Eaton Satsang
"The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself
is to quote one."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Notable quotes for awakening
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
~ Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
Close your eyes...
and notice your heart.
See if it needs some gentleness from you.
Comfort it the way you would comfort your best friend.
~ Pamela Wilson
The more evolved you become, the more compassionate you become, the more you show loving kindness to everything, to the mineral kingdom, to the vegetable kingdom, to the animal kingdom, and to the human kingdom. You show total compassion, loving kindness. You become an embodiment of love simply because everything is you.
~ Robert Adams
What is humility? Perhaps it is the recognition of our ultimate inability to control this moment – our total powerlessness in the face of the unbridled, untamed, raw energy of life itself. There is no protection here - no filter, no boundary, no protective layer between who I am and life itself. This is wild vulnerability... which is also peace beyond understanding.
~ Jeff Foster
Everything is created from moment to moment, always new. Like fireworks, this universe is a celebration and you are the spectator contemplating the eternal Fourth of July of your absolute splendor.
~ Francis Lucille
Meditation is not a way to enlightenment,
nor is it a method of achieving anything at all.
It is peace and blessedness itself.
It is the actualization of wisdom, the ultimate truth of the oneness of things.
~ Dogen
What a blessing to have taken birth
in this human form -
with the chance to see
that who we are was really never born,
can never die, is always free.
~ Kirtana
Silence is the language of God, all else is translation
~ Rumi
Wisdom says I am nothing.
Love says that I am everything.
Between the two, my life moves.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
It is not a matter of discovering new aspects of essence. It is a matter of letting go of the ego identity and living from the essence that is already present.
~ A.H. Almaas
If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
~ William Blake
The man who embraces the world as real, like the man embracing a woman in his dream, ultimately awakens to find nothing there but himself.
~ Ramesh Balsekar
Since the beginningless state of existence, external reality has been perceived as such. But all things are the manifestations of the mind, because everything is the projection of the mind.
~ Buddha (from Vajrapanjara Sutra)
How vital it is to refrain from the temptation to judge ourselves or the teachings, and to be humorously aware of our condition, and to realize that we are, at the moment, as if many people all living in one person.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.
~ Eckhart Tolle
There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.
~ The Dalai Lama
A thing becomes an illusion only when its reality becomes inferior to a higher reality that has already been found. Until then, it is still a reality. Only the sage has the strict right to call this world an illusion. If anyone else does so, such talk is mere babble.
~ Paul Brunton
By letting go our fascination with the extraordinary and spectacular, we can allow ourselves to recognize the simple wonder that lies within the ordinary.
For life is its own purpose and doesn't need a reason to be. That is its beauty.
~ Tony Parsons
A human being… experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison.
~ Albert Einstein
Are you willing to die to everything you think you know . . .
for the love, playfulness and open-freedom that you really are?
~ Unmani
The world is an illusion,
Brahman alone is real,
Brahman is the world.
~ Shankara
The natural state is just itself and nothing else, whether thoughts are arising or not. Having no thoughts is not the essential practice of Dzogchen.
There is nothing wrong with having thoughts; it is natural for thoughts to arise. They represent the creative potentiality or dynamism of the Nature of Mind.
When we are in the Natural State, there are no special thoughts associated with it. The natural state is always there whether thoughts are present or not.
The problem is to recognize this Natural State without being distracted by thoughts.
~ Lopon Tenzin Namdak
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
~ Albert Einstein
Searching through intellectual knowledge for the true Light is like a man lost in tunnels under the earth...
the deeper he journeys the darker it becomes...
~ Rumi
I have enormous gratitude for no reason at all. I experience joy just for being alive. I love because I have no choice. If you are wondering why I write and talk so much about awakening, this is it.
~ Scott Kiloby
Form does not differ from emptiness;
Emptiness does not differ from form.
Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form.
So too are feeling, cognition, formation, and consciousness.
~ from the Heart Sutra (Buddhist)
Space and time, male and female, subject and object, being and nonbeing - all are lost in the flood of Realization.
~ Ramesh Balsekar
Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.
~ Meister Eckhart
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
~ Albert Einstein
I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.
~ Walt Whitman
Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!
~ Swami Vivekananda
In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.
~ Buddha
Don't try to change the dream -- trying to change it is just another movement in the dream.
Look at the dream.
Be aware of the dream.
That awareness is It.
Become more interested in the awareness of the dream than in the dream itself.
What is that awareness?
Who is that awareness?
Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer.
Be It.
~ Adyashanti
Whenever you meditate and you come upon beautiful spaces, immediately pray to existence: ' Let my joy be showered over every being - conscious, unconscious. I don't want any personal claim over it.
~ Osho
Life is totally taking care of everything. Who I am, who everyone is - is life. We can all relax, and let life do all the work.
~ Pamela Wilson
God dwells in you, as you, and you don't have to 'do' anything to be God-realized or Self-realized, it is already your true and natural state." Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being. For this to be your own presently lived experience, Self-Inquiry is the one direct and immediate way.
~ Ramana Maharshi
You are the One which is aware of the Awareness of objects and ideas.
You are the One which is even more silent than Awareness.
You are the life which precedes the concept of life.
Your nature is Silence and it is not attainable, it always Is.
~ Papaji
All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.
~ Adyashanti
Freedom is never attained. It can only be revealed. Freedom is not a thing to be acquired but a condition that currently exists. It is here, now and it underlies everything. True freedom is total Acceptance.
~ Wayne Liquorman
If thou knowest thine own self,
thou knowest God.
~ Ibn-Al-Arabi
The "I" is only there when thoughts are believed. Pay attention to the space between thoughts.
~ Jac O'Keeffe
Seekers continue to practice all kinds of self-torture without realizing that such ‘spiritual practice’ is a reinforcement of the very ego that prevents them from their natural, free state.
~ Ramesh Balsekar
The key, during both life and death, is to recognize illusions as illusions, projections as projections, and fantasies as fantasies. In this way we become free.
~ Lama Thubten Yeshe
What people fail to realize is that their enlightenment is capable of endless enlargement.
~ Harada Roshi
If we see all actions as Gods doing, we will be unattached and free from karmic bondage.
~ Sai Baba of Shirdi
We are here for the Holy to unfold through us. There is not a single one left out of that. Not a single one in whom the process of unfolding is not happening, just perfectly.
~ Jeannie Zandi
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ...
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
~ Carl Jung
To know God is to love God. Therefore the path of bhakti (love-devotion)and of jnana (knowledge-wisdom) are the same.
~ Ramana Maharshi
There is no such thing as Personal Enlightenment. Enlightenment is simply the end of the person.
~ Tony Parsons
Do understand that you are destined for enlightenment. Cooperate with your destiny, don't go against it, don't thwart it. All it to fulfill itself. All you have to do is to give attention to the obstacles created by the foolish mind.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
~ Meister Eckhart
To those who have not realized the Self, as well as to those who have, the word 'I' refers to the body, but with this difference, that for those who have not realized, the 'I' is confined to the body whereas for those who have realized the Self within the body the 'I' shines as the limitless Self.
~ Ramana Maharshi
Imagine perceiving the world through Stillness. It's like God looking at his/her/its creation . Ohhhh. Beautiful! And you see there's a goodness present that pervades the entire Universe.
What is that Presence? -- it's your Presence. There isn't the Presence of God and you. There's only Presence. It's arising from within you.
~ Eckhart Tolle
". . . In the end spirituality is not about watching the breath. It's about waking up from the dream of separateness to the truth of unity."
~ Adyashanti
Toward the One, the Perfection of Love, Harmony and Beauty, the Only Being;
United with All the Illuminated Souls, Who Form the Embodiment of the Master, the Spirit of Guidance.
~ Hazrat Inayat Khan
The experience [of self-realization] is unique and unmistakable. It will dawn on you suddenly, when the obstacles are removed to some extent. It is like a frayed rope snapping. Yours is the work at the strands. The break is bound to happen. It can be delayed, but not prevented.
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Only if one knows the truth of love, which is the real nature of Self, will the strong entangled knot of life be untied. Only if one attains the height of love will liberation be attained. Such is the heart of all religions. The experience of Self is only love, which is seeing only love, hearing only love, feeling only love, tasting only love and smelling only love, which is bliss.
~ Ramana Maharshi
You can explore the universe looking for somebody who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and you will not find that person anywhere.
~ Dalai Lama
The mind thinks that there is an observer, an independent you, and that is what is doing the observing. But really there isn’t someone who is observing. Consciousness is conscious. Awareness is aware. Observing is observing.
~ Adyashanti
Love starts with us giving ourselves a break. It’s saying ”Okay, okay, I’m not perfect. Okay. I’m not valedictorian, number one athlete, movie star, money-maker. I'm kind of sick, I’m kind of tired, I’m kind of dorky, I lie sometimes, I'm cruel sometimes. I like Barry Manilow, so shoot me.”
