Quotes

Frank

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, where's ugly?

Reality is the Ultimate Lover, for it declares everything worthy and holds it within.

Every upset is a gift. It shows us where we are still in an argument with Reality; where we are attached to something other than Love. It invites us to choose again.

The past does not exist in reality. Look around you. Where is the past? The only place that the past exists is in the present, as a concept we call memory.

Love is freedom. Attachment to something other than love is the only suffering.

I finally figured out how to have everything I want. It's deceptively simple. All there is to do is to simply, genuinely, want everything I have.

I identified with my ego and then set about to be somebody and to make my life matter. Now my desire is to be nobody, beyond mattering.

Resentment is like locking yourself in a prison and giving the resented, the key to your freedom.

Reality is immediate and can be experienced here and now. When you seek to hold on to an experience, you reduce the immediate to a concept. You exchange reality for this concept, this memory. All concepts are false, for the truth is here, now.

Pain is a gift. It is Realities way of saying "pay attention." It shows you where you stop. It shows you the boundary of your willingness to be present to love. Unconditional love is who you are. Every limit placed upon that is a violation of your essential nature.

The Work is the express route to freedom. And you don't have to meet this train at the station. It will meet you wherever you are and bring you home.

The word "question" is derived from the Latin "quarrier" (to seek) which is also the root of "quest." A creative life is not the one we planned yesterday, but the one which lives at the edge of mystery, now; just beyond the question.

Katie

If you want something to be different than it is, you might as well teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, "Meow." Wanting something to be different than it is is hopeless.

Thoughts are just what is. They appear. They're innocent. They're not personal. They're like the breeze or the leaves on the trees or the raindrops falling. Thoughts arise like that, and we can make friends with them. Would you argue with a raindrop?

The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story.

An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy. It's a gift that says, "Get honest; inquire." We reach out for alcohol, or television, or credit cards, so we can focus out there and not have to look at the feeling. And that's as it should be, because in our innocence we haven't known how. So now what we can do is reach out for a paper and a pencil, write thought down, and investigate.

Every story, every thing is God: reality. It apparently emerges from out of Itself and appears as a life. It lives forever within the story, until the story ends. From out of Itself I appeared as my story, until the questions brought me home.

We buy a home for our children, for our bodies; we get a garage for our car; we have dog houses for our dogs; but we won't give the mind a home. And we treat it like an outcast. We shame it and blame it and shame it again. But if you let the mind ask its questions, then the heart will rise with the answer. And "rising" is just a metaphor. The heart will reveal the answer, and the mind can finally rest at home in the heart and come to see that it and the heart are one. That's what these four questions are about.

The Work always leaves you with less of a story. Who would you be without your story? You never know until you inquire. There is no story that is you or that leads to you. Every story leads away from you. Turn it around; undo it. You are what exists before all stories. You are what remains when the story is understood.

Until we know that death is equal to life, and that it comes in its own sweet way, perfectly, we're going to take on the role of God without the awareness of it, and it's always going to hurt. In other words, whenever you mentally oppose what is, you're going to experience sadness and apparent separation. There's no sadness without the story. What is is. You are it. You're not saving anyone; you're not killing anyone. The world doesn't depend on you.

You don't get to vote on what is. Have you noticed?

All sadness is a tantrum.

Personalities don't love. They want something.

So, how do you get back to heaven? To begin with, just notice the thoughts that take you away from it. You don't have to believe everything your thoughts tell you. Just become familiar with the particular thoughts you use to deprive yourself of happiness. It may seem strange at first to get to know yourself in this way, but becoming familiar with your stressful thoughts will show you the way home to everything you need.

Warner Erhard

Man keeps looking for a truth that fits his reality.
Given our reality, the truth doesn't fit.
If you experience it, it's the truth.
The same thing believed is a lie.
In life, understanding is the booby prize.

It's much easier to ride the horse in the direction he's going.

Life is a rip-off when you expect to get what you want.
Life works when you choose what you got.
Actually what you got is what you chose.
To move on, choose it.

Perfection is a state in which things are the way they are and are not the way they are not.
As you can see, this universe is perfect. Don't lie about it.

If you're not all right the way you are it takes a lot of effort to get better.
Realize you're all right the way you are, and you'll get better naturally.

