our inner core, and that takes work. That takes time and patience.

Into your darkest corner, you are safe in my love, you are protected. I am the openess you seek, I am your doorway. Come sit in the circular temple of my heart, & let yourself be calm.

I'm not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.

The depth of the ocean is calm, but on the surface, there are always waves. If you dive deep in your life, your life can be bliss.

A friend of mine helped me find my confidence by trusting the knowledge that I was not alone in writing my first book. She helped me wake up to the fact that I had a source of creativity that was my true creative nature and when I embraced it and asked for this presence in my life, I felt as if the dam of the Niagra Falls had burst and all sorts of wonderful things started to happen when I found my voice. It has been a process ever since and I am now a big advocate in the message that we are not alone and we all have ample creativity within us if we just trust it.

The key to success is radical generosity.

Maybe your path is completely different from what you imagined.

Separation happens in so many different dimensions. We see it everywhere. I believe we are all part of the spiritual heart. We all come from that place of oneness, so that place in us that knows love, that knows connection, hurts. It's a challenge that we also feel more than any other time because it's in the news and social media. It's in our families. There is division with people in our lives, as well as political division and religious division.

Seeing how many people in our world today are focused on doing good in this world for others, especially in the younger generation and how passionate they feel about making a difference. What inspires me is helping others to become more of who they are and to learn to become radically generous with each other.

Because of social media, we have access to amazing spiritual teachers. You can watch the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Eckhart Tolle or any number of other masters. Their teachings are available and we must celebrate that.

I feel there is a great spiritual awakening on the planet right now. More than any previous time, people are drawn to meditation, to mindfulness, to yoga. These have become mainstream in the West because there is a hunger.

I see parents who bring their kids down because their parents did that to them, instead of reinforcing their gifts, and instilling a sense of what they came to this earth to do.

We are not alone and we all have ample creativity within us if we just trust it.

What inspires me is helping others to become more of who they are and to learn to become radically generous with each other.

I urge people to be a scientist about what they want and ask themselves why they want it so badly. Perhaps they are chasing an illusory dream. But if you want to learn, to expand, to be of service, you will find a way.

People who say, "I don't believe in God," I want to say to them, "Forget the G O D word. But can you believe that there is something larger than yourself that is working for you and around you in a brilliant cosmic intelligence?" To me, daily practice of meditation is accessing that reverence and awe and really tapping into it. Do whatever it takes to move with it, to partner with it, and live your life with that in mind. Imagine what would happen if enough of us did that? We would open to such amazing energy, creativity, and power.

We start to feel not good enough and we withdraw our hearts energy and sensor our authentic expression, and that hurts!

If we strive for happiness, it's going to be elusive because things constantly happen with human beings that disrupt that happiness. But if you focus on euphoros, the Greek word for "the bearer of goodness," you will be inhabited by the divine source of life.

One of the things I tell young people - and older people too - is that when things don't happen that you want, don't drown in discouragement. We say, "Oh, this didn't happen, so nothing good will happen." Don't barricade yourself.

There is a spirit, an energy, that works with us. We've all felt it at some point in our lives.

We worry so much in this culture about being happy. The pursuit of happiness is even written in our Constitution. It's an erroneous concept because we are emotional, thinking beings that are constantly affected by a hundred things around us and inside us.