All Quotes By Tag: Self

“Real Soul [Self, Atma] sees everyone as without faults (nirdosh). Therefore there is no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ there. When others are seen as faultless, bliss arises.”

“This is indeed the nature of worldly life, isn’t it? We anticipate happiness in old age. But in old age we develop severe back pain, which will not let us sit peacefully. That is why people are searching for moksha [ultimate liberation]; once we reach our own place, there will be no problems, right?”

“The Self is the only thing that is worth knowing. Nothing else in this world is worth knowing. The other things which you have known are all relative and they are destructible. If you have a desire for worldly happiness, then you have to know the destructible religion.  ”

“But what was fortune? She had come to believe it was being exactly the same on the inside as on the outside. What was misfortune but the quality of existing as something, or someone else, inside?”

“Nothing has the strength to prevent you from finding your way to the sea when you’re determined to fulfill your destiny.”

“Dreams provide glimpses of yourself and your life that you might not otherwise see: your deepest desires, untapped potential, self-defeating patterns, and opportunities for greater happiness.”

“One of the points that all wise men and women agree on is this: If we want our world to improve, we should work on ourselves first. That’s where the significant gains are to be found. Focusing on the inadequacies of others, or the unfairness in the world, is often just a trap of our own making as we resist looking in the mirror.”

“Awareness influences and enables all that we are and all that we strive for.”

“What good is it to seek our happiness in the opinion of others if we cannot find it in ourselves?”

“Some Consequences of the Made ThingThe End. Above these words the sky closes.It closes by turning white. NotThe white of all clouds or being within a cloud.White of worldless light. The End.Feel a silence there that reminds you of a scent.Crushed grass the hooves galloped throughOr is it the binder’s glue?Some silence never not real finally can beHeard. Silence before the first words.Precedent chaos. Or marrow work.Or just the sound of the throat opening to speak.Like those scholars of pure waterWho rode through mountains and meadowsTo drink from each fresh spring a glassAnd then with brush and ink wrote poemsOn the differences of sameness,You too feel yourself taste the silent pageOf the end and the silent page of beginning.They taste so much of whiteness never moreWhite than white that’s been lost.You have some sense of the bookAltering, page sewn secretly next to page,Last page stitched to first. O, earth—It rolls around the solar scrollTurning nothing into years and years intoNothing. At The End you’re a witness to this workThat wears the witness away. And who are youAnyway. Pronoun of the 2nd person. Lover,Stranger, God. Student, Child, Shade.Something similar gathers in you.Another way of saying I in a poem—Of saying I in a poem that realizes at the endThat I am just a distance from myself.And so are you. That same distance.”

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

“The Kena Upanishad says that the Self “shines through the mind and senses,” which is a poetic way of saying that it is the power of the Self which allows the mind and senses to function. So the eternally conscious Self is what makes us conscious. Essentially, it is light. At times when our inner vision becomes pure enough to let us see through the layers of psychic debris that thickens our consciousness and make it opaque, we realize that everything is actually made of light. We understand that we are light, that the world is light, and that light is the essence of everything. This is why so many people’s experience of touching the Self are experiences of light – visions, inner luminosity, or profound and crystalline clarity.”

“So often when we are unhappy it is becasue we are taking too much responsibility or we are taking too little. Instead of being assertive and choosing clearly for ourselves, we might become aggressive (choosing for others) or passive (letting others choose for us), or passive-aggressive (choosing for others by preventing them from achieving what they are choosing for themselves).”

“The sage is sick of being sick (Tao Te Ching)”

“The subsistence mentality of a person is a prison in which his personal joy is detained. If you want to live in joy, you don’t live for yourself alone. Live for others too!”