Quotes I like:
Freedom
The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not “the thinker.” The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.”
- Eckhart Tolle
Growth
I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
― Martha Graham
ATTACHMENTS
All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.
- Eckhart Tolle
“The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that.”
- Eckhart Tolle
Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being.
- Eckhart Tolle
Limiting Beliefs
“Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.”
- Eckhart Tolle
CREATIVITY
"Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous."
- Bill Moyers
"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."
- Steve Jobs
"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
- Erich Fromm
"Every single thing you see on-screen came out of somebody's creativity. It doesn't exist. Nature didn't deliver it to us. Everything had to be dreamed."
- Jeffrey Katzenburg
"I firmly believe that all human beings have access to extraordinary energies and powers. Judging from accounts of mystical experience, heightened creativity, or exceptional performance by athletes and artists, we harbor a greater life than we know."
- Jean Houston
"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
- Sylvia Plath
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
- Scott Adams
"Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting."
- Edward de Bono
"One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity."
- Edward de Bono
"Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way."
- Edward de Bono
"Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death."
- Rollo May
"Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness."
Julia Cameron
Reciprocity
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be not a slave to your moods, but their master. But if you are so angry, so depressed and so sore that your spirit cannot find deliverance and peace, even in prayer, then go quickly and give some pleasure to someone lowly or sorrowful, or to a guilty or innocent sufferer! Sacrifice yourself, your talent, your time, your rest to another, to one who has to bear a heavier load than you -- and your unhappy mood will dissolve into a blessed, contented submission to God.
Abdu'l-Baha
One cannot really ever overcome the enemy until one had rid oneself of that which is found despicable in the other.
Stephen Levine
Judging vs Experiencing
The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality.
- Eckhart Tolle
Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.
- Eckhart Tolle
Release
Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.
- Eckhart Tolle
Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.
- Eckhart Tolle
Life Purpose
“You are here to enable the divine purpose of the Universe to unfold. That is how important you are!”
- Eckhart Tolle
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
"You are not here to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world and you impoverish yourself if you forget that errand"
- Woodrow Wilson
"Instead of asking 'what do I want from life?', a more powerful question is, 'what does life want from me?"
- Eckhart Tolle
Aspirations
Let us be about setting high standards for life, love, creativity, and wisdom. If our expectations in these areas are low, we are not likely to experience wellness. Setting high standards makes every day and every decade worth looking forward to.
- Greg Anderson
Grace
"If you pay attention, you're always learning. And if you're always learning, you're always in grace, and grace will fill in the cracks in your understanding."
― Richard Bartlett
EGO
“I am the hole on the flute that Gods breath flows through.”
- Eckhart Tolle
The less you try to direct, the more room you give the Universe to do so- and the greater the results. It's not that the universe can't work around you, it's just that there's a certain level of grace and ease that occurs when you get yourself out of the way.
- Eric Pearl
Self Acceptance
Jesus’ words, “Forgive them for they do not know what they do,” also apply to yourself.”
- Eckhart Tolle
“Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.”
- Eckhart Tolle
“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.”
- Eckhart Tolle
“In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.”
- Eckhart Tolle
“On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.”
- Eckhart Tolle
Emotions
…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are."
― Pema Chödrön
An emotion is the body's reaction to your mind.
― Eckhart Tolle
Compassion
Compassion is more important than intellect in calling forth the love that the work of peace needs, and intuition can often be a far more powerful searchlight than cold reason.
Betty Williams
(Irish Nobel Peace Laureate)
Personal Mythology
"Whenever a knight of the Grail tried to follow a path made by someone else, he went altogether astray. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's footsteps. Each of us has to find his own way, and this is what gives our Occidental world its initiative and creative quality. Nobody can give you a mythology. The images that mean something to you, you'll find in your dreams, in your visions, in your actions - and you'll find out what they are after you've passed them."
- Joseph Campbell
Spirituality
“Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called "God." As soon as you turn away from it, God ceases to be a reality in your life, and all you are left with is the mental concept of God, which some people believe in and others deny. Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life.”
- Eckhart Tolle
“Man Made 'God' in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, the unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as 'my god' or 'our god'.”
- Eckhart Tolle
"In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say 'Aha' to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses."
- Joseph Campbell,
"Creativity," The Mythic Dimension, p. 154
“Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.”
- Eckhart Tolle
Love
Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.
- Eckhart Tolle
“So love is the recognition of oneness in a world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.”
- Eckhart Tolle
Joy
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your
laughter rises was oftentime filled with your tears...
When you are joyous, look deep into
your heart and you shall find it is only
that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in
your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
― Khalil Gibran
(The Prophet (1923), p.29)
Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
- Eckhart Tolle
Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
- Joseph Campbell
Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.
- Eckhart Tolle