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.
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
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
Present Moment
Only the present moment contains life. – Thich Nhat Hanh
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
Become Still
How do I become still? By flowing with the stream. – Lao Tzu
Living Truth
To me there is a reality, an immense living truth; and to comprehend that, there must be utter simplicity of thought. – Krishnamurti
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
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
You Are The Light
Don’t you know it yet? You are the Light that lights the world. – Rumi
Knowledge
As the Universe is run by an Infinite Mind, so man’s life is controlled by his thinking; ignorance of this keeps him bondage; knowledge will free him. – 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
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
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.
True Imagination
True imagination is not fanciful daydreaming; it is fire from heaven. – Ernest Holmes
Wonders
The whole of creation exists in you, and it is your destiny to become increasingly aware of its infinite wonders and to experience ever greater and grander portions of it. – The Power of Awareness
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
Sky
Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life. – Marcel Proust
All Good
I partake in the nature and bounty of the All Good and I am now surrounded by everything which makes life worth while. – Ernest Holmes
Instinctive Life
Instinctive Life desires that man shall express more, and yet more, of its own limitless possibilities. – Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind
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
Success
There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way. – Christopher Morley
Glimpses
This is what the music does, it gets inside you, an energy that keeps you alive, always driving, riding the waves, following the sounds that make you feel. It keeps you seeking, for the truth you can hear with your soul. The music gives you glimpses of the power and light that exists in dimensions outside of our own.
The Calling
The calling is not to Go beyond the mind. The calling is to be, which is Prior to the mind. – Wu Hsin
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……
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…
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
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
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