🌀Week 2023-30: Kahlil Gibran - Collected Quotes

"Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self." (Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet", 1923)

"You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts." (Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet", 1923)

"Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite." (Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet", 1923)

"A pearl is a temple built by pain around a grain of sand." (Kahlil Gibran, "Sand and Foam", 1926)

"Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking." (Kahlil Gibran, "Sand and Foam", 1926)

"Perhaps the sea's definition of a shell is the pearl." (Kahlil Gibran, "Sand and Foam", 1926)

"A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle." (Kahlil Gibran)

"And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Knowledge and understanding are life's faithful companions who will never prove untrue to you. For knowledge is your crown, and understanding your staff; and when they are with you, you possess no greater treasures." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Life without Love is like a tree without blossom and fruit." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Philosophy's work is finding the shortest path between two points." (Kahlil Gibran)

"Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow." (Kahlil Gibran)

"The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves." (Kahlil Gibran)

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." (Kahlil Gibran)

🌀Week 2023-22: Nicolas of Cusa - Collected Quotes

"All we know of the truth is that the absolute truth, such as it is, is beyond our reach." 

(Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Docta Ignorantia" ["On Learned Ignorance"], 1440)

"Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Docta Ignorantia" ["On Learned Ignorance"], 1440)

"Now discourse is necessarily limited by its point of departure and its point of arrival, and since these are in mutual opposition we speak of contradiction. For the discursive reason these terms are opposed and distinct. In the realm of the reason, therefore, there is a necessary disjunction between extremes, as, for example, in the rational definition of the circle where the lines from the center to the circumference are equal and where the center cannot coincide with the circumference." (Nicholas of Cusa, "Apologia Doctae ignorantiae" ["The Defense of Learned Ignorance"], 1449)

"Mind is the limit and measure of all things [...]" (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "Idiota de mente: The Layman: About Mind", 1450)

"You know how the divine Simplicity enfolds all things. Mind is the image of this enfolding Simplicity. If, then, you called this divine Simplicity infinite Mind, it will be the exemplar of our mind. If you called the divine mind the totality of the truth of things, you will call our mind the totality of the assimilation of things, so that it may be a totality of ideas. In the divine Mind conception is the production of things; in our mind conception is the knowledge of things. If the divine Mind is absolute Being, then its conception is the creation of beings; and conception in the human mind is the assimilation of beings." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "Idiota de mente: The Layman: About Mind", 1450)

"[…] a great multitude cannot exist without much diversity […]" (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Pace Fidei" ["The Peace of Faith"], 1453)

"All men strive and hope for nothing other than eternal life in their human nature. For this they instituted purgations of souls and sacred rites, in order to be better adapted in their nature to that eternal life." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Pace Fidei" ["The Peace of Faith"], 1453)

"There can only be one wisdom. For if it were possible that there be several wisdoms, then these would have to be from one. Namely, unity is prior to all plurality." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "De Pace Fidei" ["The Peace of Faith"], 1453)

"Within itself the soul sees all things more truly than as they exist in different things outside itself. And the more it goes out unto other things in order to know them, the more it enters into itself in order to know itself." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus], "On Equality", 1459)

"If full knowledge about the very base of our existence could be described as a circle, the best we can do is to arrive at a polygon." (Nicholas of Cusa [Nicolaus Cusanus])

"The universe has no circumference, for if it had a center and a circumference there would be some and some thing beyond the world, suppositions which are wholly lacking in truth. Since, therefore, it is impossible that the universe should be enclosed within a corporeal center and corporeal boundary, it is not within our power to understand the universe, whose center and circumference are God. And though the universe." (Nicholas of Cusa[Nicolaus Cusanus])

"Time is to eternity as an image is to its exemplar, and those things which are temporal bear a resemblance to those things which are eternal." (Nicholas of Cusa[Nicolaus Cusanus])

🌀Week 2022-45: Ken Wilber - Collected Quotes

"The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two." (Ken Wilber, "No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth", 1979)

"Physics is the most fundamental, and least significant, of the sciences." (Ken Wilber, "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution", 1995)

