Quotes About Self-discovery

The meditation technique itself cultivate precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go - qualities that are innate within us.

All too frequently we relate like timid birds who don't dare to leave the nest.

Loneliness is not a problem. Loneliness is nothing to be solved. The same is true for any other experience we might have.

Yesterday I talked about cultivating precision, gentleness, and openess, and described how the meditation technique helps us to remember the qualities that we already possess.

Nobody else can really begin to sort out for you what do you accept and what to reject in terms of what wakes you up and what makes you fall asleep. No one else can really sort out for you what do you accept - what opens up your world – and what to reject – but seems to keep you going round and round in some kind of repetitive misery.

The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

We're able to see how we run and hide and keep ourselves busy so that we never have to let our hearts be penetrated. And we're also able to see how we could open and relax.

we ourselves can sort out what to accept and what to reject. We can discern what will make us complete, sane, grown-up people, and what—if we are too involved in it—will keep us children forever. This is the process of making friends with ourselves and with our world. It involves not just the parts we like, but the whole picture, because it all has a lot to teach us.

In the same way, if we see our so-called limitations with clarity, precision, gentleness, goodheartedness, and kindness and, having seen them fully, then let go, open further, we begin to find that our world is more vast and more refreshing and fascinating than we had realized before. In other words, the key to feeling more whole and less shut off and shut down is to be able to see clearly who we are and what we're doing.

To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is. (The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 3)

Quizá su batalla para establecerse en Old House había terminado, o quizá se equivocaba al pensar que había encontrado su lugar o que podría encontrarlo alguna vez.

Sólo sumida en ese torbellino de emociones, en mis horas, más bajas, descubrí que la gente podía seguir amándome aunque viera mi verdadero yo. Con el lado oscuro incluido.

Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive.

Freedom would mean rest, artistic achievement, the intellectual fulfilment of my being.

That's the only hitch in learning: it's humbling. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. Anyway, all that's a long way around saying that it's crazy to do things just to prove you can do 'em. The more you learn, the more you'll find yourself doing things you never thought you could do in a million years.

A wise man is capable of determining his weaknesses and working to address them

Stephen summarizes, "It's when you look back and you learn how much you've grown and changed.

Like many Peace Corps volunteers all over the world, I found that the parent visit was a kind of revelation: suddenly I saw how much I had learned and how much I had forgotten.

I find my data first in myself, not first in the poets. For if I did not find it in myself, I would not be able to find it in the poets.

To a humble mind nothing is more astonishing than to hear its own excellence.

Pascal would not have needed to read this book. He wrote: "Not only do we only know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life, or our death, of God or of ourselves.

But this time I see a new person. Silent. Still. Someone I believe I know. WHO ARE YOU? I move closer but the face is shrouded, the features blurred as if seen through a dirty lens. I'm tempted to run away, but I don't. I know where running leads. To the hole. To death. I know I can no longer fear.

Separated from the herd, it gains identity.

about how we are all "emigrants from a country we remember too little of," how important to us are the fragments we do remember clearly and how we spend our time trying to reconstruct ourselves from these.