One of the purposes of life is to increase our capacity to love. As students on the path, the Universe will present to us many opportunities to develop this capacity. Let us increase our awareness of these opportunities and respond accordingly.
Lonnie Edwards
You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at the table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka
Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
The Dalai Lama
When meditation is mastered,
the mind is unwavering,
like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.
Krishna
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
Henry David Thoreau
My dedication is to serve the 7 billion human beings on this planet and the other creatures with whom we share it. If you can, help and serve others, but if you can’t at least don’t harm them; then in the end you will feel no regret.
The Dalai Lama
The mental suffering you create is always some form of non-acceptance,
some form of unconscious resistance to what is.
On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgement.
The intensity of the suffering depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment.
Eckhart Tolle
Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Could God exist if nobody else did? No. That’s why gods are very avid for worshipers. If there is nobody to worship them, there are no gods. There are as many gods as there are people thinking about God. When Mrs. Mulligan and the Pope are thinking about God, it is not the same God.
In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours.
The god you worship is the god you deserve.
Joseph Campbell
There is pleasure when a sore is scratched,
But to be without sores is more pleasurable still.
Just so, there are pleasures in worldly desires,
But to be without desires is more pleasurable still.
Arya Nagarjuna
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.
Eckhart Tolle
Within us are powers and abilities that are like invisible sparks waiting to be fanned into brilliant flames.
H. Spencer Lewis
Understand the suffering of worldly existence.
Abandon its causes of ignorance and selfishness.
Practice the path of meditation and compassion.
Awaken from suffering within Great Peace.
Buddha
The act of meditation is being spacious.
Sogyal Rinpoche
If you would know a mystic, do not confine your search to monasteries and temples, but look also on the highways and byways, in towns, hamlets, and in the hustle and bustle of the great cosmopolitan centers of the world. When you find someone who is industrious, studious, compassionate, loved by friends, and neighbours, tolerant in religious views, and who can point out to you the magnificence and efficacy of God in the simplest of things, you have found a mystic. With these qualities, whether one is attired in sacerdotal robe or in the overalls of a mechanic, one is none the less a mystic.
Ralph M. Lewis
Here it is–right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it.
Huang Po
To be free from bondage the wise person must practise discrimination between One-Self and the ego-self.
By that alone you will become full of joy, recognising Self as Pure Being, Consciousness and Bliss.
Adi Shankara
And as long as you’re subject to birth and death, you’ll never attain enlightenment.
Bodhidharma
The whole secret to existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.
The Buddha
Enlightenment must come little by little – otherwise it would overwhelm.
Idries Shah
Integrated meditation practice is like a healthy diet
which is indispensable for maintaining your vitality and resistance to disease.
Likewise, a balanced meditative practice in the course of a socially engaged way of life
heightens your psychological immune system, so that you are less vulnerable to mental imbalances of all kinds.
Alan Wallace
A Crazy Wisdom Meditator is neither bound by the worldly view of materialism nor are they bound by the transcendental view of spirituality, instead they are free to dive into the abyss of Ultimate Being free in every moment.
Chogyam Trungpa
Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment.
Morihei Ueshiba
The affairs of the world will go on forever, do not delay the practice of meditation.
Milarepa
Learn to live without self concern.
For this you must know your own true being as indomitable, fearless and ever victorious.
Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination,
you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas, and live by truth alone.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
If we remove ourselves from the world, we are pretending that we can follow our own individual enlightenment and let the rest of the world go to hell, so to speak.
Satish Kumar
Normally we do not like to think about death.
We would rather think about life.
Why reflect on death?
When you start preparing for death you soon realize
that you must look into your life now
and come to face the truth of your self.
Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.
Sogyal Rinpoche
Ignorance has always been the weapon of tyrants; enlightenment the salvation of the free.
Bill Richardson
All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit
is to stop seeking something more or better or different,
and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.
Adyashanti
You personally do not perceive your own nature, but this does not mean that your nature does not exist…. Yours is a case of not seeing the sun, not of there being no sun.
Hui Hai
Meditation is like the calisthenics of the Spirit.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
When one past thought has ceased and a future thought has not yet risen,
in that gap, in between, isn’t there a consciousness of the present moment;
fresh, virgin, unaltered by even a hair’s breadth of a concept, a luminous, naked awareness?
Well, that’s what naturally peaceful awareness is.
Sogyal Rinpoche
It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.
Quentin Crisp
Go beyond language go beyond thought.
Bodhidharma
Out beyond the world of ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.