Life is a game.
In order to have a game something has to be more important than something else.
If what already is, is more important than what isn't the game is over.
So, life is a game in which we pretend that what isn't is more important than what is.
Let the good times roll.

If you could really accept that you weren't ok, you could stop proving you were ok.
If you could stop proving that you were ok, you could get that it was ok not to be ok.
If you could get that it was ok not to be ok, you could get that you were ok the way you are.
You're ok, get it?

Nisargadatta Maharaj

I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both.

It is enough to know the "I am" as reality and also love.

The Supreme (paramakash) imparts reality to whatever comes into being. To say that it is the universal love may be the nearest we can come to it in words. Just like love, it makes everything real, beautiful, desirable.

Circumstances and conditions rule the ignorant. The knower of reality is not compelled. The only law he obeys is that of love.

To act from desire and fear is bondage, to act from love is freedom.

Gangaji

The resolve that all being live in peace and harmony is the willingness to meet, straight on, all the horror-beginning with yourself.

When you are willing to give up the habit of causing, and enjoying or hating the effect, there is the possibility of recognizing the truth of who you are.

True retreat is a sacred opportunity. To truly retreat means to leave behind all notions of what keeps you from true eternal happiness, as well as all notions of what gives you eternal happiness. In other words, to open the mind.

You are the stillness that is eternally awake.

When you say yes to the totality of being, with your whole life, regardless of the consequences, then the wisdom and the insights and the opportunities for deepening this yes are immediate and endless.

The habit is to want to get rid of what bothers us, rather than using that to see what cause is of being bothered.

The less abstract death is in your life now, the more possibility that the rest of your days can be lived in freedom.

The biggest obstacle I have seen so far is that awakening is actually wanted for something else. Truth must be desired for itself, regardless of what consequences follow. This is a shocking truth.

The message that I bring from my Master and his Master is that without a shadow of a doubt, you can know the truth of your being.

Surrendering to the inherent truth of the mortality of the body serves to push you deeper into what is here in this moment. This moment is the doorway that opens to the truth of omnipresent, omni-directional Being.

What you are investigating is always only your Self, formless throughout eternity, and vast beyond measure.

When you are willing to totally renounce all the strategies of survival-mental, emotional, and physical-then immediately, instantaneously, you will recognize your true Self.

When the question, WHO? is followed innocently, purely, all the way back to its source, there is a huge. astounding realization: there is no entity there at all! There is only the indefinable, boundless recognition of yourself as inseparable from anything else.
You are free. You are whole. You are endless. There is no bottom to you, no boundary to you. Any idea about yourself appears in you and will disappear back into you. You are awareness, and awareness IS consciousness.
Let all self-definitions die in this moment. Let them all go, and see what remains. See what is never born and what does not die. Feel the relief of laying down the burden of defining yourself. Experience the actual non-reality of the burden. Experience the joy that is here. Rest in the endless peace of your true nature before any thought of I arises.

Telling the personal story is the primary religion of most people on the planet. The personal story gets located in a body, a tribe, a nation, a religion, an "us". This is why the planet is constantly at war, and why you may be constantly at war with yourself. If you can recognize what your story is, then the story is conscious rather than unconscious. You can see what the story is, and you can choose to stop following it as if it were reality.
The possibility is to recognize that all our stories, however complex and multi-layered, however deeply implanted in our genetic structure, are only stories. The truth of who you are is not a story. The vastness and the closeness of that truth precedes all stories. When you overlook the truth of who you are in allegiance to some story, you miss a precious opportunity for self-recognition.

Miscellaneous

No resistance. Love it the way it is. If you love it the way it is, it will change. What did you think it was that needed to be loved? -Thaddeus Golas, author of The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. -Albert Einstein

You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving.
Well then, love your suffering.
Do not resist it, do not flee from it.
It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else. -Hermann Hesse

You know if you don't have a sense of humor, it's just not funny. -Wavy Gravy

It is the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive. -C. W. Leadbeater

Forgiveness is the only sane response. -A Course in Miracles

If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions. - Susanne K. Langer

You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. -Richard Bach

The angry epithets I hurl, describe for you my inner world
For every harsh judgment that I hold, I make lead from my own gold. -Paul Snider

Speak the truth and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

An artists job is to go to the edge and report back. -YoYo Ma