Quotes About Introspection

I keep trying to feel who I was, and cannot. — Jack Gilbert, from "Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina," Collected Poems (Knopf, 2012)

You hear yourself walking on the snow. You hear the absence of the birds. A stillness so complete, you hear the whispering inside of you. Alone morning after morning, and even more at night. They say we are born alone, to live and die alone. But they are wrong. We get to be alone by time, by luck, or by misadventure. — Jack Gilbert, from "Betrothed," Collected Poems (Knopf, 2012)

Alone on Christmas Eve in Japan" Not wanting to lose it all for poetry. Wanting to live the living. All this year looking on the graveyard below my apartment. Holding myself tenderly in this marred body. Wondering if the quiet I feel is that happiness wise people speak of, or the modulation that is the acquiescence to death beginning.

What is it about a beautiful sunny afternoon, with the birds singing and the wind rustling through the leaves, that makes you want to get drunk?

mind and went

After wrestling with myself for six months, I began medical treatment. During that time I started a band with some friends of mine called Jack's Car, but that didn't last.

People don't know anything about themselves because they're all worried about everybody else.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves There's no need for rain It's our own parade Let's not be afraid of our reflections It's not only you you're looking at now

As I sit with pen in hand, I am wondering, "Just what the hell do you think you are doing, Kelly?" I ask myself all the questions: how and why and will they be able to understand; can you spell good enough to get this message across? I keep coming up with the same answer: "Give it a try"- this as you see, is what I will do.

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

It's funny how easy it is to point out other peoples mistakes and make our own mistakes seem insignificant.

Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness. But it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.

There are many ways up the mountain and each of us must choose a practice that feels true to our heart.

The poet Hafiz writes, Don't surrender your loneliness So quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you As few human Or even divine ingredients can.

Our life is shaped and determined by our thoughts. Usually we are only half conscious of the way thoughts direct our life; we are lost in thoughts as if they are reality. We take our own mental creations quite seriously, endorsing them without reservation.

The root of the problem is that everyone has to first discover the root of anger and hatred inside themselves before they can understand how it operates in the outside world.

Though one may conquer a thousand times a thousand men in battle, he who conquers himself is the greatest warrior.

We have so many ideas and beliefs about ourselves. We told ourselves story about what we want and who we are, smart or kind. Often these are the unexamined and limited ideas of others that we have internalized and then gone on to live out

To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.

As Albert Camus wrote, "We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and others.

To begin to meditate is to look into our lives with interest in kindness and discover how to be wakeful and free.

The first level of practice is illuminated by the qualities of courage and renunciation.

Where we tended to be judgmental, we became more judgmental of ourselves in our spiritual practice.

To stop the war, we need to begin with ourselves. Mahatma Gandhi understood this when he said: I have only three enemies. My favorite enemy, the one most easily influenced for the better, is the British Empire. My second enemy the Indian people, is far more difficult. But my most formidable opponent is a man named Mohandas K. Gandhi. With him I seem to have very little influence.