Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you will ever have.
What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.
It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.
In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.
I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.
Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?
Where there is anger there is always pain underneath.
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.
Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.
Die before you die and find that there is no death.
Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.
Reading is my passion and my escape since I was 5 years old. Overall, children don’t realize the magic that can live inside their own heads. Better even then any movie.
When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently.
If there were nothing but thought in you. You wouldn’t even know your thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he’s dreaming. You would be as identified with thought as a dreamer is with every image in the dream.
The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.
Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.
Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.
You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.
Mind isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.
For awhile, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy.
You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness has identified with. That’s the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.
What you react to in another you strengthen within yourself.
Stupidity is relatively harmless, but intelligent stupidity is highly dangerous
Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.
The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be…
Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is.You are open to life.
Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.
Ego is the complete identification with form. Physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms.
The more you make your thoughts and beliefs into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself.
When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you’re doing, you become stressed.
Those who do not attempt to appear more than they are but are simply themselves, stand out as remarkable and are the only ones who truly make a difference in this world.
Fulfill me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self created suffering comes to an end.
Suffering needs time. It cannot survive in the now.
To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.
If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.
When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. It is that awareness that says “I AM
A new heaven is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness. And A New Earth is it’s direct reflection in the physical realm.
When you are fully conscious, drama does not come into your life anymore.
How “spiritual” you are has nothing to do with what you believe, but everything to do with your state of consciousness.
Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.
Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.
Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.
Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same no-thing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence.
The more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself.
Ego-generated emotions are derived from the mind’s identification with external factors which are, of course, all unstable and liable to change at any moment.
Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.
True communication is communion- the realization of oneness, which is love.
Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.
To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end and a more benign and wondrous dream arises. This is the new earth.
Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment. It is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego.
What keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work. The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more and keep buying and consuming.
How you are seen by others becomes the mirror that tells you what you are like and who you are. The ego’s sense of self-worth is in most cases bound up with the worth you have in the eyes of others.
the ego likes to emphasize the ‘otherness’ of others
When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought.
…the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions.
If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.
All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.
Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.
To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.
Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.
The more you live in the present moment, the more the fear of death disappears.
People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.
You can have religion with spirituality. You can also have religion without spirituality.
The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.
People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.
If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.
I’m grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes.
For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.
Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‘yours,’ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.
Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.
Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.
Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.
Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.
People don’t realize that now is all there ever is there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.