~ Jeannie Zandi
Through all ages, great saints have remained as living proof that this non-temporary, permanent state of God consciousness can be revived in all living souls.
~ George Harrison
Enlightenment is not an achievement. Rather, getting rid of ignorance is an achievement, getting rid of all the stresses and tension. Because our very nature is enlightenment. That's why "human" and "Divine" are not two things. "Human" is the outer skin and "Divine" is the inside.
~ Sri Sri
Short moments of awareness,
repeated many times,
become automatic.
~ Candice O'Denver
While the old is held on to the only new that can appear
is a reconfiguration of what has been
The ten thousand things can be endlessly recombined
into what the mind marvels at as new
The ten thousand and first comes from the willingness
to leave the land of the ten thousand
~ Ameeta
As long as there is a 'you' doing or not doing, thinking or not-thinking, meditating or not-meditating, you are no closer to home than the day you were born.
~ Wei Wu Wei
We change the world not by what we say or do, but as a consequence of what we have become.
~ David Hawkins
How did the rose ever open its heart
And give the world all of its beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light against its being,
Otherwise we all remain too frightened.
~ Hafiz
Joy is not the result of anything. If you are yourself, there is joy. If you are accepting and open to your experience, if you’re being yourself, you are naturally joyful because you are the source of joy.
~ A.H. Almaas
Spirituality is really only about various degrees of Silence and Stillness. The rest is ego and desire for Experience.
~ Adyashanti
The saint is a man who disciplines his ego. The Sage is a man who rids himself of his ego.
~ Wei Wu Wei
There is nothing to fix, nothing to do, nothing needs to be better, nicer, or in a certain way, all that stuff is just thoughts, there's no need to take any interest in it. How things are is just fine. Rest. Rest on the inside.
~ Jac O’Keeffe
There may be bliss with awakening, because it is actually a by-product of awakening, but it is not awakening itself. As long as we are chasing the by-product of awakening, we will miss the real thing.
~ Adyashanti
Although a human activity may have a number of complicated motives, some of which are base and gross, it is the aspiration towards divinity, the desire towards beauty, which is its soul, its life, and its reality. And it is in proportion to the degree of strength or weakness of his aspiration towards beauty that man's ideal is great or small, and his religion is great or small.
~ Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Seeking is a great treasure hunt,
and we're the treasure
~ Pamela Wilson
A seeker seeking salvation through a particular path is in fact trying to get out of a hole he has never been in: the effort itself becomes the hole.
~ Ramesh Balsekar
Do understand that you are destined for enlightenment. Co-operate with your destiny, don't go against it, don't thwart it. Allow it to fulfill itself. All you have to do is to give attention to the obstacles created by the foolish mind.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
You do not have to wait for grace to take place - it has already taken place and is taking place in you. You have been given an interest in your true nature - that is the most valuable thing you could have been given.
That is grace,
Say “Yes” to the gift you’ve been given and follow it.
~ Rupert Spira
We may wonder, “If a person has no direction, isn’t yearning to realize an ideal, doesn’t have an aim in life, then who will help living beings be liberated, who will rescue those who are drowning in the ocean of suffering?” A Buddha is a person who has no more business to do and isn’t looking for anything. In doing nothing, in simply stopping, we can live freely and true to ourselves and our liberation will contribute to the liberation of all beings.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
It comes to this paradox--that the farther they travel on the path of ego-effort,
the farther they move from their goal, and the less they try to approach their Source the closer they come to it!
~ Paul Brunton
The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive - it has nothing to do with time. It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure and pain. When self concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open. The mystery, the essence of all life is not separate from the silent openness of simple listening.
~ Toni Packer
Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing.
By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realization is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of understanding.
Once arrived at, it cannot be lost.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
Transcendence is the experiential recognition of one's identity as beyond time and space, as timeless and spaceless. The soul experiences the luminous intensity of true nature, a formless sense of consciousness aware of the self without the self-awareness consisting of shape, size, location, or duration.
~ A H Almaas
When life breathes love, what can we do but dance?
~ Pamela Wilson
When you love a person all fear disappears. And when you are afraid all love disappears.
~ Osho
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
~ Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Be no-thing
Do no-thing
Get no-thing
Become no-thing
Seek no-thing
Relinquish no-thing
Be as you are
Rest in God
~ Miranda Macpherson
Freedom is freedom from worry. Having realized that you cannot influence the results, pay no attention to your desires and fears. Let them come and go. Don't give them the nourishment of interest and attention.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
The heart is always right-- if there's a question of choosing between the mind and the heart-- because mind is a creation of the society. It has been educated. You have been given it by the society, not by existence. The heart is unpolluted.
