Enlightenment Doesn't Care

There are many paths to
enlightenment. Some of us
who have expanded to a
degree of illumination have
thereafter preached the
dogmatic certainty of one
particular path. But
enlightenment doesn't care
how you get there. And if you
aren't going to be thinking
about it in paradise, then
don't worry about it now.

Thaddeus Golas

The Way You See It

Inside yourself or outside, you
never have to change what you see,
only the way you see it.

Thaddeus Golas

How You React

What happens is not as important
as how you react to what happens.

Thaddeus Golas

Freedom to be Stupid

Giving others the freedom to be
stupid is one of the most important
and hardest steps to take in
spiritual progress. Conveniently,
the opportunity to take that step
is all around us every day.

Thaddeus Golas

Expand or Contract

No matter what your
spiritual condition is,
no matter where you
find yourself in the universe,
your choice is always
the same: to expand
your awareness
or contract it.

Thaddeus Golas

To Be Free of It

Consciousness is not the power
to control the material world.
It is the absolute power to be free of it.

Thaddeus Golas

Consciousness is the Power

Is love the power? No.
Consciousness is the power.
But it is not the power to do
anything specific. It is
the power to push away
from itself all unconsciousness,
to remove itself from
all energy and mass entities.

Thaddeus Golas

Prolonging Your Conscious State

Expanding consciousness is not
a process of expanding like a balloon,
it is a process of PROLONGING
your conscious state.

Thaddeus Golas

Sizeless God

When we imagine God,
we imagine a vast intelligence
that also wishes to manipulate
and control, to create and destroy.
But what if God is not large but
very small, perhaps even sizeless?
And what if there are an infinite number
of such entities, who have no intentions
about energy and matter at all,
since energy and matter are
those same gods functioning differently?

Thaddeus Golas

Arguing with the Universe

We humans do a great deal of what
we might call "arguing with the universe."
We admire reputed magicians and
other entertainers who offer the promise
of evading the laws that govern reality.
This is a strange state of mind:
trying to prove the spirit exists
by contradicting laws presumed
to be ordained by the spirit.

Thaddeus Golas

Not a Problem

The further one goes in
trying to understand reality,
the more it looks like
a problem the universe
doesn't need to have solved
-- certainly not by us humans!

Thaddeus Golas

Love the Way You Are Now

There is no point in worry or wonder
about worse or better spiritual conditions,
although that game is available.
You will not be able to rise
above your present vibration level to stay
until you love the way you are now.

Thaddeus Golas

All You Need to Know

We are equal beings and
the universe is our relations
with each other. The universe

is made of one kind of entity:

each one is alive, each determines

the course of his own existence.

That is really all you need to know

to understand this book or

write your own.

Thaddeus Golas

Everything is a Consequence of This

We truly possess free will,
and we truly are equal,
no matter what appearances
may tell us. Everything is
a consequence of this,
and follows, like falling
dominoes.

Thaddeus Golas

Great and Final Disappointment

Enlightenment is the great
and final disappointment,
the dissolution of all
our egoic fantasies and grand hopes.

Chogyam Trungpa

Quest for the Weird

It was the quest
for the weird that
brought me so far.

Terence McKenna

Truth is No Respecter

Truth is no respecter
of spirituality.

Byron Katie

Exactly As It Is

All human unhappiness comes
from not facing reality squarely,
exactly as it is.

The Buddha

Not Even Close

Question your conclusions, your judgments,
your answers. Question this. If you question
everything thoroughly enough, the truth
will eventually hit you upside the head
and you will know. But here's the warning:
It won't be what you imagined. It won't
even be close.

Brad Warner

What It is Not

A way of liberation can
have no positive definition.
It has to be suggested
by saying what it is not,
somewhat as a sculptor
reveals an image by
the act of removing
pieces of stone from a block.

Alan Watts

Just Peel the Potatoes

Zen ... does not confuse spirituality
with thinking about God while one
is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality
is just to peel the potatoes.

Alan Watts

Not a Problem to be Solved

Can you imagine if you really
let it in that you are not a
problem to be solved in any
way? Imagine you knew that
anything that would tell you
otherwise is just a movement
of thought in the mind that
says "Whatever is, isn't the
way it is supposed to be." So
the biggest act of compassion
starts within. And when the
self is no longer seen as a
problem, this is called "the
peace that passes all
understanding."

Adyashanti

Not Personal

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

Eckhart Tolle

Nowhere is It Writ

Nowhere is it writ
that anthropoid apes
should understand reality.

Terrence McKenna

No One

The real truth,
that dare not speak itself,
is that no one is in control.
Absolutely no one.

Terence McKenna

No Worries

No one knows enough
to worry.

Terence McKenna

Darkness Revealed

The bigger you build the bonfire,
the more darkness is revealed.

Terence McKenna

Thou Art That

tat tvam asi
(Thou art that.)

Hindu saying

Whoa

Whoa!

