Quotes About Perception

Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Spiritual Laws," Essays and Lectures . (Library of America November 15, 1983)

It's all real and it's all illusory: that's Awareness!

There's much more in any given moment than we usually perceive, and that we ourselves are much more than we usually perceive. When you know that, part of you can stand outside the drama of your life.

All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.

In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear.

To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.

Those who know do not talk And talkers do not know."—Tao Te Ching

Religions are founded by what mystics say when they come back; but what the mystics say is not the same as what happened to them.

What we're seeing out there is the projection of where we're at--the projection of the clingings of our minds.

I don't really believe anything I say. Because the nature of my work concerns the spaces between the words, rather than the words themselves.

IT'S BETTER TO SEE GOD IN EVERYTHING THAN TO TRY TO FIGURE IT OUT.

When you are already in Detroit, you don't have to take a bus to get there.

What Einstein demonstrated in physics is equally true of all other aspects of the cosmos: all reality is relative. Each reality is true only within given limits. It is only one possible version of the way things are. There are always multiple versions of reality. To awaken from any single reality is to recognize its relative nature. Meditation is a device to do just that.

The epitome of the human realm is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thought. —Chogyam Trungpa

If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets." Then he'd get up and leave. Or he'd write, "If you wear shoeleather, the whole earth is covered with leather." These were his ways of teaching me about how motivation affects perception.

The thing about perspective is: something happens. it means nothing. we make up a story about what it means based on what we feel. this story becomes our truth. this story creates our reality, our world, what is possible and what is not.

I found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard 'new things': that is, things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new."—Ouspensky

To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible." And

Who in all his works sees God, in truth he goes to God.

We recognize now that we are bringing our external world genuinely and honestly into harmony with our inner perceptions, and we don't need to try so hard to create an external space to prove anything.

In The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, Thaddeus Golas says, "You never have to change what you see, only the way you see it.

Part of the process of awakening is recognizing that the realities we thought were absolute are only relative. All you have to do is shift from one reality to another once, and your attachment to what you thought was real starts to collapse. Once the seed of awakening sprouts in you, there's no choice—there's no turning back.

I must really be crazy, now—because craziness is where everybody agrees about something,—except you!