It is very hard to tell when I started to be a spiritual teacher. There was a time when occasionally somebody would come and ask me questions. One could say at that point I became a spiritual teacher, although the term did not occur to me then.
The more you are focused on time-past and future-the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.
The future does not exist, because nobody has ever experienced it. You can only ever experience a present moment.
You are never more essentially, more deeply, yourself than when you are still.
It takes practice to hear your true desires. Your passion will often come as a whisper or serendipitous event that reminds you of what’s important and what makes you happy.
Anybody who is one with what he or she does is building the new earth.
Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.
In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned consciousness.
Every practice at some point will become a hindrance. No practice can ever take you there, to freedom, to liberation. That’s important to realize.
Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts too seriously.
Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.
When you are not making the present moment into a means to an end, you also are not making every human being you meet – in your business and even at home, in your family – into a means to an end.
What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.
As long as we define ourselves in terms of our pain and our problems, we will never be free from them.
When you live as a friend of the now, many changes come into your life.
Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?
Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.
A built-in reminder is the simple understanding that whenever any kind of unhappiness arises, you know you’ve lost the now. That’s a built-in alarm clock. The moment you realize you’ve lost the now, come back to the now.
Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.
Presence remains even amidst worldly activities. Stillness is there even when you’re doing something quickly, like rushing to answer the phone. Otherwise you would be condemned to moving in slow motion.