The ability to understand the cause of your own suffering gives you the ability to understand ours.
Clarity moves much more efficiently than violence or stress.
I have discovered that in every language and every country I have visited, there are no new stories. They’re all recycled. The same stressful thoughts arise in each mind one way or another, sooner or later.
Put your stressful thoughts on paper, question them, and have a great life.
We’ve been looking outside us for our own peace. We’ve been looking in the wrong direction.
No one can hurt me – that’s my job.
What would it be like to let go of wanting things to be other than they are?
When we believe in our thoughts, when we tell ourselves a story, we suffer. ‘My husband doesn’t respect me.’ ‘I should be thinner.’ Those are stories. When there’s no story, there’s no suffering.
I havent had a single thought for 26 years. I have only understanding. Its somewhat complicated to understand that. Ive hardly ever spoken about it. Youre in a state of total peace of mind. A kind of nirvana.
Since the past is unreal and the future is unreal, all your thoughts are about nothing.
When I was in my early forties, I slept with a loaded gun under my bed. Id become severely depressed in my thirties, and for almost a decade I spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide.
You don’t have to feel bad to act kindly. Love doesn’t stand by, it moves with the speed of clarity.
If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.
The world you live in is 100 percent your own responsibility. If you don’t like your world, it doesn’t work to say, “Well, it’s my mother’s fault. She taught me how to think.”
The nature of mind is that it loves everything once it loves itself, just as it opposes everything when it opposes itself.
Mind is infinitely creative. And when it’s not stuck, that’s where the joy comes from. Something happens, and the way we think about it, understand it, see it, is actually hilarious, whereas before it used to depress us.
Low self-esteem is not possible when you understand the nature of everything. Depression is not possible. The universe is absolutely friendly.
Realizing that people should lie when they do makes me a little more open-minded, a little more tolerant, when my child or my partner lies.
If people are living their lives for security and comfort and pleasure, then mind’s every waking moment will be plotting those things. That’s how it stays identified – as a body, as a you.
It’s a wonderful world when you have what you want at all times.