~ Osho
So think as if your every thought were to be etched in fire upon the sky for all and everything to see. For so, in truth, it is.
So speak as if the world entire were but a single ear intent on hearing what you say. And so, in truth, it is.
So do as if your every deed were to recoil upon your heads. And so, in truth, it does.
So wish as if you were the wish. And so, in truth, you are.
So live as if your God Himself had need of you His life to live. And so, in truth, He does.
~ Mirdad
Life is an expression of the divine and we each hold the light of the divine within our own heart. Part of spiritual practice is to affirm this inner reality with each and every breath, and so to affirm the connection of love that is at the core of life.
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
We think that we have to be perfect, we have to be right, we have to patch this thing together so there aren’t any holes or leaks or cracks. We are looking in the wrong direction for the perfection, and working so hard to perfect something that’s impossible to perfect. We are not creatures of need or insufficiency! We just have to stop and drink of ourselves - we are already here brimming over.
~ Jeannie Zandi
The awareness that you are has never believed a single thought the mind has produced. Only thought has ever believed thought. "That's true." "That's false," thought believing thought - the wheel of suffering . . .
~ John Astin
If you want something to be different than it is, you might as well teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, "Meow." Wanting something to be different than it is, is hopeless.
~ Byron Katie
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep!
~ Rumi
There’s nothing else.
Being is totally whole just being.
And it is alive and fleshy
and sexy and juicy
and immediately this;
it's not some concept
about 'there's no-one here'.
It's not some concept
about 'there’s nowhere to go'.
It is the aliveness
that's in that body right now.
There is pure beingness,
pure aliveness.
That's it.
End of story.
~ Tony Parsons
Whatever I do, the responsibility is mine, but like one who plants an orchard,
what comes of what I do, the fruit, will be for others.
I offer the action of this life to the God within, and wherever I go, the way is blessed.
~ Lalla
This is God speaking.
I will be handling all your problems today.
I will not need your help.
~ God
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
~ Shakespeare in Hamlet
When you wake up to yourself, your enlightenment is retroactive.
~ Papaji via Gangaji
To be what you are, nothing is needed.
To know who you are, something is needed.
~ Jac O'Keeffe
Have you ever loved someone so much that it really hurts? Good, go do that again...and again...until you see it has nothing to do with them.
~ Scott Kiloby
You need to hear the truth about yourself as frequently as possible, because your mind is so preoccupied with false self-images.
~ A Course In Miracles
50 MORE QUOTES
Usually, when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas.
If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect.
In either case, we learn nothing.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Mental suffering denotes that you are digging in the graveyard of the past. Without touching the past, tell me who is unhappy? If you are living in the present, you are happy.
~ Papaji
You are not sad, sadness arises.
You are not humble, humility arises.
You are not depressed, depression arises .
You are not fatigued, fatigue arises.
You are not hungry, hunger happens.
You are not acting, action happens.
You are not thinking, thoughts happen.
You are a sentient, transparent screen
which cognizes the phenomena that appear on it.
~ Wu Hsin
God dwells in you, as you, and you don't have to 'do' anything to be God-realized or Self-realized,
it is already your true and natural state." Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being.
~ Ramana Maharshi
Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple in itself an ecstasy.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
Do not speak ill of anybody
as I dwell in the hearts of all beings.
~ Sai Baba of Shridi
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
~ Albert Einstein
We assume we will awaken to something else, something bigger and more grand. But really it is awakening to yourself, to what is here, has always been here. That is the startling, refreshing, wonderful, good news.
~ Gangaji
Heaven is not a place or a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect oneness.
~ A Course In Miracles
The body is actually more intelligent than the mind. With thoughts we imagine the future, and with feelings we remember the past. Only the body is rooted in present experience. The body always calls attention back to what is really happening here. As the body becomes very present to the subtlety of its experience, the sights, the sounds, its own breath, and the boundaries of self become more transparent. The self loses its definition, its competitiveness, to make the world be anything but what it is.
~ Enza Vita
This is what is asked of us, over and over and over, to offer our empty hands. To let the things we are holding so tight just drop. To give it all up, everything, that does not exist in this moment here. All that has happened, that we think we somehow need to do sometning about, all that we think might happen, or we hope will happen, every sweet dream that we cling to. This is like God’s loving strip search, give it all over! Something else wants to live you. And you can feel it.
