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.
Light is All
From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
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
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
Call it Freedom
Don’t call it uncertainty – call it wonder. Don’t call it insecurity – call it freedom. – Osho
Success
There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way. – Christopher Morley
Natural Laws
This is true of any and all of the natural laws; they always existed, and as soon as understood may be used. – Ernest Holmes
Light and Heart
We all need to return to the basics. Within society, and within ourselves. Simplify and attend to what makes the worlds inner & outer into better places. Kindness, honesty, and compassion – we can all have these for each other and our own self, and in all these small doses of lightness, we will become the greater good. We make a difference in the small things we do, the things that don’t make headlines, that people do every day out of humanity and grace. To give light and heart to another is to improve the very fabric of our existence. The more we can improve through open minds, selflessness, and care, the more we can love, the better the whole of the universe becomes. Starting small is the key, as there is no limit to what steps upon steps, every piece coming together, will end up becoming.
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
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
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
Repetition
There is nothing new under the sky. Everything is old and a repetition. And you will go on repeating for many, many lives. Beware of the repetition, beware of your boredom. Take a jump. – Buddha & Mahavira
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
Cosmic Scheme
The whole Cosmic Scheme must be reproduced on the plane of the individual, if there is an individual. – The Science of Mind
Treatment
Treatment is the science of inducing within Mind concepts, acceptances, and realizations of peace, poise, power, plenty, health, happiness and success, or whatever the particular need may be. – Ernest Holmes
Individualized
He must suffer, not because pain is a necessity, but because he must have experience in order to become individualized. – Ernest Holmes
Earnestness
To remember what needs to be remembered is the secret of success. You come to it through earnestness. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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
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
Really Free
That he is really free, but that, in order to be free, he must first go through the experiences which will teach him how to use his freedom properly. – Ernest Holmes
Integrity
Integrity is the essence of everything successful. – R. Buckminster Fuller
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
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
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
Great Door
As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens. – Stephen Graham
The Beauty
The image is a dream. The beauty is real. – Richard Bach, Illusions
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