Rumi
No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention; let it settle itself.
Tilopa
Just being the seeker, somebody who’s open to spiritual enlightenment, is in itself the important thing and it’s the reward for being a seeker in this world.
Walter Isaacson
Happiness is your nature.
It is not wrong to desire it.
What is wrong is seeking it outside
when it is inside.
Ramana Maharshi
Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.
Lao Tzu
This is the real secret of life ~ to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
Alan Watts
Many spiritual teachers – in Buddhism, in Islam – have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.
Bell Hooks
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality;
to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality.
The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
Sengstau, The 3rd Zen Patriarch.
Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
Bodhidharma
Although intrinsic basic goodness is within all of us, we still come face to face with tremendous challenges known as habitual patterns; these emotional and mental afflictions challenge our enthusiasm and awareness.
Khandro Rinpoche
Our society is the product of several great religious and philosophical traditions. The ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Christianity, Judaism, humanism and the Enlightenment have made us who we are.
Jan Peter Balkenende
Understanding requires not just a moment of perception, but a continuous awareness, a continuous state of inquiry without conclusion.
Bruce Lee
Without meditation there is no enlightenment.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Bible and several other self-help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful… or fun for that matter.
Dave Mustaine
Among the key contributory factors of Awakening, devotion stands supreme, and it is the search for one’s own true nature that is meant by devotion.
Shankara
The left has come to regard common sense – the traditional wisdom and folkways of the community – as an obstacle to progress and enlightenment.
Christopher Lasch
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
Thich Nhat Hahn
The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith.
Michael Polanyi
God dwells in you, as you, and you don’t have to ‘do’ anything to be God-realized or Self-realized, it is already your true and natural state…. Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your ego mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being. For this to be your own presently lived experience, Self-Inquiry is the one direct and immediate way.
Ramana Maharshi
The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Thoughts are impediments to seeing your own face. Don’t give rise to any thought, and discover who you are.
Papaji
There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.
Stanislav Grof
When you become aware of silence, immediately there is a state of inner alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of years of collective human conditioning.
Eckhart Tolle
To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.
Buddha
If you are willing to experience anything directly and immediately, whether good or bad, joyous or hateful, you will recognize that what you are running from does not exist, and what you are running toward is already here.
Gangaji
Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.
Dogen Zenji
With no effort or practice whatsoever, liberation or enlightenment is already here.
The everyday practice of Dzogchen is just everyday life itself.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
The way the world appears to most people is that the GAME is rigged against us. We are taught, and even encouraged, by society to be worthless. We are taught that sin is succumbing to our “baser nature,” This is false. Our natural self is not base; It is divine.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience.
It isn’t more complicated than that.
It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant,
just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
Sylvia Boorstein
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi
The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes.
Pema Chodron
Though you may travel the world to find the beautiful, you must have it within you or you will find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The experience of non-dual awareness is wonderful. It is freedom from the restless striving of the conditioned mind. It is not dull peace, but its opposite. It is pure wakefulness. It is light, open, radiant and blissful.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.
James Allen
Without meditation, without self-knowledge and without understanding the working and functions of his or her mind, people cannot be free, people cannot govern themselves and they will always remain a slave.
Gurdjieff
What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.
Anthony de Mello
“Why is everyone here so happy except me?”
“Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere,” said the Master.
“Why don’t I see goodness and beauty everywhere?”
“Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside.”
Anthony de Mello
Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
Chuang Tzu
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that, with patience, discipline, and the right training, our mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity.
Sogyal Rinpoche
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon
When you recognize the spontaneous great perfection of mind, fabrication and effort are naturally freed.
Padmasambhava
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
André Gide
Understanding requires not just a moment of perception, but a continuous awareness, a continuous state of inquiry without conclusion
Bruce Lee
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
There are 2 aspects of mind; the appearances and its essence. Most people are lost in appearances/projections without ever knowing the true nature of their experiences. Therefore meditation is bringing the mind home to its true nature, clarity and peace.
Sogyal Rinpoche
I’d rather live with a good question than a bad answer.
Aryeh Frimer
Wisdom is knowing I’m nothing. Love is knowing I’m everything. In between the two, my LIFE moves.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
The only thing that prevents a person from taking action on an idea is self-doubt. People that act are acting on FAITH.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Most of us most of the time are run by, dominated by our thoughts or feelings. It follows that we tend to think we are those thoughts and feeling. Meditation is the state of simply being, just pure experiencing, with no interference from the body or mind. It’s a natural state but one which we have forgotten how to access.
