Quotes About Self

Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head.

When something goes wrong, such as failing an exam to qualify as a doctor, a person may seem to be despairing over something that has been lost. But on closer inspection, according to Kierkegaard, it becomes obvious that the man is not really despairing of the thing (failing an exam) but of himself. The self that failed to achieve a goal has become intolerable. The man wanted to become a different self (a doctor), but he is now stuck with a failed self and in despair.

Is there more to me? Sure. Kids yell 'albino boy.' I don't turn around. Choose the name you answer to. No one can do that but you.

Forget who I really am, who I really want to be.

Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it.

I am who I am and that's who I am.

Don't call yourself a change, let the change manifest in you and people will call you change without asking them to

It felt so good to be darling, being lost didn't matter.

I didn't tell him the rest of what I knew -- that once you gave up even a little of yourself, it wasn't long before you gave up everything. But he'd learn that for himself soon enough.

He saw clearly, immediately, that the man didn't care about the gift's value, didn't care about the gift even, but cared profoundly for the act of receiving as though the gift were a tribute, a confirmation of his self, his being, his reality. He found no pleasure in what he was taking but in the act of taking itself.

Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.

As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there. "I Am That" - pg 188

In the stillness of the mind, I saw myself as I am: unbound.

When you go deep inside nothing is all there is. There is no 'I am'. The 'I am' merges in the Absolute.

I am' itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor mind, and the love of the self in you is for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.

The man who carries a parcel is anxious not to lose it -- he is parcel-conscious. The man who cherishes the feeling 'I am' is self-conscious. The jnani holds on to nothing and cannot be said to be conscious. And yet he is not unconscious. He is the very heart of awareness. We call him digambara clothed in space, the Naked One, beyond all appearance. There is no name and shape under which he may be said to exist, yet he is the only one that truly is.

There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself. And that vastness is also love.

In the great mirror of consciousness, images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material - destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence - vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion, "I am so-and-so," obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.

The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out. The "I am" is the door. Stay at it until it opens … It is only when you cannot come and go freely that the house becomes a jail. I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally and therefore to me, the world is a home, not a prison.

Our minds are just waves on the ocean of consciousness. As waves, they come and go. As ocean, they are infinite and eternal. Know yourself as the ocean of being, the womb of all existence.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience, "I am the world, the world is myself," you are free from desire and fear on one hand and become totally responsible for the world on the other.

Don't try to reform yourself; just see the futility of all change. The changeful keeps on changing while the changeless is waiting.

Leave alone your desires and fears and give your entire attention to the subject, to he who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: who desires? Let each desire bring you back to yourself.

Desire by itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience. It is the choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing - food, sex, power, fame - will make you happy is to deceive yourself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.