Quotes About Perspective

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgement, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, as so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.

Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of your life but from the conditioning of your mind.

When you realize it's not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were.

Everything is honored, but nothing matters.

Many people don't realize until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away that no thing ever had anything to do with who they are.

Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don't take your thoughts too seriously.

It may then seem that you had something very precious, and lost it, or your mind may convince you that it was all an illusion anyway. The truth is that it wasn't an illusion, and you cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscured but can never be destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn't disappeared. It's still there on the other side of the clouds.

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is.

If you were far out in space, you would see that the sun neither rises nor sets, but that it shines continuously. And yet, even after realizing that, we can continue to speak of the sunrise or sunset, still see its beauty, paint it, write poems about it, even though we now know that it is a relative rather than an absolute truth.

Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.

You might say, "What a dreadful day," without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that is created by that resistance. In Shakespeare's words, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

As long as we define ourselves in terms of our pains and problems, we will never be free from them.

It is everywhere, not just in places where people don't have enough, but even more so where they have more than enough. Is that surprising? No. The affluent world is even more deeply identified with form, more lost in content, more trapped in ego.

So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it.

Your life's journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to "make it." You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now.

Do I want the present moment to be my friend or my enemy? ....Become friendly toward it, welcome it no matter in what disguise it comes, and soon you will see the results. Life becomes friendly toward you; people become helpful, circumstances cooperative....But that one decision you have to make again and again and again - until it becomes natural to live in such a way.

How spiritual you are has nothing to do with what you believe, but everything to do with your state of consciousness.

Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing with any situation.

Can you give some more examples of ordinary unconsciousness?   See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what

If there is nothing you can do, face what is and say, 'Well, right now, this is how it is. I can either accept it, or make myself miserable. The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is. There is the situation or the fact, and here are my thoughts about it.

Every fragment of self-talk is a little story in the head that goes around, and then you look at reality through the lens of the little story.

There *are* no problems. Only situations - to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the 'isness' of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with.

making yourself right and others wrong is one of the principal ego mind patterns, one of the main forms of unconsciousness.