Quotes
Play of Life
Creation is the play of Life upon Itself through Divine Self-Imagination– Ernest Holmes
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.
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
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…
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
Integrity
Integrity is the essence of everything successful. – R. Buckminster Fuller
Growing
Not guided, not guarded, not directed, not motivated, but simply growing. – Osho
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.
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
Sovereignty
You were born to this world with sovereignty over your mind and over your life. Your abilities to think, to feel, to learn and to love are your liberty. In you, these capacities are infinite. You have infinite worth. – Jeremy Locke
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
Pursuit
There can be no creative thinking if mind is hindered by the search for a reward, by the pursuit of a goal. -Krishnamurti
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
Transcended
Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended. – Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
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
Limitless
Life is infinite energy coupled with limitless creative imagination. It is the invisible essence and substance of every visible form. Its nature is goodness, truth, wisdom and beauty, as well as energy and imagination. Our highest satisfaction comes from a sense of conscious union with this invisible Life. All human endeavor is an attempt to get back to first principles, to find such an inward wholeness that all sense of fear, doubt and uncertainty vanishes. – Ernest Holmes
Creation
One little spark, of inspiration Is at the heart, of all creation. Right at the start, of everything that’s new. One little spark, lights up for you. – Figment, Journey Into Imagination
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
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
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
Images of Thought
Disease and limitation are neither person, place, nor thing; they are simply images of thought. Turn entirely from the condition, or the limited situation, to its opposite, that is, to the realization of health, happiness or harmony. – Ernest Holmes
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
The Spirit
We will think of the Spirit as the great Actor, the Soul as the medium of Its action, and the Body as the result of this action. – Ernest Holmes
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
Everywhere Music
See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. – Thomas Carlyle
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
Freedom
I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
In The Dark
We are all children in the dark, finding our way together to the light. – Tom Althouse