Osho
We learn something every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong.
Bill Vaughan
Simplicity is the key to brilliance.
Bruce Lee
When one tugs at a single thing in Nature, he finds it hitched to the rest of the Universe.
John Muir
Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.
Swami Sivananda
Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.
Chinese proverb
Meditation is for you to realise that the deepest nature of your existence is beyond thoughts and emotions, that it is incredibly vast and interconnected with all other beings.
Tenzin Palmo
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the World.
There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t fee unsure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
As we let our Light shine; we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear; our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson
The belief in ego is the great cause of conflict and suffering. And it’s the primary illusion that meditation is meant to dispel. Meditation is a teaching which offers you the possibility of breaking free of this egoic state of consciousness and coming into a whole new realization of who and what you truly are. And all this starts with the willingness to question. To pause for just a moment and realize that maybe you aren’t who you imagine yourself to be.
Adyashanti
Seek first to understand, then be understood.
Stephen Covey
If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
Dogen
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.
Albert Einstein
A beautiful country is a dream-like illusion. It is senseless to cling to it. Unless the inner forces of negative emotions are conquered, strife with outer enemies will never end.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.
Helen Keller
Anything that is created must sooner or later die. Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it.
Chogyam Trungpa
Ever wonder why your life is the way it is? Examine your everyday random thoughts. What is it you are telling yourself? What is it you are programming your mind to accept as truth?
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Banishing all hope and all fear, rest in the unshakable certainty that the eternal simplicity of awareness is itself enlightenment. That is the way of perfect bliss, in which all the qualities of enlightenment will flourish without effort.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Man’s mind, once stretch by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Do not try to become anything.
Do not make yourself into anything.
Do not be a meditator.
Do not become enlightened.
When you sit, let it be.
When you walk, let it be.
Grasp at nothing.
Resist nothing.
Ajahn Chah
Minds are like parachutes, they only function when they are open.
Thomas Dewar
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
Thich Nhat Hanh
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
Galileo Galilei
Through one word, or seven words, or three times five, even if you investigate thoroughly myriad forms, nothing can be depended upon. Night advances, the moon glows and falls into the ocean. The black dragon jewel you have been searching for is everywhere.
Dogen
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
Confucius
The universe is full of magical things waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you’ll help them become what they are capable of becoming.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Problems cannot be solved at the same level that created them.
Albert Einstein
It is not enough to have a good mind, the main thing is to use it well.
Rene Descartes
What we see depends mainly upon what we look for.
Sir John Lubbock
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Whenever you say anything about yourself or your condition, you send a powerful signal to your mind – you create identification within yourself with that statement.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.
Unknown
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
Sir Winston Churchill
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Benjamin Franklin
From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
Arthur Ashe
He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes. He who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.
Chinese Proverb
When you can harness the power of your imagination and combine it with emotional stimulation, you can generate amazing results.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what you think you are.
John Wooden
The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
Peter F. Drucker
Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts.
Marianne Williamson
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.
Marcel Proust
When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.
Unknown Monk
It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.
Sir Winston Churchill
Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.
Fred Astaire
The thoughts that occupy our mind each and every day of our lives produce effects that change the world – first for ourselves and then, by our actions, for others as well.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.
George Horace Lorimer
You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Martin Luther King Jr.
If man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it’s because he hears a different drummer.
Henry David Thoreau
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
Helen Keller
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
Indian Proverb
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life – it goes on.
Robert Frost
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Unknown
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Confucius
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Sir Winston Churchill
Belief that you can have happiness in your life, that you are worthy of it, forms the mental atmosphere that brings the happiness about.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
John Ruskin
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for this is the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin
When you come to the edge of all the light you know and are about to step off into the darkness, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.
Barbara Walters
Tough times never last but tough people do.
Robert Schuller
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Charles A. Beard
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
James F. Bymes
If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
Dolly Parton
You cannot escape the possibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Abraham Lincoln
When one door closes another opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully at the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.
Alexander Graham Bell
A bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn.
Unknown
Everything is okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.
Unknown
Release your doubt, fear and sense of unworthiness and accept the reality of your true nature found in the DIVINE ASPECT of your being. Can you imagine the Sun doubting its ability to shine? The true nature of the Sun is to give light and warmth and the true nature of human beings is to create a life that EMBRACES THE LIGHT.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Live out of your imagination, not out of your history.
Stephen Covey
Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?
