Your life, all of your life, is your path to awakening. By resisting or not dealing with its challenges, you stay asleep to Reality. Pay attention to what life is trying to reveal to you. Say yes to its fierce, ruthless, and loving grace.
Whatever you resist you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion,you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.
The biggest embrace of love you'll ever make is to embrace yourself completely. Then you'll realize you've just embraced the whole universe, and everything and everybody in it.
Question your thoughts. Question your stories. Question your assumptions. Question your opinions. Question your conclusions. Question them all into utter emptiness, stillness and joy. The keys to freedom are in your hands. Use them.
The more in harmony you are with the flow of your own existence, the more magical life becomes.
There is a very Simple Secret to being happy. Just let go of your 'demand' on this moment. Any time you have a demand on the moment to give you something or remove something, there is suffering. You're Arguing with 'What Is' - Your demands keep you chained to the 'dream-state' of the conditioned mind. The desire to 'control'... is, ultimately, our unwillingness to just be awake.
Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretence. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.
Imagine trusting silence more than any thought you can come up with.
When someone tells you, 'I love you,' and then you feel, 'Oh, I must be worthy after all,' that's an illusion. That's not true. Or someone says, 'I hate you,' and you think, 'Oh, God, I knew it; I'm not very worthy,' that's not true either. Neither one of these thoughts hold any intrinsic reality. They are an overlay. When someone says, 'I love you,' he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, 'I hate you,' she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views-literally.
When you get out of the driver's seat, you find that life can drive itself, that actually life has always been driving itself. When you get out of the driver's seat, it can drive itself so much easier-it can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the “me” is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.
Thoughts in your head are really no different than the sound of a bird outside. It is just that you decide that they are more or less relevant.
Many Sages have said, "Your world is a dream. You're living in an illusion." They're referring to this world of the mind and the way we believe our thoughts about reality. When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are.
When you rest in quietness and your image of yourself fades, and your image of the world fades, and your ideas of others fade, what's left? A brightness, a radiant emptiness that is simply what you are.
Grace is something that comes to us when we somehow find ourselves completely available, when we become openhearted and open-minded, and are willing to entertain the possibility that we may not know what we think we know.
This one question-'What do I know for certain?'-is tremendously powerful. When you look deeply into this question, it actually destroys your world. It destroys your whole sense of self, and it's meant to. You come to see that everything you think you know about yourself, everything you think you know about the world, is based on assumptions, beliefs, and opinions-things that you believe because you were taught or told they were true. Until we start to see these false perceptions for what they really are, consciousness will be imprisoned within the dream state.
To be here, all you have to do is let go of who you think you are. That's all! And then you realize, "I'm here." Here is where thoughts aren't believed. Every time you come here, you are nothing. Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake. Emptiness that is full. Emptiness that is everything.
Right now you can allow yourself to experience a very simple sense of not knowing - not knowing what or who you are, not knowing what this moment is, not knowing anything. If you give yourself this gift of not knowing and you follow it, a vast spaciousness and mysterious openness dawns within you. Relaxing into not knowing is almost like surrendering into a big, comfortable chair; you just fall into a field of possibility.
True freedom is to be free from the desire to be free from anything.
Why is it that so few people are truly free? Because they try to conform to ideas, concepts, and beliefs in their heads.
When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are. When I have a thought about you, that’s something I’ve created. I’ve turned you into an idea. In a certain sense, if I have an idea about you that I believe, I’ve degraded you. I’ve made you into something very small. This is the way of human beings, this is what we do to each other.
Actually, all paths lead away from the truth...how's that? All paths. There's no such thing as a path to the truth. The truth's already here, where are you going?
Truth is not over there, wherever over there is. Truth is neither housed in religious rituals nor secret doctrines, nor in a guru's touch or beatific smile, nor in exotic locations or ancient temples. Truth is quite literally the only thing that does exist. It is not hidden but in plain view, not lacking but abundantly present.
In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside. As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind's compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.
This moment in which you experience stillness is every moment. Don't let the mind seduce you into the past or future. Stay in the moment, and dare to consider that you can be free now.
True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: