The purpose of the world is for youto be lost in it, ultimately. The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen.
The next step in human evolution is not inevitable, but for the first time in the history of the planet, it can be a conscious choice. Who is making that choice? You are. And who are you? Consciousness that has become conscious of itself.
Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain.
If you don’t mind being unhappy, what happens to the unhappiness?
If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.
People look to the future for salvation, but the future never arrives.
The sun never sets. It is only an appearance due to the observer’s limited perspective. And yet, what a sublime illusion it is.
Neither concepts nor mathematical formulae can explain the infinite.
Transcending the world does not mean to withdraw from the world, to no longer take action, or to stop interacting with people. Transcendence of the world is to act and to interact without any self-seeking.
Time is the horizontal dimension of life, the surface layer of reality. Then there is the vertical dimension of depth, accessible only through the portal of the present moment.
The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself.
As each human being is an integral part of the collective human consciousness, they affect the world much more deeply than is visible on the surface of their lives.
The soul is your innermost being. The presence that you are beyond form. The consciousness that you are beyond form, that is the soul. That is who you are in essence.
The place that I love most is the stillness. It’s not that the stillness is lost when I talk or when I teach because the words arise out of the stillness. But when people leave me, there is only the stillness left. And I love that so much.
Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly.
Allow nature to teach you stillness.
It’s a wonderful thing to perceive the world and to interact with it and with other people and nature from that deep place of utter stillness, where the compulsion to immediately label and interpret whatever arises around you is no longer there.
Allow your dog to take you for a walk every day. It’s good for the body and it’s good for the soul.
Even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfillment or completion in the future. So don’t seek to become free or desire or “achieve” enlightenment. Become present.
Much suffering, much unhappiness arises when you take each thought that comes into your head for the truth.