Albert Einstein
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
Carl Bard
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
Helen Keller
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Benjamin Franklin
To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.
Bruce Lee
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
Erica Jong
Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.
Dame Edna Everage
Work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching.
Unknown
Be confident in your purpose just as the Sun is confident in its purpose. The Universe does not hesitate to act. It has no fear.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.
Virgil Garnett Thomson
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers
You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
Wayne Gretzky
When things go wrong, as they sometime will
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low, and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns.
And many a great person turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems far.
So stick in the fight when you’re hardest hit,
It’s when thing seem worse,
That you must not quit.
Unknown
To laugh
Is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep
Is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another
Is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings
Is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before the crowd
Is to risk loss.
To love
Is to risk not being loved in return.
To live
Is to risk dying.
To hope
Is to risk despair.
To try it all
Is to risk failure,
But risk we must
Because the greatest hazard in life
Is to risk nothing.
Unknown
If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you like to win but think you can’t,
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will.
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win the prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But sooner or later, the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.
C.W. Longenecker
True and lasting happiness can only be found in discovering the purpose of your soul at any given moment of your life.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure… it does mean you haven’t succeeded yet.
Failure doesn’t mean you have accomplished nothing… it does mean that you have learned something.
Failure doesn’t mean you have been a fool… it does mean you had a lot of faith.
Failure doesn’t mean you have been disgraced… it does mean you were willing to try.
Failure doesn’t mean you don’t have it… it does mean you have to do something in a different way.
Failure doesn’t mean you are inferior…. it does mean you are not perfect.
Failure doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your life… it does mean you’ve reason to start afresh.
Failure doesn’t mean you should give up… it does mean you should try harder.
Failure doesn’t mean you’ll never make it… it does mean it will take a little longer.
Failure doesn’t mean God has abandoned you… it does mean God has better idea.
Robert Schuller
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.
Wayne Dyer
Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau
We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.
Vince Lombardi
It’s amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.
Charles F. Kettering
You’ve got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.
Arthur Ashe
Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.
Morihei Ueshiba
“Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.”
Chinese Proverb
Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.
Dogen
Gratitude acknowledges to the mind your appreciation for good things. It creates a positive state of being that is able to accept and sustain even more goodness.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tzu
Enlightenment must come little by little – otherwise it would overwhelm.
Idries Shah
Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment.
Morihei Ueshiba
Though you may travel the world to find the beautiful, you must have it within you or you will find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we remove ourselves from the world, we are pretending that we can follow our own individual enlightenment and let the rest of the world go to hell, so to speak.
Satish Kumar
Ignorance has always been the weapon of tyrants; enlightenment the salvation of the free.
Bill Richardson
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi
Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.
Lao Tzu
Many spiritual teachers – in Buddhism, in Islam – have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.
Bell Hooks
You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.
James Allen
Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
Bodhidharma
The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
Nikos Kazantzakis
To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.
Buddha
Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.
Dogen Zenji
What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.
Anthony de Mello
Just for now, let yourself feel good, be happy and enjoy yourself on a deep and spiritual level. Just for now, allow yourself to relax and be at peace. Just for now, accept the freedom to be in tune with universal peace and harmony. If it becomes too uncomfortable, you can always choose to return to a life of gloom and tragedy.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
“Why is everyone here so happy except me?” “Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere,” said the Master. “Why don’t I see goodness and beauty everywhere?” “Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside.”
Anthony de Mello
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon
Everybody wants to get enlightened but nobody wants to change.
This is the simple, daunting truth that has been staring back at me
from the eyes of countless seekers over the years. “I really want
to get enlightened,” they insist. “But are YOU ready to CHANGE
now?” I ask. “What?” is the inevitable response—surprised and
even slightly stunned. And I repeat, “Are YOU ready to CHANGE
now?” What follows is always a strange and surreal moment of
ambiguity, confusion, and backpedaling.
“But I thought you wanted to get enlightened… ”
Andrew Cohen
You may have expected
that enlightenment would
come Zap! Instantaneous
and permanent. This is
unlikely. After the first
“ah-ha” experience,
it can be thought of
as the thinning of
a layer of clouds.
Ram Dass
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions
of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson
If we pretend to be more enlightened than we really are, we will miss
an opportunity to heal ourselves. Admitting our limitations can make us
feel vulnerable, yet it is very freeing. We just have to be ourselves as
we are now, accepting the mixture of enlightened awareness and human
limitation that is in each of us. Through this self-acceptance,
we find a deep peace and self-love.
