Quotes About Perspective

There is so much more to my father's life and death than how it impacted, reflected on, or revealed me.

And yet. It is not easy, living in the shadow of someone's Tragic Illness, so that everything you do seems insubstantial by comparison. Other people in the world would have to agree that this is true.

We can never know what to want, because living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come . . . There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. —Milan Kundera

Where you are standing—your spot on the ground amid this vast world—and what you choose to look at from there means absolutely everything.

Lately, I've been a little sad that I'm not a gay man.

Experience is a master teacher, even when it's not our own.

Our lives follow the stories we tell ourselves.

Once back home I would adjust my lens to the resolution through which I perceived the people and provinces of the globe. My daily commute, the supermarket check out line, neighborhood walks, pedestrian tasks of any job would inspire me as much as the stir of white linen canopies in Venice's Piazza San Marco; the velvety dunes of the eastern Sahara; Bali's kaleidoscope of color; my Vietnamese sisters.

The treasured vistas of our solo journeys are not always about the landscape.

Opportunity to suspend disbelief is often why we watch movies. The stories and images touch us and shift perspectives in ways we may not allow in our daily lives. As readily as you check your "this isn't real" attitude at the ticket counter – when transformers are defending earth against aliens and 21st century vampires frolic by daylight – on the big screen of your heart and mind train for, run and celebrate finishing your first marathon.

Distinguish between getting lost and losing your way. The first is a shift in direction. The second is the absence of perspective. Cultivate perspective and you will be able to steer home.

If companionship is a mandate for all of our experiences, then we will miss out on many of life's blessings.

Those who receive the blessing are those who see beyond its disguise.

When you find yourself wanting a better moment -wanting something else in the future- it can be helpful to ask: What will that give me? We think we will finally be happy when that moment arrives. What we discover when we do get what we want is that even that wonderful moment disappears. Life keeps moving on, bringing us a mixture of what we like and don't like. Why not like- love - it all because it won't be here for long, it will never be this way again, and it's all you've got.

What if you are the awareness, and you were just pretending to be attached to a particular body-mind for the experience it provides consciousness?

Life unfolds as it will regardless of whether we like what's happening or not. By opposing life, we eventually learn this truth. We learn how impotent our opposition to life is and that this opposition causes only suffering. What's left is choosing to agree with life—to love whatever is, no matter what that looks like.

When things don't go as planned, simply asking, "Is it that important?" can be helpful. Answer this question from a place of being zoomed out: "Will this be important a year from now or several years from now? Will this be important on my deathbed?" Many of the things we get upset about wouldn't be important even moments or days later.

Beliefs manifest as reality. This is why nothing short of a change in consciousness will change your world fundamentally. This change of consciousness is imperative now.

Problems seem to exist, but problems are actually illusory and part of everyone's illusory reality. "Problem" is a concept, not a reality. The mind turns something into a problem by telling you it is a problem. In reality, problems do not exist. You cannot touch, see, hear, smell, or taste a problem or sense it in more subtle ways, because there is nothing there to sense. A problem is imagined.

If we believe our thoughts, then they define us and determine our experience of life, how we feel, and what we do. We are, in many respects, a puppet to our conditioning, to our thoughts and feelings—when we believe them. When we are identified with them and believe them, we are at the mercy of them. They run the show.

Language such as "good" and "bad" and "I like" and "I don't like" divides the world into what you want and don't want. Then when life shows up in a way you don't like, you suffer. By wanting life to look a certain way, you cause your own suffering. The hero has seen how such dualities and desires create suffering and how suffering wouldn't exist without them.

Beliefs are more often than not self-fulfilling prophecies. That is why becoming aware of your beliefs is so important. A self-fulfilling prophecy is a belief that is not true but becomes true merely because it is believed.

It doesn't take the partner's words and actions personally.

To help bring the rest of reality into focus and put the feeling in its proper perspective, we can ask ourselves: "Is there space around the feeling? How big is that space? Can I make that space even bigger? What is that space like? Is peace there? Is love there? Is compassion there? Can I be that space? What's it like to observe the feeling from the perspective of space? As space, what can I discover about this feeling? Can I, as space, give love and compassion to the feeling?