Quotes About Perception

At first it seems as if begoing follows becoming. But look even closer and you will see that there are only flashes of lightning illuminating the empty sky.

All delusions begin in the mind. All delusions are based on various ways we're talking to ourselves and then believing what we are saying.

The way they perceive the world suddenly changes, and they find themselves without any sense of separation between themselves and the rest of the world.

The greatest dream that we can have is to forget that we are dreaming.

Whatever you think you are, that's not it.

When our minds start to open, we're no longer in a constant state of evaluation and judgment. Naturally, then, our senses open—and we can really see what is before us. Our eyes open in a different way, our hearing opens in a different way, our emotions open, our hearts open to all of existence. We see how judging and condemning actually close our hearts and harden us to our experience of life and others.

Ego is nothing more than the beliefs, ideas, and images we have about ourselves—and so it is actually

In truth, we are life itself. When we see and perceive that we are the totality of life, we are no longer afraid of it; we no longer feel afraid of birth, life, and death. But until we see that, we will see life as intimidating, as a barrier we somehow have to get through.

Now is just what's happening – minus everything you think.

Again, the only way to know that we've seen into the true nature of something is that the story we're telling ourselves releases.

Have you ever noticed that you have never left here, except in your mind? When you remember the past, you are not actually in the past. Your remembering is happening here. When you think about the future, that future projection is completely here. And when you get to the future, it's here. It's no longer the future.

Suffering occurs when you believe in a thought that is at odds with what is, what was, or what may be.

To you your dream is real because all of your thoughts confirm that it is real. But what is is more real than a thousand thoughts about how things should be. Life will conform neither to the story you tell yourself about it nor your interpretation of it. Believe a single thought that runs contrary to the way things are or have been and you suffer because of it. No exceptions!

All of these are labels. All of them are fine. There is nothing wrong with any one of them, until you actually believe they're true. As soon as you believe that a label you've put on yourself is true, you've limited something that is literally limitless, you've limited who you are into nothing more than a thought.

don't know what it is. They'll forget that that thing flying through the sky is beyond all words, that it's an expression of the immensity of life. It's actually an extraordinary and wondrous thing that flies through the sky. But as soon as we name it, we think we know what it is. We see "bird," and we almost discount it.

The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it." [Gospel of Thomas 113]

All of a sudden there I was, standing there, holding my plate my of food at this wedding, and there was the realization that even though I don't see things the way most people around me see them, this is it. This is life, and it is absolutely wonderful, amazingly beautiful. The only thing left for me to do was to walk back into the world.

The simplest thing one can say about the experiential knowledge of awakening is that it is a shift in one's perception . This is the heart of awakening. There is a shift in perception from seeing oneself as an isolated individual to seeing oneself, if we have a sense of self at all after this shift, as something mush more universal—everything and everyone and everywhere at the same time.

One of the most common of these traps is a sense of meaninglessness. From our new view of reality, we are free from the egoic desire to find meaning. We see that the ego's desire to find meaning in life is actually a substitute for the perception of being life itself. The search for meaning in life is a surrogate for the knowledge that we are life. Only someone who is disconnected from life itself will seek meaning. Only someone disconnected from life will look for purpose.

In awakening, what's revealed to us is that we are not a thing, nor a person, nor even an entity. What we are is that which manifests as all things, as all experiences, as all personalities. We are that which dreams the whole world into existence. Spiritual awakening reveals that that which is unspeakable is actually what we are.

We should come to know that there is more Reality and sacredness in a blade of grass than in all of our thoughts and ideas about Reality.

The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to answer your questions, but to question your answers. For it is your conscious and unconscious assumptions and beliefs that distort your perception and cause you to see separation and division where there is actually only unity and completeness.

We've become trapped in a world of dreams, a world in which we live primarily in our minds.

Be an open space for whatever arises. Notice that you are the space in which everything arises. When everything is allowed to arise, you have the opportunity to perceive That which does not arise or subside. You Are That. (p. 32)