Nature exists in a state of unconscious oneness with the whole. This, for example, is why virtually no wild animals were killed in the tsunami disaster of 2004. Being more in touch with the totality than humans, they could sense the tsunami's approach long before it could be seen or heard and so had time to withdraw to higher terrain.
Being must be felt. It can't be thought.
Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bomb doesn't mean that you use your mind. Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs.
For what you do to others, you do to yourself.
The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.
There is no substitute for finding true purpose. But the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do but what you are—that is to say, your state of consciousness.
Thoughts are fine when you don't confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.
There is an Eastern saying: The teacher and the taught together create the teaching.
Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.
Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it… This will miraculously transform your whole life.
The realm of consciousness is much vaster than thought can grasp. When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are.
That in you which recognizes madness as madness (even if it is your own) is sanity, is the arising awareness, is the end of insanity.
On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.
I was convinced that all the answers to the dilemmas of human existence could be found through the intellect, that is to say, by thinking. I didn't realize yet that thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.
In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind - in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.
True Power is within, and it is available now.
Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of your life but from the conditioning of your mind.
The mind-identified state is severely dysfunctional.
You are cut off from Being as long as your mind takes up all your attention. When this happens — and it happens continuously for most people — you are not in your body. The mind absorbs all your consciousness and transforms it into mind stuff. You cannot stop thinking. Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease.
If the history of humanity were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived "enemies" - his own unconsciousness projected outwards.
In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence, nonattachment to the fruit of your action is called Karma Yoga. It is described as the path of consecrated action.
Be present as the watcher of your mind- of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations.
You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do. And, of course, you cannot be present unless you become friendly with the present moment. That is the basis for effective action, uncontaminated by negativity.
And then one day, you too disappear. Your armchair is still there. But instead of you sitting in it, there is just an empty space. You went back to where you came from just a few years ago.
Every fragment of self-talk is a little story in the head that goes around, and then you look at reality through the lens of the little story.
Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.
What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is?
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.
In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer.
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.
The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions.
You are aware of where you want to go, but you honor and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment.
Most people's lives are cluttered up with things: material things, things to do, things to think about. Their lives are like the history of humanity, which Winston Churchill defined as one damn thing after another. Their minds are filled up with the clutter of thoughts, one thought after another.
To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment.
Awareness is the greatest agent for change.
Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.
What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.
Forgiveness is to offer no resistance to life — to allow life to live through you.
The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant.
What it doesn't say — but only points to — is more important than what it says.
Accept - then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.
You don't need fear to avoid unnecessary danger — just a minimum of intelligence and common sense.
If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.
You are the universe, you aren't in the universe.
You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to your inner state.
Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion.
The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.
If you cannot surrender, take action immediately: Speak up or do something to bring about a change in the situation — or remove yourself from it. Take responsibility for your life.
The truth is: you don't have a life, you are life. The One Life, the one consciousness that pervades the entire universe and takes temporary form to experience itself as a stone or a blade of grass, as an animal, a person, a star or a galaxy. Can you sense deep within that you already know that? Can you sense that you already are That?
