Insight

There is so much more hue and variety in real life than any model can encompass. The labels “straight”, “gay”, “bi”, are only a lens we use for convenience so we can have a feeling that we are able to manage and contain an infinitely complex reality. People don’t realize that, and implicitly believe that humans should conform to the language labels they happen to have inherited from the way their society arbitrarily parses reality.

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live.

Sometimes you win the battle by simply choosing not to fight it.

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.

Men have slow reflexes. In general it takes several generations later for them to understand.

The best books... are those that tell you what you know already

I contend that we are both Athiests. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

It is amazing how complete is the dillusion that beauty is goodness

The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man.

Insight without action is useless.

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes.

To profess to be doing God's will is a form of megalomania.

We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.

Dogs never bite me, just humans

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.

That's a fine line that's a big deal.

The dream is illusion. The work is life.

Good judgment comes from experience,
And a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

Only the individual who has comes to terms with his self have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.

i am my parents child

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.

When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own.

Water has the capability to spliter: it needs a splash.

The worst insult I can inflict on life is that I do not reflect on its meaning.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

Fundamentally, what everyone needs is mental strength and confidence, to manage the mind, just as we manage the outside world.

Change the story and you change perception; change perception and you change the world.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Parenting: Affection without sentiment, authority without cruelty, discipline without aggression, humor without ridicule, sacrifice without obligation, companionship without possessiveness.

The same lesson keeps presenting itself to me. As soon as I rebound, I will be presented with the same lesson.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

In their voices they found themselves.

Nothing is lost, nothing is gained. There is nothing.

Don't go about here and there. Go inside and remain there.

All is play. God is just playing everywhere. All are bubbles-small bubbles going down and coming up to the surface.

Things that you cannot face in yourself you will hate when you see them in someone else.

Be equal to whatever you meet! That is a better way to react to life. It is accomplished simply by meeting everything in understanding, by demanding understanding from within yourself.

This physical world, though necessary to our evolution, is the embodiment of impermanence, of constant change. Thus, we take care not to become overly attached to it.

Self Realization is finding That which is beyond even superconsciousness itself, beyond the mind--timeless, causeless, spaceless.

A hearing heart loves to whom it listens. -Melvin

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

Love all that has been created by God, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf and every ray of light. Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, love every separate fragment. If you love each separate fragment, you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

He who angers you conquers you.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

I gravitate toward gravitas.

“In order to be filled with light I have to take the risk of plugging myself in. The more often I dip into the well of inspiration the more likely I am to be inspired. The seed grows in darkness before the tree bursts forth into the light.”

“Women are the mothers of nations; by empowering them, we empower the next generation.”

Transition does not require that you reject or deny the importance of your old life, just that you let go of it. The process begins with surrender (of avoidances), awareness (of who and where we really are) and release (of the old ways of being).

It seems to me that if “We the People” could raise our level of consciousness we would see what is responsible for unhappiness. We would not frantically “pursue happiness” much the way an addict “pursues” their drug. We would begin the difficult but magnificently gratifying steps of creating a healthier world so that happiness is a natural result, not an external target we must individually pursue.

The habit of employing self-deception to maintain one’s self esteem has often become so ingrained that the first step to developing accurate self-awareness is honest acknowledgment of the existence of hidden emotions, motives and tendencies in the mind without immediately suppressing them.

It takes strong ears indeed to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship. For it is a healthy love that will risk wounding or offending in order to profer a benefit.

Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

You cannot understand what a person is saying unless you understand who they are arguing with.

“Everything that happens to you makes you stronger” isn’t really true. It is what you choose to learn from everything that makes you the person you are today. Every situation presents us with a choice: what will you do with this? Will you learn from this experience, as difficult as it may be, to grow and become a better & stronger person? Or will you assume the victim role, become bitter, and forever blame everyone & everything around you for your life? Everyone is tested; not everyone learns.

The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. where can I find a man who has forgotten the words so that I can talk with him?

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.

Some men of a secluded and studious life have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon which, though far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that restless world of waters.

Albert is a very poor student. He is mentally slow, unsociable and is always daydreaming. He is spoiling it for the rest of the class. It would be in the best interests of all if he were removed from school immediately.

"Nothing difficult is ever easy"

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

It is better to read a little and ponder a lot than to read a lot and ponder a little.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire? There is nothing spontaneous, nothing natural about human desires. Our desires are artificial. We have to be taught to desire. Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire. It tells you how to desire.

...it is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

I have lost the consolation of faith / though not the ambition to worship.

Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.

Very few people really see things unless they've had someone in early life who made them look at things. And name them too. But the looking is primary, the focus.

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.

Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be swamped. However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives, (i.e. in his world-view) then man ceases to regard the resultant divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and this world as actually constituted of separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or building blocks. Rather one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes.

Intuition makes much of it; I mean by this the faculty of seeing a connection between things that in appearance are completely different; it does not fail to lead us astray quite often.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

Enlightenment for a wave, is the moment the wave realizes that it is water.

Beware of turning into the enemy you most fear. All it takes is to lash out violently at someone who has done you some grievous harm, proclaiming that only your pain matters in this world. More than against that person’s body, you will then, at that moment, be committing a crime against your own imagination.

New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works ... images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models -- surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works -- promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.

It is only by following your deepest instinct that you can lead a rich life, and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin.

The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

The old man has been long at the fair. He is acquainted with the jugglers at the booths. His curiosity has been satisfied. He no longer cares for the exceptional, the monstrous, the marvelous and deformed. He looks through and beyond the gilding, the glitter and gloss, not only of things, but of conduct, of manners, theories, religions and philosophies. He sees clearer. The light no longer shines in his eyes.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance; for it requires knowledge to perceive it and therefore he that can perceive it hath it not.

He who understands you is greater kin to you than your own brother.

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 can possess no greater treasures.

Each day look into your conscience and amend your faults; if you fail in this duty you will be untrue to the Knowledge and Reason that are within you. Keep a watchful eye over yourself as if you were your own enemy; for you cannot learn to govern yourself, unless you first learn to govern your own passions and obey the dictates of your conscience.

Know thyself.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

Our mental limitations prevent us from accepting our mental limitations.

No one seriously doubts Socrates' maxim: The unexamined life isn't worth living. Self-assessment and attempts at self-improvement are essential aspects of "the good life." Yes, we should engage in ruthless self-reflection and harsh scrutiny, but we should simultaneously acknowledge that such introspection will, at best, only result in a partial view of our minds at work. Complete objectivity is not an option.

Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

The essence of education is not to stuff you full of facts, but to help you discover your uniqueness, to teach you how to develop it, and then show you how to give it away.

By exhaustively examining one's own mind,
one may understand his nature.
One who understands his own nature understands Heaven.

We are slaves of what we don't know;
of what we know we are masters.
Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover
and understand its cause and workings,
we overcome it by the very knowing.
The primary purpose of meditation is to become more conscious
and familiar with our inner life.
The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life.

The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. 
These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization.

He who knows others is wise. 
He who knows himself is enlightened.

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.