- “Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.” ― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
- “I am not my opinion of myself, I am not anything I can describe to me. I am only a part of a large system that cannot describe itself fully; therefore, I relax and I am in the point source of consciousness, of delight, of mobility, in the inner spaces. My tasks do not include describing me nor having an opinion about the system in which I live, biological or social or dyadic. I hereby drop that “responsibility”.I am much more than I can conceive or judge me to be. Any negative or positive opinions I have of me are false fronts, headlines, limited and unnecessary programmes written on a thin paper blowing about and floating around in the vastness of inner spaces.” ― John C. Lilly, The Center of the Cyclone: Looking into Inner Space
- “For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.” ― Hermann Hesse, Wandering
- “We’d start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for awhile. Maybe even forever.That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.” ― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
- “Daring life, graceful living.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
- “There can only be two basic loves… the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.” ― St. Augustine
- “I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” ― mary anne radmacher
- “We cannot learn if we are stuck in our mind’s conditioned way of thinking. We must be open to discovering the Truth, whatever it may turn out to be. This requires a state of openness, curiosity, and sincerity, a state of pure awareness, a state of observing reality without jumping to conclusions about what reality is. This state of direct experience is known in Zen as “beginner’s mind,” and it is essential to embody this state when we want to understand our experience.” ― Joseph P. Kauffman, The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
- “Then the edge asserts itself. You are not a god. You are not that enlarged self. Indeed, you are not even a whole self, as you now see. Your new knowledge of possibilities is also a knowledge of what is lacking in the actual.” ― Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
- “Some people need significance more than they need another person. Change will only happen in a relationship when you realize it is not the person, but the “emotion” you desire.” ― Shannon L. Alder
- “We fail to see the oneness of all things, and because of this, we unknowingly cause a lot of harm to ourselves. We pollute the Earth that we live on, cut down the trees that produce our oxygen, destroy the ecosystems of nature and the animals that maintain them, and we mistreat and harm each other, thinking that these destructive actions will not have a direct effect on us.” ― Joseph P. Kauffman, The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
- “Imagine people sitting around fire under a starry sky and wondering who we are and where we have come from. But instead we sit in drawing rooms and make statements: “I am so and so, my son is so and so, my god is so and so, my holy book is so and so.” If you have already assumed an identity, how will you know who you really are?” ― Shunya
- “As long as there is a slightest self gain motive, no one will be able to speak the truth.” ― Dada Bhagwan, Who Am I?
- “It is the mind, not the self, that feels (sad, happy, angry, etc.).” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “It is because we feel that we are separate from nature that we also feel it is okay to manipulate it, pollute it, and cause it harm. We project our inner turmoil onto the planet, causing outer turmoil. Nearly all of the disasters of our time—war, famine, oppression, social injustice, environmental pollution, extinction—arise from this delusional belief that we have an existence independent of the world we live in. All of this misery, all of this destruction, all of this pain and suffering, is caused by our failure to realize that there is no separation and that really we are all one.” ― Joseph P. Kauffman, The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
- “Chit’s tendencies can become pure [transparent] in front of God, but people don’t have this knowhow. The easiest solution to purify chit’s tendencies is to associate with a person who has the least amount of desires and the ultimate solution to make them pure is the inner visual contemplation (niddidhyasan) of the Vitarag (the enlightened ones who are free of all attachments).” ― Dada Bhagwan
- “When the Self is freed from mind there are no limits to what one can experience.” ― Vivian Amis, I Am: The Key to Manifesting
- “We reveal most about ourselves when we speak about others.” ― Kamand Kojouri
- “To begin to know ourselves we must have sincere conversations with ourselves as if with a good friend. We must answer without reserve, listen without judgement, and accept without condition. That is self-love.” ― Kamand Kojouri
- “The world exists because your mind exists. If your mind didn’t exist, there would be no world. As you look at these words, you see them in what appears to be a reality outside of you. What you are really seeing is the image that your mind is creating from the electrical signals being sent to your brain. While they may appear to be outside of you, this is an illusion, they exist within your own mind, and are being projected to appear as if they are outside of you. This apparent reality that is projected by our minds, is maya, and to believe that maya is the ultimate reality is a result of ignorance, or avidya in Sanskrit.” ― Joseph P. Kauffman, The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
- “The world exists because your mind exists. If your mind didn’t exist, there would be no world. As you look at these words, you see them in what appears to be a reality outside of you. What you are really seeing is the image that your mind is creating from the electrical signals being sent to your brain. While they may appear to be outside of you, this is an illusion, they exist within your own mind, and are being projected to appear as if they are outside of you. This apparent reality that is projected by our minds, is maya, and to believe that maya is the ultimate reality is a result of ignorance, or avidya in Sanskrit.” ― Joseph P. Kauffman, The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
- “Please, touch me, I pray.” ― Jess C Scott, The Intern
- “Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone…Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness.” ― Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
- “If you never tell anyone the truth about yourself, eventually you start to forget. The love, the heartbreak, the joy, the despair, the things I did that were good, the things I did that were shameful–if I kept them all inside, my memories of them would start to disappear. And then I would disappear.” ― Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire
- “No personality (prakruti) is a waste, but you have to discover what it is useful for. You do not have to keep saying, ‘You do not know how to make this sweet. You do not know how to do this and how to do that.’ But, instead discover what he knows.” ― Dada Bhagwan, Life Without Conflict
- “Your dreaming self seeks to tell you something your waking ears will not hear” ― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel’s Chosen
- “Master Yourself and you master your environment! Such is the nature of wisdom.” ― D Nicole Williams, Change Your Posture! Change Your LIFE!: The Passion Fruit of Purposed Pursuit
- “Pure Soul and circumstances; there are only these two; but the disturbance of egoism does not allow it to be at peace.” ― Dada Bhagwan
- “Until we heal the root cause of our suffering, and awaken to our true nature, our inherent confusion will continue to manifest itself in the world around us.” ― Joseph P. Kauffman, The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom
- “You are precious and special possession of God.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind