Quotes

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,…

Sky

Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life. – Marcel Proust

Good Music

When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have. – Edgar Watson Howe

Into the Unknown

What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become. – David Malouf, An Imaginary Life

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

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

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……

Bliss

Innocence is Bliss

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.

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

Success

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way. – Christopher Morley

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

Direct

You can direct. Once you can direct your dreams you can direct everything, because dream is the very stuff of this world. – Osho, Book of Secrets

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

Source of Life

We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but of our inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little. The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

River of Life

Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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.

In Love

Be in love with your life. Every minute of it. – Jack Kerouac

Pursuit

There can be no creative thinking if mind is hindered by the search for a reward, by the pursuit of a goal. -Krishnamurti

Inward Gleam

The Seeker

The seeker is he who is in search of himself. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

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

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

Beyond the Dream

The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out. The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining. When you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that need be done. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

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