"Anybody can they say they are being 'spiritual' - and they are, because everybody has some type and level of concern. Let us therefore see their actual conception, in thought and action, and see how many perspectives it is in fact concerned with, and how many perspectives it actually takes into account, and how many perspectives it attempts to integrate, and thus let us see how deep and how wide runs that bodhisattva vow to refuse rest until all perspectives whatsoever are liberated into their own primordial nature." (Ken Wilber, "The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad", 1997)

"Spirit slumbers in nature, awakens in mind, and finally recognizes itself as Spirit in the transpersonal domains."  (Ken Wilber, "A Brief History of Everything", 1998)

"Truth, in the broadest sense, means being attuned with the real. To be authentically in touch with the true, and the good and the beautiful." (Ken Wilber, "A Brief History of Everything", 1998)

"These similarities would seem to suggest, among other things, that there are spiritual patterns at work in the universe, at least as far as we can tell, and these spiritual patterns announce themselves with impressive regularity wherever human hearts and minds attempt to attune themselves to the cosmos in all its radiant dimensions." (Ken Wilber, "An Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World", 2007)

"Reality is a rich tapestry of interwoven levels, reaching from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit." (Ken Wilber)

"The modern West, after the enlightenment, became the first major civilization in the history of humanity to deny almost entirely the existence of the Great Nest (or chain) of Being. In its place was a 'flatland' conception of the universe as composed basically of matter (or matter/energy) and this material universe [...] could be studied by science and science alone." (Ken Wilber)

🌀Week 2022-11: Eckhart Tolle - Collected Quotes

"When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in." (Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now", 1997)

"A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"All the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace ~ arise from beyond the mind." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Always say 'yes' to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say 'yes' to life - and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Am I aware not only of what is happening at this moment, but also of the Now itself as the living timeless inner space in which everything happens?" (Eckhart Tolle)

"Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"As long as the ego runs your life, most of your thoughts, emotions, and actions arise from desire and fear." (Eckhart Tolle)

"As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action." (Eckhart Tolle)

"As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, this sense of your own presence, you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body and the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as 'your self'." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Authentic human interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Be aware of your breathing as often as you are able, whenever you remember. Do that for one year, and it will be more powerfully transformative than attending all of these courses. And it's free." (Eckhart Tolle, "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose", 2005)

"Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"By far the greater part of violence that humans have inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged, but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‘yours,’ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"By knowing yourself as the awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self seeking in situations, places, and conditions. In other words, what happens or doesn't happen is not that important any more. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. A playfulness comes into your life. You recognize this world as a cosmic dance, the dance of form." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Don’t Seek Happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to – alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person – you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain." (Eckhart Tolle)

"For what you do to others, you do to yourself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Forget about your life situation and pay attention to your life. Your life situation exists in time. Your life is now. Your life situation is mind~stuff. Your life is real." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction." (Eckhart Tolle)

"How wonderful to go beyond wanting and fearing in your relationships. Love does not want or fear anything." (Eckhart Tolle)

"I am the awareness that is aware that there is attachment." (Eckhart Tolle)

"I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don't know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten. Living knowledge, ancient and yet ever new, is then activated and released from within you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"I just cannot live with myself any longer. [...] If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self ’ that ‘I’ cannot live with." (Eckhart Tolle , "The Power of Now")

"Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate 'other'. You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is." (Eckhart Tolle)

"If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream. (Eckhart Tolle)

"If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without." (Eckhart Tolle)

"If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that’s just more ego." (Eckhart Tolle)

"In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same." (Eckhart Tolle)

"In today’s rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just Being." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not." (Eckhart Tolle)

"It has been said 'God is love' but that is not absolutely correct. God is the One Life in and beyond the countless forms of life. Love implies duality: lover and beloved, subject and object. so love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Money can activate the painbody and cause complete unconsciousness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?" (Eckhart Tolle)

"Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disillusionments before you realize that truth. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they will also give you pain. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they cannot give you joy. Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of Being. It is an essential part of the inner state of peace, the state that has been called the peace of God. It is your natural state, not something that you need to work hard for or struggle to attain." (Eckhart Tolle)

