Quotes
Individualized
He must suffer, not because pain is a necessity, but because he must have experience in order to become individualized. – Ernest Holmes
Deepest Nature
One should be always on the trail of one’s own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the divine. – Henry David Thoreau
State of Thought
What a man has, as well as what he is, is the result of the subjective state of his thought. – Ernest Holmes
Dreamlike
There is no good reason to say that yesterday was more solid and real than last night’s dream, except that we cling to our dreamlike experience of yesterday more than to our experience of last night’s dream. – 7th Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
Create
You build the universe with your creations.
River of Life
Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Calling
The calling is not to Go beyond the mind. The calling is to be, which is Prior to the mind. – Wu Hsin
Sky
Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life. – Marcel Proust
Self Image
All of your actions, feelings, behaviors – even your abilities, are consistent with the self-image. The self-image can be changed. – Psychocybernetics
Awakeness/Awareness
Student: I’ve made up all of it? Adyashanti: The whole thing. But the awakeness in you is not dreaming. Only the mind is dreaming. It tells itself stories and wants to know if you’re progressing. When you shift into wakefulness, you realize, “Wait, it’s a dream. The mind is creating an altered state of reality, a virtual reality, but it’s not true – it’s just thought.” Thought can tell a million stories inside of awareness, and it’s not going to change awareness one bit. The only thing that’s going to change is the way the body feels. If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels all puffed up, confident. But when you realize it’s all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don’t awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.
Whole of Being
Nothing is true but if you think it. And what you think, if you think it with your whole being, becomes true for the Whole of Being. – Bob Frissell
Sunset Music
There is nothing is more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little – the book of Nature. – Claude Debussy
Leap in the Dark
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success. – Henry David Thoreau
Into the Unknown
What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become. – David Malouf, An Imaginary Life
Instinct
Trust instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Madness
Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life… If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature… Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life. – C.G. Jung
Completely
It is within the power of every man to completely change his environment and completely heal his body. Whether or not he will do this depends entirely upon his own conviction and his own determination. Nature attends him on the way and is always ready to serve; but he is an individual and nothing will ever be forced upon him. Let any one follow the Law, comply with Its nature, and consistently apply himself to right thinking and living, and he will prove to himself that life holds all and more than he has ever imagined. – Ernest Holmes
Aware
Be aware of wonder. – Robert Fulghum
Totally
Do it as totally as possible, and forget the result. – Osho
Sovereignty
You were born to this world with sovereignty over your mind and over your life. Your abilities to think, to feel, to learn and to love are your liberty. In you, these capacities are infinite. You have infinite worth. – Jeremy Locke
Growing
Not guided, not guarded, not directed, not motivated, but simply growing. – Osho
Active Principle
There is the Power, the way that It works, and the result of Its operation; the Word, the law, and the effect; Intelligence, substance, and form; the Active Principle, the passive receptivity, and the relative condition. The Spirit of the Universe cannot change; the Soul of the Universe cannot change; the Body of the Universe cannot help changing. – Ernest Holmes
Restless Pursuit
Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization. – Rabindranath Tagore
Cosmic Ocean
Do it as totally as possible, and forget the result. …you have to forget about the result, only then does it happen. You have to be in the act totally. The more you are in the act, the sooner the result happens. …So remember, centering is the method, not the result. The result is cosmic, oceanic experience. There is no center then. – Osho
Coded
We all have the extraordinary coded within us… waiting to be released. – Jean Houston
Beyond the Dream
The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that need be done. – Nisargadatta Maharaj
Present Moment
Only the present moment contains life. – Thich Nhat Hanh