Neo (from the Matrix)

Red Pill

You take the blue pill,
the story ends. You wake up
in your bed and believe
whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill,
you stay in wonderland,
and I show you how deep
the rabbit hole goes.

Morpheus, The Matrix

Until It is Done

A cat sits until it is done sitting,
and then gets up, stretches,
and walks away.

Alan Watts

Hard as Hell

There is a transcendental dimension beyond language.
It's just hard as hell to talk about!

Terence McKenna

Face the Answer

The problem is not to find the answer,
it's to face the answer.

Terence McKenna

Nobody Smarter

Nobody is smarter than you are.
And what if they are?
What good is their understanding
doing you?

Terence McKenna

Don't Believe Anything

My technique is don't believe anything.
If you believe in something, you are
automatically precluded from believing
its opposite.

Terence McKenna

The Creative Act

The creative act is a letting down
of the net of human imagination
into the ocean of chaos on which
we are suspended, and the attempt
to bring out of it ideas.

Terence McKenna

Your Own Understanding

You have to take seriously the notion
that understanding the universe is
your responsibility because the only
understanding that will be useful to you
is your own understanding.

Terence McKanna

Chaos

Chaos is what we've lost touch with.
This is why it is given a bad name.
It is feared by the dominant archetype
of our world, which is Ego, which
clenches because its existence is
defined in terms of control.

Terence McKenna

Cost of Sanity

The cost of sanity in this society
is a certain level of alienation.

Terence McKenna

A Difference

There is a difference between
knowing the path and
walking the path.

Morpheus, The Matrix

Because You Can

At some point in life the world's beauty
becomes enough. You don't need to photograph,
paint, or even remember it. It is enough.
No record of it needs to be kept and
you don't need someone to share it with
or tell it to. When that happens, that letting go,
you let go because you can.

Toni Morrison

How Life Works

The Buddha didn’t become enlightened

by being polite. He saw how life works and

respected the guiding principles of the universe.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Check to See

What would happen
if you stopped looking for solutions
and check to see
if there was actually a problem?

Jeff Foster

Reject Everything

You have to brush
everything aside to find out.
Your problem is not how to
get something from somebody,
but how to reject everything
that is offered by anybody.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Kind of Funny

It's kind of funny when we consider
how we attempt to manipulate existence
into giving us what we want.

Judy Cohen

Some of the Questions

It's better to know some of the questions
than all of the answers.

James Thurber

Loafing

It is better to have loafed and lost,
than never to have loafed at all.

James Thurber

Mirrors

Man cannot be anything other
than what he is.
Whatever he is, he will create
a society that mirrors him.

U.G. Krishanmurti

Stick to It

If you are firm in your belief
in the guidance of God, stick to it,
and do not concern yourself with
what happens around you.

Ramana Marharshi

Even One Word

When you are deluded
and full of doubt,
even a thousand books of scripture
are still not enough.
When you have realized understanding,
even one word is already too much.

Fen-Yang

What I Am Saying is a Threat

What I am saying is a threat to
society as it is presently organized.
The way I am thinking, functioning,
and operating is a threat to
the present society.

U.G. Krishnamurti

It is Grotesque

Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals,
whereas culture has invented a single mold to which
all must conform. It is grotesque.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Experiencing Life

When we see the world
through our thoughts,
we stop experiencing life
as it really is and others
as they really are.

Adyashanti

Nothing to Understand

There is nothing
to understand.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Nobody Can Teach You

You have to touch life at a point
where nobody has touched it before.
Nobody can teach you that.

U.G. Krishnamurti

No Individuality

What I am trying to say is that
there is no individual there at all.
There is only a certain gathering
of knowledge, which is thought,
but no individuality there.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Saved

You have to be saved from the very idea
that you have to be saved. You must be saved
from the saviors, redeemed from the redeemers.

U.G. Krishnamurti

The Great Way

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth then hold
no opinion for or against.
The struggle of what one likes and
what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.

Sosan, Third Zen Patriarch

You Are the One

Because of an innocent misunderstanding,
you think that you are a human being in
the relative world seeking the experience
of oneness, but actually you are the One
expressing itself as the experience of being
a human being.

Adyashanti

Assuming

Isn't there a kind of arrogance
in assuming that we know how
to help another human being?

Jeff Foster

Heal Yourself

Physician, heal yourself!

Luke 4;23

What We Want

If safety is what we want,
then it would pay to notice
how very much of it
we already have.

Judy Cohen

Best Interests

The mind has invented
both religion and dynamite
to protect what it regards
as its best interests.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Nothing to Say

When you know nothing,
you say a lot.
When you know something,
there is nothing to say.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Mind is a Myth

Spirituality is the invention of the mind,
and the mind is a myth.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Your Own Uniqueness

You can't come into your own uniqueness
unless the whole of human experience
is thrown out of your system.