"On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane." (Eckhart Tolle)

"People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind." (Eckhart Tolle)

"People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.True power if within, and it is available to you now." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Spiritual Awakening is awakening from the dream of thought." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not 'the thinker'. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it." (Eckhart Tolle)

"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." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly - you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over." (Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment", 1997)

"The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind." (Eckhart Tolle)

"[...] the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions." (Eckhart Tolle)

"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it." (Eckhart Tolle)

"There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time - past and future - the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment." (Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment", 1997)

"Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To be aware of little, quiet things, you need to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment. That means now." (Eckhart Tolle)

"To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them – while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease." (Eckhart Tolle)

"True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found." (Eckhart Tolle)

"What you react to in others, you strengthen in yourself." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get attached to them, you will know it’s the ego. And you are never really attached to a thing but to a thought that has ‘I,’ ‘me,’ or ‘mine’ in it. Whenever you completely accept a loss, you go beyond ego, and who you are, the I Am which is consciousness itself, emerges." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whatever the present moment contains, accept is as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists." (Eckhart Tolle)

"When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are." (Eckhart Tolle)"

"When your attention moves into the Now, there is an alertness. It is as if you were waking up from a dream, the dream of thought, the dream of past and future. Such clarity, such simplicity. No room for problem-making. Just this moment as it is." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. [...] When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Where does all that unhappiness come from?" (Eckhart Tolle)

"Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Within every situation is contained a seed of grace. Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world." (Eckhart Tolle)

"Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You are the universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You don’t need to condemn. Just observe, That is sin. That is insanity. That is unconsciousness. Above all, don’t forget to observe your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there." (Eckhart Tolle)

"You get there by realizing you are already there." (Eckhart Tolle)

🌀Week 2022-10: Rudolf Steiner - Collected Quotes

"In thinking, we have that element given us which welds our separate individuality into one whole with the cosmos." (Rudolf Steiner, "The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception", 1894)

"It is owing to our limitations that a thing appears to us as single and separate when in truth it is not a separate thing at all." (Rudolf Steiner, "The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception", 1894)

"The smallest thing in its rightful place can lead to the highest goals." (Rudolf Steiner, "Rosicrucian Wisdom", 1907)

"When the past has taught us that we have more within us than we have ever used, our prayer is a cry to the divine to come to us and fill us with its power." (Rudolf Steiner, "Paths of Experience", 1934)

"Man is effective in the world not only through what he does, but above all through what he is." (Rudolf Steiner, "Study of Man", 1948)

"Truth is a free creation of the human spirit, that never would exist at all if we did not generate it ourselves. The task of understanding is not to replicate in conceptual form something that already exists, but rather to create a wholly new realm, that together with the world given to our senses constitutes the fullness of reality." (Rudolf Steiner, "Truth and Knowledge", 1963)

"You'll be able to gain insight and reach a conclusion only by applying the powers of mind, intellect, soul, heart, spirit, and imagination. This is what 'looking at something spiritually' really means." (Rudolf Steiner, "Bees", 1982)

"Beauty is not the divine in a cloak of physical reality; no, it is physical reality in a cloak that is divine. The artist does not bring the divine on to the earth by letting it flow into the world; he raises the world into the sphere of the divine." (Rudolf Steiner, "Art: An Introductory Reader", 2003)

"He who would know the world, seek first within his being’s depth; he who would truly know himself, develop interest in the world." (Rudolf Steiner)

"Heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the portals of humility." (Rudolf Steiner)

"If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher." (Rudolf Steiner)

"Just as the human soul takes leave of the body... one can truly see in the flying swarm an image of the departing human soul." (Rudolf Steiner)

"Nor it is an objection to say that we must understand a prayer if it is to have its true effect. That simply is not the case. Who understands the wisdom of a flower? Yet we can take pleasure in it." (Rudolf Steiner, "Prayer", 1910)

"The outer world, with all its phenomena, is filled with divine splendour, but we must have experienced the divine within ourselves, before we can discover it in our environment." (Rudolf Steiner)

