Quotes
Good Music
When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have. – Edgar Watson Howe
Spirit Alone
But Spirit alone is Conscious, Law, of itself, is only a force, and matter has no mind of its own. Law is not a thinker but is a doer, while matter cannot think but is thought upon. – Ernest Holmes
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
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
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
Self Image
All of your actions, feelings, behaviors – even your abilities, are consistent with the self-image. The self-image can be changed. – Psychocybernetics
In Love
Be in love with your life. Every minute of it. – Jack Kerouac
The Seeker
The seeker is he who is in search of himself. – Nisargadatta Maharaj
Call it Freedom
Don’t call it uncertainty – call it wonder. Don’t call it insecurity – call it freedom. – Osho
Aware
Be aware of wonder. – Robert Fulghum
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
Love is a State of Mind
When a mood against someone or for something arises, do not place it on the person in question, but remain centered. Remember that you are the source, so do not move to the other, move to the source. And do not think in terms of relationship, think in terms of state of mind. If you are in love, this is a state of mind. This state of mind may be focused on one person or it may be unfocused – on the whole. When it is focused on one person, it is known as love. When it becomes unfocused, it becomes prayer. Then you are just in love – not with someone, but just in love, as you are breathing. So take love as a breathing of the soul. Once you know how to enter a single moment with love, you have entered eternity: time is no more. The sea and the sand and the stars, they are one with you. You are not an island, you are organically one with this universe. The whole universe is within you and the whole of you is in this universe. Unless you come to know it and feel it and realize it,…
Success
There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way. – Christopher Morley
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……
Heart
Do something every day that advances you not in the direction of some far-off goal, but in the direction of your heart. It will not lead you astray. – Charlie Amber
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
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
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
Searching for the Marvelous
Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. – Anaïs Nin
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
Restless Pursuit
Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization. – Rabindranath Tagore
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
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.
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
Perceive
To understand is to perceive patterns. – Isaiah Berlin
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
Completely
It is within the power of every man to completely change his environment and completely heal his body. Whether or not he will do this depends entirely upon his own conviction and his own determination. Nature attends him on the way and is always ready to serve; but he is an individual and nothing will ever be forced upon him. Let any one follow the Law, comply with Its nature, and consistently apply himself to right thinking and living, and he will prove to himself that life holds all and more than he has ever imagined. – Ernest Holmes