Quotes
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
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
Be Alive
That is why humans resist life. To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our lives trying to satisfy other people’s demands. We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else. – Miguel Ruiz
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…
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
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
To Yourself
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. – Richard Bach, Illusions
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
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.
Restless
Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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. – Osho
Create
You build the universe with your creations.
Potentiality
Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Instinctive Life
Instinctive Life desires that man shall express more, and yet more, of its own limitless possibilities. – Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind
True Artist
To me, the true artist is one who lives completely, harmoniously, who does not divide his art from living, whose very life is that expression, whether it be a picture, music, or his behavior; who has not divorced his expression on a canvas or in music or in stone from his daily conduct, daily living. That demands the highest intelligence, highest harmony. To me the true artist is the man who has that harmony. He may express it on canvas, or he may talk, or he may paint; or he may not express it at all, he may feel it. But all this demands exquisite poise, that intensity of awareness and therefore, his expression is not divorced from the daily continuity of living. -Krishnamurti
Tenacity
What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions: the goal and the way must not be on different levels; life and light must not quarrel; behaviour must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Play of Mind
If you bring any questions of making an effort, of making it a method, or of trying to achieve something in the distant future, then this will bring you into time, and time is mind. This will be play of mind only, but your original nature is empty. You are all, at every time, empty. That�s all! Then, follow what thought arises in your mind. You will find that all thoughts arise from Emptiness, from their Source. When you are aware, when you see that ,�I am that Source Itself�, then there is no longer a need to practice anything and there is no longer a need to go anywhere. You will see that you already have been That. This is called �freedom�, which you have not to achieve or attain in the distant future. It is already there! So, if there are any questions about this, then we can discuss about this together. – Papaji
Strive to Live
Be joyful, think hard, dream tough, challenge yourself and relish the pain, the struggle, the tears. This is where you get into the depth of it. Dive in deep beneath the protective layers. Strive to live. It’s not what you think, where wrong is not real – it’s bliss or struggle all the same. Forget the judgment. Who matters but You? You are It. Every hate and judge, every love and acceptance. Although they are a part of you, they are not the complete you. Your perspective is unique. You create rightness with your actions. You tie into reality with your breath, creating your own dream with your movement. What can you achieve when you realize this is true? Strive to live, your options are limitless when you remember that you are too.
Waking State
Your thinking that you have to make an effort to get rid of this dream of the waking state, and your making efforts to attain jnana (realization of Self) or real awakening, are all parts of the dream. – Ramana Maharshi
Everywhere Music
See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. – Thomas Carlyle
Centering
So remember, centering is the method, not the result. The result is cosmic, oceanic experience. There is no center then. – Osho
Wonder
What is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe? – Devi to Shiva
Creative Thinking
What we call happiness or ecstacy is, to me, creative thinking. And creative thinking is the infinite movement of thought, emotion, and action. – Krishnamurti
Creative Power
The greatest discovery that man ever made was, that his thought has creative power; that is that it uses creative power. – Ernest Holmes
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
Possibility
When I speak of Possibility, I am speaking of a way of looking at reality – or more than that – a way of Being. I see reality itself as Possibility itself. – 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
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
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