"To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world." (Rudolf Steiner)

"What may be trivial and commonplace to the understanding is infinitely deep and sublime to the human heart." (Rudolf Steiner)

"When we raise ourselves through meditation to what unites us with the spirit, we quicken something within us that is eternal and unlimited by birth and death. Once we have experienced this eternal part in us, we can no longer doubt its existence. Meditation is thus the way to knowing and beholding the eternal, indestructible, essential center of our being." (Rudolf Steiner, 1923)

🌀Week 2022-03: Paulo Coelho - Collected Quotes

"Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself." (Paulo Coelho, "The Pilgrimage", 1987)

"Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive. and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognize that it is working for us." (Paulo Coelho, "The Alchemist", 1988)

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting." (Paulo Coelho, "The Alchemist", 1988)

"People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly."(Paulo Coelho, "The Alchemist", 1988)

"When you cease doubting, you have stopped moving forward." (Paulo Coelho, "Brida", 1990)

"Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown - even when we don't want to and when we think we don't need to." (Paulo Coelho, "By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept", 1994)

"The spiritual path can only be traveled through the daily experience of love." (Paulo Coelho, "By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept", 1994)

"At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss."(Paulo Coelho, "Eleven Minutes", 2003)

"Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant." (Paulo Coelho, "Eleven Minutes", 2003)

"Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person." (Paulo Coelho, "Eleven Minutes", 2003)

"Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams." (Paulo Coelho, "The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession", 2005)

"We humans have two great problems: the first is knowing when to begin; the second is knowing when to stop." (Paulo Coelho, "The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession", 2005)

"Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find hard to accept. Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself." (Paulo Coelho, "The Witch of Portobello: A Novel", 2006) 

"Everyone contributes a word, a sentence, an image, but in the end it all makes sense: the happiness of one becomes the joy of all."(Paulo Coelho, "Aleph", 2011)

"I understand that everything is connected, that all roads meet, and that all rivers flow into the same sea." (Paulo Coelho, "Aleph", 2011)

"If you want to see a rainbow you have to learn to see the rain." (Paulo Coelho, "Aleph", 2011)

"That is what marks out the warrior: the knowledge that willpower and courage are not the same thing. Courage can attract fear and adulation, but willpower requires patience and commitment. Men and women with immense willpower are generally solitary types and give off a kind of coolness. Many people mistakenly think that (they) are cold (people) when nothing could be further from the truth." (Paulo Coelho, "Aleph", 2011)

"Excessive caution destroys the soul and the heart, because living is an act of courage, and an act of courage is always an act of love." (Paulo Coelho, "Manuscript Found in Accra", 2012)

"Love rules, but no one knows where it has its throne; in order to know that secret place, you must first submit to Love." (Paulo Coelho, "Manuscript Found in Accra", 2012)

"Love transforms, Love heals. But sometimes it lays deadly traps and ends up destroying the person who decided to surrender himself completely." (Paulo Coelho, "Manuscript Found in Accra", 2012)

"The act of discovering who we are will force us to accept that we can go further than we think." (Paulo Coelho, "Manuscript Found in Accra", 2012)

"All battles in life serve to teach us something, even the battles we lose." (Paulo Coelho)

"Love is looking at the same mountains from different angles." (Paulo Coelho)

"The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter." (Paulo Coelho)

🌀Week 2022-02: Hermann Hesse - Collected Quotes

"During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman." (Hermann Hesse, "Siddhartha", 1910)

"Passion is always a mystery and unaccountable, and unfortunately there is no doubt that life does not spare its purest children and often it is just the most deserving people who cannot help loving those that destroy them." ("Hermann Hesse, "Gertrude", 1910)

"Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again." (Hermann Hesse, "Demian", 1919)

"Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it." (Hermann Hesse, "Siddhartha", 1922)

"Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it." (Hermann Hesse, "Siddhartha", 1922)

"All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast." (Hermann Hesse, "Narcissus and Goldmund", 1930)

"All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require the medium of theories, mythologies, and lies." (Hermann Hesse)

"Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order." (Hermann Hesse)

