Quotes
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……
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
To Yourself
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. – Richard Bach, Illusions
Radiant Emptiness
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. – Adyashanti
Leave Your Mind
Leave your mind alone, that is all. Do not go along with it. After all, there is no such thing as mind apart from thoughts which come and go obeying their own laws, not yours. They dominate you only because you are interested in them. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Eternal Name
The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnameable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding. – Tao Te Ching, Ch.1, interpreted by Stephen Michell
Perfect Idea
The Divine Ideas are perfect, but man has the ability to cause them to appear imperfect. Through right thinking he is able to uncover the appearance of imperfection and reveal the Perfect Idea. – Ernest Holmes
The Spirit
We will think of the Spirit as the great Actor, the Soul as the medium of Its action, and the Body as the result of this action. – Ernest Holmes
Integrity
Integrity is the essence of everything successful. – R. Buckminster Fuller
Phenomenon
He has known darkness & light, but now he has gone beyond it. Now he sees darkness as part of light, and light as part of darkness, now there is no division. Light and darkness have both become one – degrees of one phenomenon. – Osho, Book of Secrets
Transcended
Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended. – Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
The Door
Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open. – Rumi
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
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
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
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
Everywhere Music
See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. – Thomas Carlyle
The One
Mental activity is spontaneous and your True Nature is also spontaneous. Your form or your acting may differ from time to time, but you are not that which is seen, but the One who sees – That you are. – 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.
Cosmic Scheme
The whole Cosmic Scheme must be reproduced on the plane of the individual, if there is an individual. – The Science of Mind
Love-Worthy
You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Present
The moment you start seeking you have moved away from the present, away from yourself, because you are always in the present. The seeker is always in the present and the seeking is in the future; you are not going to meet whatsoever you are seeking. Lao Tzu says “Seek not; otherwise you will miss. Seek not and find. Don’t seek and find.” – Osho, Book of Secrets
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
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
Create
You build the universe with your creations.
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
Source & Heart
You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable. – Nisargadatta Maharaj