Quotes
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
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
Dissolution
Incidentally practice of meditation affects deeply our character. We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover and understand its causes and its workings, we over-come it by the very knowing; the unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious. The dissolution of the unconscious releases energy; the mind feels adequate and become quiet. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Richness
Surely truth, or that Godhead of understanding, is not to be found by clinging either to family or tradition or habit. It is to be found only when you are compeltely naked, stripped of your longings, hopes, securities; and in that direct simplicity is the richness of life. – Krishnamurti
True Imagination
True imagination is not fanciful daydreaming; it is fire from heaven. – Ernest Holmes
Direction of Dreams
I have learned that if one advances in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. – Henry David Thoreau
The Seeker
The seeker is he who is in search of himself. – Nisargadatta Maharaj
Knowing the Truth
MAN, BY THINKING, CAN BRING INTO HIS EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER HE DESIRES, IF HE THINKS CORRECTLY AND BECOMES A LIVING EMBODIMENT OF HIS THOUGHTS. This is not done by holding thoughts but by KNOWING THE TRUTH. – Ernest Holmes
Great Discovery
To be real and free, individuality must be created IN THE IMAGE OF PERFECTION AND LET ALONE TO MAKE THE GREAT DISCOVERY FOR ITSELF. – Ernest Holmes
Division
Let us no longer accept division, but find ourselves united in light.
Who Am I
Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. – Sri Nisargadatta Mahara
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
Evaluate
Make no attempt to evaluate yourself. – Mooji
Images of Thought
Disease and limitation are neither person, place, nor thing; they are simply images of thought. Turn entirely from the condition, or the limited situation, to its opposite, that is, to the realization of health, happiness or harmony. – Ernest Holmes
Out of Control
With some tumultuous surroundings, as life introduces struggles and challenges, I’d like to try an experiment in ease. What if I can find the ease in the storm, the peace in the chaos, to just be. Everything will be figured out, and I can do it without struggle or worry. The challenge is to let go of the illusion of control, let life happen, and to know that you don’t know. We always think we know what is best for ourselves, not only that… what is best for reality. If we do this, if we act in this specific way or do this particular action, life will be just the way we want. But that’s impossible, there are truly too many factors. Life is an infinite amount of changes, possibilities, stories. The story that is best for you is out of your control. I’m not sure best is even the right word here… your life is what you make of it. It’s always been about a goal of achieving success, about looking like a success in the eyes of others, but what you do, day to day, the feelings you have inside, the love you express, the smiles you create……
Amazement
A lot of stuff changes once you figure out the voices you hear in your head have no idea what they’re talking about. If they knew anything at all about the world, they’d stop in amazement because why waste all that time talking when you could be spinning around & around laughing & soaking it all in? – Brian Andreas
World of Shamans
The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue. – Carlos Castaneda
Coded
We all have the extraordinary coded within us… waiting to be released. – Jean Houston
Meet Things Anew
So to live each moment now without the burden of the past or of the present, without that crippling memory created by the lack of understanding, mind must ever meet things anew. It is fatal to meet life with the burden of certainty, with the conceit of knowledge, because, after all, knowledge is merely a thing of the past. So when you come to that life with a freshness, then you will know what it is to live without conflict, without this continual straining effort. Then you wander far on the floods of life. – Krishnamurti
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.
Source of Life
We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but of our inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little. The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Darkness
You are not what you are; You are darkness Looking for light within. – Dejan Stojanovic
Dare to Think
I’m not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except dare to think. And to dare to go with the truth. And to dare to really love completely. – R. Buckminster Fuller
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
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
Spectrum
You will discover that silence is a spectrum where there is no end to how deep you can go. It is there, in the eternal quiet, that you will find the mastery that you seek. – Graeme Rodaughan
Limitless
Life is infinite energy coupled with limitless creative imagination. It is the invisible essence and substance of every visible form. Its nature is goodness, truth, wisdom and beauty, as well as energy and imagination. Our highest satisfaction comes from a sense of conscious union with this invisible Life. All human endeavor is an attempt to get back to first principles, to find such an inward wholeness that all sense of fear, doubt and uncertainty vanishes. – Ernest Holmes