Shakti Gawain
There are many paths to enlightenment.
Be sure to take one with a heart.
Lao Tzu
If we demand enlightenment, it hides. . . . All that we can
do is make ourselves enlightenment-prone. We learn to
treasure the possibility of awakening in all moments and
circumstances. We learn to simplify and cultivate the
receptivity of heart that can be touched by profound
understanding. We learn to listen deeply and discover
stillness amid the movement in our world.
Christina Feldman
Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
William Faulkner
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
George Bernard Shaw
A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
Nelson Mandela
Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.
Roger Babson
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
Dale Carnegie
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg
Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of your life.
Michael LeBoeuf
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan
Happiness is found in the awareness and acknowledgement of our DIVINE aspect. To the degree we can accept and consciously live from the presence of our own Inner Divinity we will have a true experience of happiness. This happiness is the kind the mystics of old enjoyed, the beatific happiness of the saints, the bliss in the eternal lotus. It is the source of all good in life, and it is ours by right – we have only to claim it.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.
Moliere
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius
Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.
Thomas J. Watson
You can never plan the future by the past.
Edmund Burke
You may delay, but time will not.
Benjamin Franklin
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
W. Somerset Maugham
Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
Jim Rohn
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
Abraham Lincoln
We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.
Lee Segall
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.
Lewis Carrol
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide
When embarking on a mystical journey, a journey of spiritual transformation, we must prepare ourselves for a long trip. We cannot be dabblers. We must commit to the process and work on it every day.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
Aesop
Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.
Baba Ram Dass
I am a part of all that I have met.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
There’s more to the truth than just the facts.
Unknown
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.
Edward R. Murrow
Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day.
Polish Proverb
Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.
Ludwig Börne
If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?
Stanislaw J. Lec
We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it.
Albert Szent-Györgyi
Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
Edward Albee
When the student is ready, the master appears.
Buddhist Proverb
A gun gives you the body, not the bird.
Henry David Thoreau
Before enlightenment – chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment – chop wood, carry water.
Zen Buddhist Proverb
When they go fishing, it is not really fish they are after. It is a philosophic meditation.
E.T. Brown
Your progress in this work [self-realization] depends upon your willingness to accept that change and transformation are REAL possibilities for you.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work – that goes on, it adds up.
Barbara Kingsolver
I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying.
Charles C. Finn
Oh, Heaven, it is mysterious; it is awful to consider that we not only carry a future Ghost within us; but are, in very deed, Ghosts!
Thomas Carlyle
Knock on the sky and listen to the sound.
Zen Saying
The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
Chuang Tzu
By daily dying I have come to be.
Theodore Roethke
There are some remedies worse than the disease.
Publilius Syrus
You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.
William Blake
It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos.
John L. McClenahan
What you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite.
Thomas Carlyle
Philosophy is life’s dry-nurse, who can take care of us – but not suckle us.
Soren Kierkegaard
Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science.
Henry David Thoreau
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Henri Louis Bergson
If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.
Ram Dass
The fly that doesn’t want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.
G.C. Lichtenberg
Don’t miss the donut by looking through the hole.
Unknown
You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
Navajo Proverb
The ability to accept good things in life is a true blessing. The acceptance of greater, as yet undreamed of, possibilities in life is an even greater blessing.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death.
Heraclitus
To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.
John Burroughs
Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me.
Antonio Porchia
Alice came to a fork in the road. “Which road do I take?” she asked.
“Where do you want to go?” responded the Cheshire cat.
“I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
Lewis Carroll
Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.
John Lancaster Spalding
The map is not the territory.
Alfred Korzybski
No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head.
Terry Josephson
Would there be this eternal seeking if the found existed?
Antonio Porchia
I was once a skeptic but was converted by the two missionaries on either side of my nose.
Robert Brault
He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form.
Marcus Aurelius
If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.
Russian Proverb
Life is made up of moments. Some moments we are running free and easy and some moments we are stuck in the mud. The mystic learns that the mud that holds us back is our own creation – it does not really hold us – we hold on to it.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.
Bertrand Russell
Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.
Roger Miller
The obstacle is the path.
Zen Proverb
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
James Thurber
It is easy to stand a pain, but difficult to stand an itch.
Chang Ch’ao
You cannot step into the same river twice.
Heraclitus
You are fastened to them and cannot understand how, because they are not fastened to you.
Antonio Porchia
Only in the early morning light of day, and of life, can we see the world without its shadows. Truth requires new beginnings.
Jeb Dickerson
One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, “Is it half full or half empty?” So I drank the water. No more problem.