~ Jeannie Zandi
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"
"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so"
"Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"
"I say there is no darkness but ignorance"
"To thine own Self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man"
"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy"
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon a stage"
~ Shakespeare
There is no I . . . . responsibility is taken care of by Brahman, and I am that.
~ Jac O'Keeffe
The final truth, as Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj and all the sages before them have clearly stated, is that there is neither creation nor destruction, neither birth nor death, neither destiny nor free will, neither any path nor any achievement. All there is is Consciousness.
~ Ramesh Balsekar
You are the unchangeable Awareness in which all activity takes place.
Always rest in peace.
You are eternal Being, unbounded and undivided.
Just keep Quiet.
All is well.
Keep Quiet Here and Now.
You are Happiness, you are Peace, you are Freedom.
Do not entertain any notions that you are in trouble.
Be kind to yourself.
Open to your Heart and simply Be.
~ Papaji
When you know yourself, your "I-ness" vanishes
and you know that you and God are one and the same.
~ Ibn 'Arabi
Humanity is now faced with a choice: Evolve or die ... If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.
~ Eckhart Tolle
The natural state is acausal: it just happens.
~ U. G. Krishnamurti
God is who you are before you label yourself.
~ Deepak Chopra
There is only one decision we need to make; either you are working at your Freedom or you are accepting your Bondage.
~ Robert Adams
What a liberation to realize that the voice in my head is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.
~ Eckhart Tolle
Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9% of everything you think, and
Of everything you do,
Is for yourself--
And there isn't one.
~ Wei Wu Wei
Don’t try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.
~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Try to remember the main points: Birth and death are like going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning. When you go to sleep at night, you die, when you dream it's like being on an astral plane, and when you wake up in the morning, it's like being born. Through those states of consciousness somebody exists, and that somebody is none other than you. In other words you are aware of dreaming. You are aware of sleeping. You are aware of waking up. You are aware of dying, and you are aware of being reborn. Somebody is watching all this, that's you. You exist through all those states. Abide in your existence, not in the states. Ignore the fake consciousness. Abide in the reality, which is called absolute awareness, consciousness. Abide in that and be free.
~ Robert Adams
The best place for you is wherever you find yourself. And you will know this if you take out intention out of your mind. If you remove or leave aside any intention or any projection or any speculation out of your mind, you will find full contentment where you are. Full contentment, and you will be happy. You will be at Peace.
~ Mooji
When you awake, you cross a line of no return, and you never see the world in the same way.
You are still dreaming, because you can not avoid dreaming, because dreaming is the function of the mind, but the difference is that you know It is a Dream.
Knowing that, you can enjoy the dream or suffer the dream.
That depends on you.
~ Don Miguel Ruiz
Just Relax.
Stop trying to change anything, and recognize what is already here.
There may be changes, or there may be no changes,
but that is secondary to what is always here.
~ Gangaji
To seek people’s love and approval assumes that you aren’t whole.
~ Byron Katie
When you realize your integral connection with the Absolute, you will realize in every sand particle, in every dust particle, everywhere is God himself. That is meditation. You need not close your eyes and sit in the meditation hall. The moment you are aware of this, you are in a state of meditation. That is the way to be happy. Otherwise you are happy inside the meditation hall and unhappy outside.
~ Swami Krishnananda
If there is a personal 'i' wanting to feel or experience true being then this is just desire and can be dropped. The personal 'i' is blocking the seeing of what you are; it is the obstacle and can never 'experience' truth. Let there be an acceptance of this point and the related desire will fall away.
~ Jac O’Keeffe
Consider that the desire to be other than you are, to feel differently about yourself or your life, is only a thought distracting you from what is in perfect order, silent and peaceful at a deeper level within you.
~ Jac O’Keeffe
The potential of being human is to discover that state within oneself which is beyond effort, which cannot be maintained or sustained. No effort is required for being.
Once that realization has occurred, one sees that oneself is not the moving part, not emotion, not time, not space, not body, not relationship, not contact, not separation, not mind, not senses, not anything that belongs to the interrelated play of opposites.
Knowing I am not that, leaving all that to dance; not striving to control what is by nature restless and moving, but realizing oneself as that unmoving being, then one is free. That alone is freedom. Freedom beyond the concept of freedom. Not someone being free; free of somebody-ness.
~ Mooji
Nobody ever fails in Yoga. It is all a matter of the rate of progress. It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the end. When one is fully matured, realisation is explosive. It takes place spontaneously, or at the slightest hint. The quick is not better than the slow. Slow ripening and rapid flowering alternate. Both are natural and right.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.
