Quotes About Self

W]hen you practise right meditation, you 'cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self.

T]he term 'I' … must … be used … in order for us to talk with one another. But it's not a very accurate term.

the sense we generally have that it [self] exists somewhere inside us, if not in our bodies, then at least in our minds.

When you say, 'When I was six years old, … ' the 'I' refers to something that must have been the same at the age of six as it is now. If it isn't the same, … what in the world does 'I' refer to?

Clinging to any entity—including self, other, cat, or God—puts us into a conceptual prison. This is true of all beliefs, all grasped concepts. They all obstruct true Religious Experience—direct experience of Reality.

H]ow can there be experience without a self to have that experience? We don't need … an explanation, … that's all the self is: an explanation of experience.

Just as we conceive of a self and counter this notion with a non-self, … we are also taken in by another set of opposing concepts – existence and non-existence.

T]he self is … a concept formed out of our desire to get a handle on things rather than accept … experience as real but ungraspable.

If we believe in … an everlasting self, it's tantamount to claiming that we have existed before all else came into being. We may as well fancy ourselves as being the cause of all creation.

If we are the stream, what is it that experiences the flux, the flow, the change? … [T]here is no particular thing … having an experience. There is experience, but no experiencer. … [P]erception, but no perceiver. … [C]onsciousness, but no self that can be located or identified.

The issues of what a self is, how long it will last, what will happen when our bodies decay and consciousness flickers off, are all based not on what we actually see but on what we imagine.

There can be no moral authority to tell you what to do, for no such authority can lie outside your own will.

To assume the existence of a self, an 'I', is to assume the existence of something that has not changed … . … [I]f the thing in question – the 'I' – has changed, in what manner can it still be itself?

T]he most basic division is 'me' and 'everything else,' self and other.

There are no overwhelming questions such as 'Where do I go after I die?' because it becomes clear that such questions, doubts, fears, and anxieties are based on buying into an illusion – the self.

If we're human, we habitually conceptualise our experience, thus conceiving a self. … [T]his self 1) is unlocatable, 2) contradicts direct experience, 3) is … impossible[.]

Try as we will, we'll not find any workable, definable thing in actual experience for this 'I' to refer to.

Most of us see ourselves as corks floating in a stream … [T]his is yet another frozen view. According to this … , everything … changes except the cork. While we generally admit to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe 'I' myself doesn't change. I'm still me … an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream. This is precisely what we believe the self to be – something that doesn't change.

Most of us see ourselves as corks floating in a stream … [T]his is yet another frozen view. According to this … , everything … changes except the cork. While we generally admit to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe 'I' myself don't change. I'm still me. … an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream. This is precisely what we believe the self to be – something that doesn't change.

Most of us see ourselves as corks floating in a stream … [T]his is yet another frozen view. According to this … , everything … changes except the cork. While we generally admit to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe 'I myself don't change. I'm still me. … an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream.' This is precisely what we believe the self to be – something that doesn't change.

In fixing] on the idea of a universe full of separate, unchanging, persistent things … [w]e also necessarily conceive that each thing must die, must one day come to an end. … [W]hen that thing is the imagined 'I', this prospect naturally terrifies us.

For a while, Mirabelle believes there will be a moment when he will cave in and let himself love her, but eventually she lets the idea go. She hits bottom. She dwells in the muck for several months, not depressed exactly, but involved in a mourning that at first she thinks is for Ray but soon realizes is for the loss of her old self.

As we get older we either become our worst selves or our best selves

The classic self-problem seen in clinical settings is fusion with the content of verbal self-knowledge—such as "I am depressed" where "depressed" has the quality of a personal identity. This aspect of self—the conceptualized self—can be "positive" or "negative" or both, but its most dominant features are that it is rigid, evaluative, and evocative.