“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. ”
“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. ”
“Suffering needs time. It cannot survive in the Now.”
“When I look back on the suffering in my life, this may sound really strange, but I see it now as a gift. I would have never asked for it for a second. I hated it while it was happening and I protested as loudly as I could, but suffering happened anyway. Now, in retrospect I see the way in which it deepened my being immeasurably.
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“I’m not afraid of death because I don’t believe in it. It’s just getting out of one car, and into another. ”
“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. ”
via Ram Dass
“It takes courage...to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives. ”
“Allow the great unknown dimensions of life to find you. ”
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Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness. ”
“You cannot think your way out of a box made of thought. ”
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. ”
“Experience is one ever-present, seamless, unnameable, intimate whole. It is thought alone that divides this intimacy into a multiplicity and diversity of objects, others and selves, considering one part ‘me’, and everything else ‘not me’.”
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. ”
“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. ”
“Everybody grows old, very few people grow up. Aging is one thing, growing up another. What is the meaning of growing up? Taking all the responsibility, good and bad — whatsoever happens to you, you are responsible for it.”
“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. ”