~ Lao Tzu
Here's some very good news.
Right here, right now, in this moment, you don't have to 'figure out' the rest of your life, no matter what anyone says.
In this moment, you don't need all the answers. They will come, in time, or not, or perhaps the unncecessary questions will fall away.
There is no rush. Life is not in a hurry. Be like the seasons. Winter is not trying to become summer. Spring does not rush towards autumn. The grass grows at its own pace.
The choices that will be made will be made, and you've no choice about that. The decisions that will happen will happen, events will unfold, but right now perhaps you don't need to know the solutions or the outcomes or how best to proceed. Perhaps not knowing is a welcome guest at life's banquet. Perhaps openness to possibility is a beloved friend. Perhaps even confusion can come to rest here.
And so, instead of trying to 'fix' our lives, instead of trying to neatly resolve the unresolveable and quickly complete the epic story of a fictitious 'me', we simply relax into utter not knowing, unravelling in the warm embrace of mystery, sinking deeply into the moment, savouring it fully, in all its uniqueness and wonder.
And then, perhaps without any effort, without any struggle or stress, without 'you' being involved at all, the true answers will emerge in their own sweet time.
~ Jeff Foster
To be aware is to be awake. Unaware means asleep. You are aware anyhow, you need not try to be. What you need is to be aware of being aware. Be aware deliberately and consciously, broaden and deepen the field of awareness. You are always conscious of the mind, but you are not aware of yourself as being conscious.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
You cannot long for something that you do not know exists. It must be already present within you, or how would you know to long for it?
You are what you are looking for; you just need to see that it is already here.
There is only one truth worth pursuing and you are That.
~ Enza Vita
Disputes and conflicts all arise from narrow views. They can extend endlessly, wasting precious time and sometimes even leading to war. Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path. Bound to narrow views, one becomes so entangled that it is no longer possible to let the door of truth open.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Belief is a cover up for insecurity . . . if something is real you don't have to believe in it, you know it.
~ Deepak Chopra
When you realize that the whole universe is a manifestation of your mind you become omnipresence. And in the omnipresence is contained all of your needs, and all of your needs are met from within. But when you start worrying or thinking about it, you spoil it. Then you have to do human things to take care of you. But if you leave the human-hood alone, and go back to the understanding that it's all in your mind, you automatically let go of your mind, and the Self takes over, bringing the right people into your life, the right situation, the right address. Remember again, your body came to this earth because of karma. And it's going to go through whatever is has to go through. But you've got absolutely nothing to do with that because you are not your body. But if you think about it you spoil it. Subsequently, allow your body to do whatever it came here to do. Do not interfere. Do not fight. Simply observe. Do not react. You will be okay.
~ Robert Adams
Doubt underlies every belief. Doubt brings defense. If you don't believe me, challenge the next person who seems to be stating Truth. When you see them defend it, notice the doubt that is coming to the surface. This is when you know it is belief. But the real juice is when you can see this in yourself, isn't it? Until then, everyone else has to do it for you.
~ Scott Kiloby
Be still. It takes no effort to be still; it is utterly simple. When your mind is still, you have no name, you have no past, you have no relationships, you have no country, you have no spiritual attainment, you have no lack of spiritual attainment. There is just the presence of beingness with itself.
~ Gangaj
This absolute intimacy of pure experiencing is what we call love.
It is the absence of distance, separation or otherness.
There is no room for two there.
Love is the experience of pure non-duality.
~ Rupert Spira
The soul in itself alone is not other than consciousness, which is all pervading. But when the same consciousness is caught in a limitation through being surrounded by elements, in that state of captivity, it is called soul. ... Every experience on the physical or astral plane is just a dream before the soul. It is ignorance when it takes this experience to be real. It does so because it cannot see itself; as the eye sees all things, but not itself. Therefore, the soul identifies itself with all things that it sees, and changes its own identity with the change of its constantly changing vision.
The soul has no birth, no death, no beginning, and no end. Sin cannot touch it, nor can virtue exalt it. Wisdom cannot open it up, nor can ignorance darken it. It has been always and always it will be. This is the very being of man, and all else is its cover, like a globe on the light. The soul's unfoldment comes from its own power, which ends in its breaking through the ties of the lower planes. It is free by nature, and looks for freedom during its captivity. All the holy beings of the world have become so by freeing the soul, its freedom being the only object there is in life
~ Hazrat Inayat Khan
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