Additional Insights

Here is just emptiness. There is no getting my ego out of the way, and all that stuff. There is just the seeing, shining in great brilliance and clarity.
- Douglas Harding

You know that you (as presence-awareness) are here, that something is happening. The bare actuality of being here is undeniable and impossible to doubt, needing no proof or belief. This presence (or emptiness) is the water in every wave. It cannot be grasped or possessed, and yet, it is always right here, unavoidable and thus unattainable. This is the jewel, and this jewel is showing up as absolutely everything.
- Joan Tollifson

When we accept that God's will prevails all the time and not the individual will, the ‘me’ as the doer gets smaller and smaller till it gets completely merged in Consciousness.
- Ramana Maharshi

Self-Realization or Enlightenment is nothing more than the deepest possible understanding that there is no individual doer of any action - neither you nor anyone else. Also you are not the thinker of any thoughts, nor the experiencer of any experiences - they happen. When IT happens, no bright lights are likely to flash in your head!
- Ramesh Balsekar

A gentle, loving, inner peace and silence is here and now in this moment. It has always been this way. It is always here. It is right here within you and all around you, a stillness, an apparent void, a seeming nothingness out of which everything arises, exists, and eventually returns.
- Mark McCloskey

Is the abode of God anywhere but in the earth, the sea, and sky, and air, and virtue? Why do we seek the heavenly ones beyond?
Whatever you see, and whatever you touch, that is God.
- Lucan

Self-Realization is effortless. What you are trying to find is what you already are.
- Ramesh Balsekar

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Mystical Musings

The light of consciousness passes through the film of memory
and throws pictures on your brain. Because of the deficient
and disordered state of your brain, what you perceive is
distorted and colored by feelings of like and dislike. Make
your thinking orderly and free from emotional overtones,
and you will see people and things as they are, with clarity
and charity.
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This Wholeness, this Unity, this Oneness cannot be denied. It is the One True Self performing a great dance for no purpose other than the dance itself. Life — this astonishing feast of sights, sounds, joy, laughter, pain, pleasure, and love — is a colossal smorgasbord served by and to a party of One.
- Theoron Felson

Strong wine, fat meat, peppery things, very sweet things, these have not real taste; real taste is plain and simple. Supernatural, extraordinary feats do not characterize a real man; a real man is quite ordinary in behavior.
From "The Gospel According to Zen"

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't
compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
- Laozi

You are the Self, here and now. Leave the mind alone,
stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that
to stand alert but detached, watching events come and
go, is an aspect of your real nature.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Silence is the mother of everything that has come out from
the Depth. And Silence kept quiet about what she was
unable to describe: the Unspeakable.
- Clement of Alexandria

We can never, never describe all features of the total
situation, not only because every situation is infinitely
complex, but also because the total situation is the Uni-
verse.
- Alan Watts

In life and in love, there is only that moment, the NOW.
The only reality we know is what we experience this very second.
Reality is not what has passed or what has yet to come into being.
Grabbing hold of this simple idea makes life magical
because it brings love alive.
- Leo Buscaglia

There is nothing wrong with asking "What is God?" or "What is the meaning of life?" — go ahead and ask. Humans, by their very nature, want answers to all of life’s mysteries. The problem lies in formulating a satisfactory response in the form of language which is merely an expression of the limited conscious mind.
- Theoron Felson

The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is
what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams,
illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is
what it is. Accept that it's unknown, and it's plain sailing.
- John Lennon

More From Mr. Watts

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it.

This is the real secret of life - to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.

We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

- Alan Watts

Quoth The Wise Man

In original nature there is no this and that. The Great Round Mirror has no likes or dislikes.
- Seung Sahn

Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind.
- Ramana Maharshi

That which is, is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet. Peace is our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that we cease to spoil it. If we remove all the rubbish from the mind, the peace will become manifest. That which is obstructing the peace must be removed. Peace is the only reality.
- Ramana Maharshi

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.
- Alan Watts

...when you really understand that you are what you see and know, you do not run around the country-side thinking, 'I am all this.' There is simply 'all this.' 
- Alan Watts

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
- Alan Watts

Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.
- Eckhart Tolle

The description is not the described; I can describe the mountain, but the description is not the mountain, and if you are caught up in the description, as most people are, then you will never see the mountain.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

What Would Jesus Say?

Jesus said: When you make the two one, and when you make the inside as the outside, and the outside as the inside, and the upper side as the lower; and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the man is not man and the woman is not woman... then you shall enter the kingdom.

Jesus said: I am the Light which is over everything. I am the All. From me that All has gone forth, and to me the All has returned. Split wood: I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.

The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us how our end will take place.
Jesus said: Have you then discovered the beginning so that you inquire about the end? For where the beginning is, there shall be the end. Blessed is he who shall stand at the beginning, and he shall know the end and he shall not taste death.

