Quotes About Self-discovery

The true purpose of alchemy is about reining in our baser instincts –' he nodded towards me '– and realizing our highest potential.

We each need to find out our own personal methods of cultivating happiness,

renunciation is the start of our inner journey. Instead of fixating on external circumstances, we look within.

Once you decide not to worry about that stuff anymore, dating and relationships and love and all that, it's like you're free to get on with real life.

She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things.

At some point, I'd like to have an origina l idea. And I'd like to be fancied, or maybe loved even, but I'll wait and see.

I get this occasionally, the need to define myself as a something-or-other, and at various times in my life I have wondered if I´m a Goth, a homosexual, a Jew, a Catholic or a manic-depressive, wheter I am adopted, or have a hole in my heart, or possess the ability to move objects with the power of my mind, and have always, mostly regretfully, come to conclusion that I´m none of the above. The fact is I´m actually not ANYTHING.

it is the essential and self-preserving act that must be taken if we intend to lead a better life. This bold and courageous step can only occur after we conquer our defensive illusions—both about our parents and about ourselves.

Identity is such a crucial affair that one shouldn't rush into it

Because fear is the basis of all inhibitions, mastery over fear means the unblocking of whole avenues of life experience that previously had been avoided.

Then growing up is not a matter of discovering who or what one really is, but joining the general amnesia whereby each of us pretends to be an autonomous person and learns how to play the social game of constantly reassuring each other that, yes, you are a person, just like me, and I'm okay, you're okay.

Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.

The challenge is to find our destiny in exactly what we are refusing to engage in.

We can actually reconstruct our past by examining what we think, say, feel, expect, believe, and do in an intimate relationship now.

Beings as complex as ourselves need retreats from others to explore the depths of our character and our destiny. We need regular periods of solitude to replenish ourselves, to locate new sources of creativity and self-knowledge, and to discover possibilities in our souls that are invisible when we are with others.

One of the difficulties of stretching ourselves is that we tend to see ourselves as our limitations, not as our potential. We're lost in our own world.

You don't know where you're going until you know where you've been?

Your desires and true beliefs have a way of playing blind man's bluff. You must corner the inner facts...

In my first group, a counselor asked me why i'm here. he said, 'What's your problem? I said ' i'm a drug addict and an alcoholic.' he shook his head. 'no.' he said, 'that's how you've been treating your problem. what is your problem?

Let a man go to the bottom of what he is and believe in that.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see, and what it means.

Zarathustra is the prophet of the Church of the Serpent. He himself was distinctly serpentine. Nietzsche is one of the snake philosophers. He has venom towards the weak and the meek. He has the fierce bite of knowledge. We all need the Serpent's Kiss if we wish to become enlightened. You must poison your old self if you wish to find your new self, your higher self. Your old views are poisonous. Poison must meet poison.

How do you fill the hole? Only by becoming Whole, which means becoming fully individuated, which means fully integrating all the contents of the unconscious, both personal and collective.

All my life I'd wanted to be special, and for a while I was, sharing David's spirit. Now I'd have to find a way to be special in my own right.