"It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is." (Hermann Hesse)

"Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin." (Hermann Hesse)

"Seeking means to have a goal; but finding means to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose." (Hermann Hesse)

"Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go." (Herman Hesse)

"There is no reality except the one contained within us." (Herman Hesse)

"Whither will my path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it." (Hermann Hesse, "Siddhartha", 1922)

"Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time." (Hermann Hesse)

🌀Week 2021-51: Anthony de Mello - Collected Quotes

"A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories." (Anthony de Mello, "One Minute Wisdom", 1988)

"All suffering comes from a person's inability to sit still and be alone." (Anthony de Mello, "One Minute Wisdom", 1988)

"People who deliberate fully before they take a step will spend their lives on one leg." (Anthony de Mello, "One Minute Wisdom", 1988)

"Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it." (Anthony de Mello, "One Minute Wisdom", 1988)

"Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance." (Anthony de Mello, "One Minute Wisdom", 1988)

"Spirituality practiced in the state of activity is incomparably superior to that practiced in a state of withdrawal." (Anthony de Mello, "One Minute Wisdom", 1988)

"You can read books without ever stepping into a library; and practice spirituality without ever going to a temple." (Anthony de Mello, " One Minute Wisdom", 1988)

"Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love them. Otherwise you spend the whole time grappling with your wrong notions of them, with your illusions that are constantly crashing against reality." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"Nobody is afraid of the unknown, what you really fear is the loss of the known." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"Ordinarily, everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"Pleasant experiences make life delightful. Painful experiences lead to growth." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"There's only one reason why you're not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it's because you're thinking or focusing on what you don't have. [...] But, right now you have everything you need to be in bliss." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"Understand the obstructions you are putting in the way of love, freedom, and happiness and they will drop. Turn on the light of awareness and the darkness will disappear. Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something you have; love is something that has you." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"What is a loving heart? A loving heart is sensitive to the whole of life, to all persons; a loving heart doesn't harden itself to any persons or things." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"You are never in love with anyone. You're only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person." (Anthony de Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters", 1990)

"Mostly the discontent that you feel comes from not having enough of something - you are dissatisfied because you think you do not have enough money or power or success or fame or virtue or love or holiness. This is not the discontent that leads to the joy of the kingdom. Its source is greed and ambition and its fruit is restlessness and frustration. The day you are discontented not because you want more of something but without knowing what it is you want; when you are sick at heart of everything you are pursuing so far and you are sick of the pursuing itself, then your heart will attain a great clarity, an insight that will cause you mysteriously to delight in everything and in nothing." (Anthony de Mello, "The Way to Love", 1995)

"The tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness – it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness, and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment." (Anthony de Mello, "The Way to Love", 1995)

"Understand your darkness and it will vanish; then you will know what light is. Understand your nightmare for what it is and it will stop; then you will wake up to reality. Understand your false beliefs and they will drop; then you will know the taste of happiness." (Anthony de Mello, "The Way to Love", 1995)

"To relate is to react. To react is to understand oneself. To understand oneself is to be enlightened. Relationships are schools for enlightenment." (Anthony de Mello, "Heart of the Enlightened: A Book of Story Meditations", 1997)

"A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within." (Anthony de Mello, "Anthony De Mello: Writings", 1999) 

"Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts - generally somebody else's - mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions." (Anthony de Mello, "Anthony De Mello: Writings", 1999) 

"The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation." (Anthony de Mello, "Anthony De Mello: Writings", 1999) 

"This is what is ultimate in our human knowledge of God, to know that we do not know." (Anthony de Mello, "Anthony De Mello: Writings", 1999)

"No one is exempt from talking nonsense. The great misfortune is to do it solemnly." (Anthony de Mello, "One Minute Nonsense", 2003)

"To those who seek to protect their ego true Peace brings only disturbance." (Anthony de Mello, "One Minute Nonsense", 2003)

"Sin is a refusal to grow, a refusal to love, a refusal to get committed, to be concerned, and to take risks." (Anthony de Mello, "Seek God Everywhere: Reflections on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius", 2010)