The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
Jesus said: It is like a mustard-seed, smaller than all seeds. But when it falls on the tilled earth, it produces a large branch and becomes shelter for the birds of heaven.

Jesus said: Look upon the Living One as long as you live, so that you will not die and seek to see Him without being able to see Him.

Jesus said: And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

So Said The Sage

You cannot describe it or draw it. You cannot praise it enough or perceive it. No place can be found in which to put the Original Face; it will not disappear even when the universe is destroyed.
- Mumon

See what at this very moment your own face looks like - the Face you had before you, or indeed your parents, were born - there is nothing hidden. If you look within and recognize your own ‘Original Face', all secrets are in you.
- Hui-neng

God, whose love and joy
are present everywhere,
can't come to visit you
unless you aren't there.
- Angelus Silesius

You are the eternal thing that comes and goes that appears - now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown - and so it goes, forever and ever and ever.
- Alan Watts

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
- Alan Watts

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god?
- Alan Watts

We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
- Alan Watts

Everything affects everything. In this universe, when one thing changes, everything changes (all minds are joined). Hence the great power of man in changing the world by changing himself.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

God is a pure no-thing,
concealed in now and here:
the less you reach for him,
the more he will appear.
- Angelus Silesius

Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you realise your true nature.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

Are not our desires inseparably intertwined with the continuation of life? Even the idea of eliminating desire is fruitless. The desire to eliminate all desire is still itself a desire. How can we find release and peace by replacing one desire with another? Surely we shall find peace not by eliminating desire, but by finding its fulfilment and satisfaction in the One who created it.
- Sadhu Sundar Singh

...a man sitting quietly and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be "passive", because he is not "doing" anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, an activity of the soul, which is possible only under the condition of inner freedom and independence.
- Erich Fromm

God is my final end;
Does he from me evolve,
Then he grows out of me,
While I in Him dissolve.
-Angelus Silesius

The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same — one in seeing, one in knowing, and one in loving.
- Meister Eckhart

If you ask a good man: “Why are you seeking God?” — he will reply: “Just because he is God!” “Why are you seeking Truth?” “Just because it is Truth!” As life lives on for its own sake, needing no reason for being, so the just man has no reason for doing what he does.
- Meister Eckhart

There is no duty except in relation to an authority which imposes it. The believer of this or that religion will say that 'God' is the authority which imposes on him the obligation of salvation. But who then is this 'God' who while imposing something on me, is separate from me and has need of my action? Everything, then, is not included in his perfect harmony?
- Hubert Benoit

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode... Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
- Henry David Thoreau

Thus Spake Theoron Felson

We are at our best when we are empty — free from greed, lust, opinions, prejudice, desire, ambition, and ultimately even hopes and dreams.

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Seeing ourselves in others is a key. It speaks to the interconnectedness of us all. Giving our time to others not only demonstrates love; it is an act of selflessness which, whether we realize it or not, contributes to our spiritual growth.

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We want to be distracted at all times, as if to avoid the silence where we just might get a glimpse of the True Self. We're afraid of losing the ego-image; afraid that it would be the end of what we're accustomed to and comfortable with; afraid of losing our “identities”. But it really comes down to an avoidance of who we are; an avoidance which produces and perpetuates misery, suffering, sorrow, hardship, heartache, adversity, grief, and all the “problems” associated with life.

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“My” mind and “your” mind; “my” body and “your” body are of the same realization. There is but one Mind, one Body.

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True, lasting happiness is not something we can attain by some switch we “decide” to turn on. It is available to us all, now; for it is our True Nature. However, it is clouded, hidden, and obscured by ego. No “decision” is going to dispel that particular illusion.

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We react to situations as they arise and it appears as if a choice has been made. Life just happens. It is, for all intents and purposes, a no-choice proposition. There is no “you” (as an individual) to make decisions as to what should be done and then to lament what could have been done. In reality, it is not in “your” hands. Life flows like a river, always in the present moment. The past (as in lamenting a choice) and the future (as in imagining the outcome of a choice) exist only in the mind.

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We are, in reality, a single unified process. But life entails a forgetting of the Eternal Process. In order to put drama into life, we pretend that we are not, in fact, the One.

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Our own well-being is best served when our concern is to serve the well-being of others.

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When we are aware of the here and now and when we eschew the trivial egocentric desires that motivate our everyday way of living, we give way to a new sense of Self.

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Seeing is sight. Hearing is sound. My mind and my experience are one. There is no need to differentiate between them.

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Neither does the world’s most brilliant mind nor the world’s wisest sage possess any knowledge beyond that which is truly in everyone.

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Only peaceful souls can effect a peaceful world.

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If we are having difficulty finding peace, then let's be still for a moment. Maybe it will find us.