Quotes
To Yourself
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. – Richard Bach, Illusions
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
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……
Dictate of the Light
The dictate of the light says: Know yourself and what you are. The dark replies, By all means, but then become afraid. – Tanith Lee
The Calling
The calling is not to Go beyond the mind. The calling is to be, which is Prior to the mind. – Wu Hsin
Pursuit
There can be no creative thinking if mind is hindered by the search for a reward, by the pursuit of a goal. -Krishnamurti
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
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
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
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
Light-Wave
Everything in Nature is expressed by rhythmic waves of light. Every thought and action is a light-wave of thought and action. – Walter Russell
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
What You See
What you see is built from the corners of your mind, from the years of perspectives that have created layers upon layers. Ask yourself: is it possible to see through these? A fresh palette in your vision, free from the thoughts that have come before. Colors and patterns untouched by the past, just pure light sent directly to your consciousness. Is what you see what is? When you see, how often is judgment the first thought? See for the beauty of what it is. Remove yourself, remove your thoughts, and just witness. Only for a moment perhaps, it’s hard to keep those thoughts at bay, but one moment is enough to open the floodgates of possibility. To show to yourself that it is possible to view in clarity the genuine truth of your observations and see the light within all.
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
Cosmic Ocean
Do it as totally as possible, and 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. …So remember, centering is the method, not the result. The result is cosmic, oceanic experience. There is no center then. – Osho
Dream World
It is necessary that Soul and Body should exist, because Spirit, without manifestation, would construct only a dream world, never coming into Self-Realization. – Ernest Holmes
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
Extravagant Journey
You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life. – Carlos Castañeda
The Novelty of Flow
Every time a surfer goes for a wave there’s the possibility of a wipeout. Every time a skateboarder is on a mega ramp, there’s a possibility of broken bones. Creative work provides you with the opportunity for risk. With everything thing you create, there’s always the risk that it might not strike a chord with its intended audience. That’s not a bad thing since it’s prerequisite for flow. Part of the reason creative people and extreme sports athletes are able to get into flow on a regular basis is because their environments provide novelty. – Flow Genome Project
Sweet Release
Enjoy the sweet release of surrender when you let go of your old thought habits and realize that you can change them at any time. You can change anything at any time, once you remove the restrictions of ideas that no longer serve you.
Coded
We all have the extraordinary coded within us… waiting to be released. – Jean Houston
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
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
Call it Freedom
Don’t call it uncertainty – call it wonder. Don’t call it insecurity – call it freedom. – Osho
Desire
Be still and know that you are that which you desire to be, and you will never have to search for it. – Neville Goddard
Seek Freedom
To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle. – Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan: the Sorcerer
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
You Are The Light
Don’t you know it yet? You are the Light that lights the world. – Rumi