Quotes
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.
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
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……
In Love
Be in love with your life. Every minute of it. – Jack Kerouac
Coded
We all have the extraordinary coded within us… waiting to be released. – Jean Houston
Pursuit
There can be no creative thinking if mind is hindered by the search for a reward, by the pursuit of a goal. -Krishnamurti
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
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
Simplify
When you reach the core that comes after allowing everything to drop, you are naturally cracked open. There is a spiritual heart in that core. You uncover not only the emptiness of the radiant mind, but the radiance and warmth of the spiritual heart as well. When you’re really resting, you can actually feel the radiant, empty mind – not as a thought, but as the radiant emptiness of yourself, the nothingness of yourself and of all selves. You also experience the radiant heart fullness and realize that the emptiness isn’t just a bland emptiness – it is heart-full. When the emptiness awakens, you know that it is also the compassionate heart. The warmth of your own spiritual heart comes alive. – Adyashanti
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
Look
Look. Look without naming or judging, without holding on or pushing away. To look in this way, to give your attention this way, is love. – From Conversations with Plato
Everywhere Music
See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. – Thomas Carlyle
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
Cosmic Scheme
The whole Cosmic Scheme must be reproduced on the plane of the individual, if there is an individual. – The Science of Mind
Bliss
Innocence is Bliss
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
Just Be
You need not worry about your worries. Just be. Don’t be restless about ‘being quiet’, miserable about ‘being happy’. Just be aware that you are and remain aware – don’t say: “Yes I am; what’s next?” There is no ‘next’ in ‘I am’. It is a timeless state. – Nisargadatta Maharaj
Transcendent Destiny
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. – Emerson
Harmony
To think creatively is to bring about harmony between mind, emotion, and action. -Krishnamurti
Extravagant Journey
You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life. – Carlos Castañeda
Creation
When we realize that we are dealing with an Infinite Intelligence, and with an Infinite Law within Intelligence, we see that there can be no limit placed upon Creation. – Ernest Holmes
Freedom
I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Dream World
It is necessary that Soul and Body should exist, because Spirit, without manifestation, would construct only a dream world, never coming into Self-Realization. – Ernest Holmes
Success
There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way. – Christopher Morley
Creation
One little spark, of inspiration Is at the heart, of all creation. Right at the start, of everything that’s new. One little spark, lights up for you. – Figment, Journey Into Imagination
Portal
A portal to another perspective is waiting. The light that shines through, the opening that shows you there is something more than the darkness that surrounds you. As you open your own eyes, the portal increases until you are on the outside looking in. What kept you beneath this window, behind the light? Now that this has shifted, (or is it you that has shifted?) what has changed? Maybe you were never behind the light, it was only hidden by your own perceptions, your own assumptions that there was a limited view. Consider the possibility that you are on both sides – you look in, you look out, you are not trapped, you can see…
Integrity
Integrity is the essence of everything successful. – R. Buckminster Fuller
Prisoner
Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner. – Lao Tzu