Alexander Jodorowsky
Among creatures born into chaos, a majority will imagine an order, a minority will question the order, and the rest will be pronounced insane.
Robert Brault
What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.
Hippocrates, Aphorisms
Seeking is not always the way to find.
Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
It takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place.
Lewis Carroll
We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still.
Mignon McLaughlin
Let the present be the only reality upon which you are building your life. Fill your mind with only such thoughts and consciousness that will generate an empowering future.
Michael A. Michail, Practical Mysticism
There is no tomorrow. There is only a planet turning on its axis, and a creature given to optimistic fancies.
Robert Brault
You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
Unknown
I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.
Aleister Crowley
Tomorrow always comes, and today is never yesterday.
S.A. Sachs
Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.
Thomas Carlyle
You can see a lot by just looking.
Yogi Berra
Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.
Leo Rosten
The unreal is more powerful than the real…. Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die.
Chuck Palahniuk
Reason and faith are both banks of the same river.
Doménico Cieri Estrada
Man is the only animal who enjoys the consolation of believing in a next life; all other animals enjoy the consolation of not worrying about it.
Robert Brault
Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
Dr. Seuss
Who depends on another man’s table often dines late.
John Ray
Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them… there is nothing.
Jean Paul Sartre
You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor.
Mignon McLaughlin
A thousand men can’t undress a naked man.
Greek Proverb
May your passion be the kernel of corn stuck between your molars, always reminding you there’s something to tend to.
Jeb Dickerson
We often repent the good we have done as well as the ill.
William Hazlitt
When I die, I will not see myself die, for the first time.
Antonio Porchia
The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.
Evelyn Waugh
It’s very strange when the life you never had flashes before your eyes.
Terri Minsky
It’s always Now.
Eckhart Tolle
The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.
Buddha
We become aware of the void as we fill it.
Antonio Porchia
If you understand compound interest, you basically understand the universe.
Robert Brault
If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity’s displayed:
I’m looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
W.B. Yeats
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
Santayana
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr
How often one sees people looking far and wide for what they are holding in their hands? Why! I am doing it myself at this very moment.
Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
Sometimes an answer not yet blowin’ in the wind is stirring in the breeze.
Robert Brault
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Eric Hoffer
Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?
Maurice Freehill
Yearning for sun and starlight, roses and winter, together.
Dr. SunWolf
I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.
Henry David Thoreau
You have to do it by yourself,
And you can’t do it alone.
Martin Rutte
Because they know the name of what I am looking for, they think they know what I am looking for!
Antonio Porchia
There are things I have wanted so long that I would only consent to have them if I could keep wanting them.
Robert Brault
Eggs cannot be unscrambled.
American Proverb
Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt.
Norman Cousins
A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence.
Antonio Porchia
The road was new to me, as roads always are going back.
Sarah Orne Jewett
Admiration and familiarity are strangers.
George Sand
I am not certain of the hereafter. Frankly, I’m not all that certain of the here.
Robert Brault
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about “and.”
Arthur Stanley Eddington
No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.
Zen Proverb
The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow; he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.
Eric Berne
Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses.
Jean Baptiste Molière
We are each a dozen people who were all the same child.
Robert Brault
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
Aldous Huxley
Will localizes us; thought universalizes us.
Henri Frederic Amiel
I’ve observed that there are more lines formed than things worth waiting for.
Robert Brault
Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
Georg Hegel
When I break any of the chains that bind me I feel that I make myself smaller.
Antonio Porchia
We are spirits clad in veils.
Christopher P. Cranch
If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am?
John Lancaster Spalding
Before I travelled my road I was my road.
Antonio Porchia
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon
To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.
Stanislaus I of Poland
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth – that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
H.L. Mencken
The future influences the present just as much as the past.
Friedrich Nietzsche
One does what one is; one becomes what one does.
Robert von Musil, Kleine Prosa
In this, the late afternoon of my life, I wonder: am I casting a longer shadow or is my shadow casting a shorter me?
Robert Brault
You can’t fall off the floor.
Unknown
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.
Unknown
In a mist the heights can for the most part see each other; but the valleys cannot.
Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
In general people experience their present naively, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it – the present, that is to say, must have become the past – before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future.
Sigmund Freud
The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
Robert M. Pirsig
A stumble may prevent a fall.
English Proverb
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Friedrich Nietzche
What you discover in a democracy is that it is difficult to build a house when each nail has an opinion.
Robert Brault
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.
Matsuo Basho