U.G. Krishnamurti

A Problem Out of Living

Why should life have any meaning?
Why should there be any purpose to living?
Living itself is all that is there.
Your search for spiritual meaning
has made a problem out of living.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Seeking Peace

All I am saying is that the peace
you are seeking is already inside you,
in the harmonious functioning
of the body.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Sowing the Seeds

The day man experienced the consciousness
that made him feel separate and superior
to the other forms of life, at that moment
he began sowing the seeds of his own destruction.

U.G. Krishnamurti

No Truth

There is no such thing as truth.
The only thing that is actually there
is your "logically" ascertained premise,
which you call truth.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Nothing

You'll get nothing,
and like it!

Judge Smails in "Caddyshack"

Unlearning All of It

For the first fifty years of my life
I learned a great deal.
For the next fifty I look forward
to unlearning all of it.

Rabbi Alvin Bobroff

That Ain't So

The trouble with the world is
not that people know too little,
but that they know so many things
that ain't so.

Mark Twain

Illusion

Anything you experience based
on knowledge is an illusion.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Pollution

Atmospheric pollution is most harmless
when compared to the spiritual and religious
pollution that have plagued the world.

U.G. Krishnamurti

This Is It

i'm not going anywhere.
neither are you.
nothing we can do.
this is it
ah

Judy Cohen

The Nothingness of Thought

A different thought changes an entire experience.
A wanted experience becomes light and weightless.
So, how real is the experience to begin with,
if it can be shifted by the nothingness of thought?

Judy Cohen

Freedom

Anything you want to be free from
for whatever reason
is the very thing that can free you.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Imagination

It's our imagination that's
responsible for love,
not the other person.

Marcel Proust

Knowledge is Power

There is no such thing as
"knowledge for the sake of knowledge."
Knowledge is power.
"I know. You don't know."

U.G. Krishnamurti

Cabbages

Cabbages are more alive
than human beings.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Start Living

Stop thinking
and start living.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Survival

All that is necessary for the survival
of this living organism is already there.
The tremendous intelligence of the body
is no match for all that we have gathered
and acquired through our intellect.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Messiah

A messiah is the one
who leaves a mess
behind him in the world.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Warty Outgrowths

All the political ideologies and even the legal structures
are the warty outgrowths of the religious thinking of man.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Consciousness is Pure

Consciousness is so pure that whatever
you are doing in the direction of purifying
that consciousness is adding impurity to it.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Natural State

The "Natural State" is acausal;
it just happens.

U.G. Krishnamurti

No Self to Discover

The so-called self-realization is the discovery
for yourself and by yourself that there is
no self to discover.

U.G. Krishnamurti

The Battle

The body is not interested in anything
you are interested in. And that is the battle
that is going on all the time.

U.G. Krishnamurti

Natural Man

To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence.
You are blessed with that intelligence; nobody need
give it to you; nobody can take it away from you.
He who lets that express itself in its own way
is a "Natural Man."

U.G. Krishnamurti

Never Wrong

When you are no longer caught up in
the dichotomy of right and wrong or
good and bad, you can never do
anything wrong. As long as you are
caught up in this duality, the danger
is that you will always do wrong.

U.G. Krishnamurti

That Messy Thing

That messy thing called "mind"
has created many destructive things.
By far the most destructive of them
all is God.

U.G. Krishnamurti

If You Don't Have a Problem

The plain fact is that if you don't
have a problem, you create one.
If you don't have a problem you
don't feel that you are living.

U.G. Krishnamurti

RIght Where You Are

Nirvana is right where you are,
provided that you don't object to it.

Alan Watts

Realize It Is Play

This is the real secret of life -
to be completely engaged with
what you are doing in the here
and now. And instead of calling
it work, realize it is play.

Alan Watts

Giving Up Control

What if you let go of every bit
of control and every urge that
you have, right down to the most
infinitesimal urge to control
anything, anywhere, including
anything that may be happening
with you at this moment? If you
were able to give up control
absolutely, totally, and completely,
then you would be a spiritually
free person.

Adyashanti

So Ordinary

You must go see him.
He's so ordinary!

Eckhart Tolle

The Answer

There ain't no answer.
There ain't gonna be any answer.
There never has been an answer.
That's the answer.

Gertrude Stein

Only One Journey

There is only one journey.
Going inside yourself.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Just Listen

Reporter:           When you pray, what do you say to God?
Mother Teresa: Nothing. I just listen.
Reporter:           What does God say to you?
Mother Teresa: Nothing. God just listens, too.
                           And if you don't understand that,
                           I can't explain it to you.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Loneliness is Dangerous

Loneliness is dangerous. It's addicting.
Once you see how peaceful it is,
you don't wanna deal with people.

Hedonist Poet

Inner Transformation

As far as inner transformation is concerned,
there is nothing you can do about it. You
cannot transform yourself, and you certainly
cannot transform your partner or anybody else.
All you can do is create a space for transformation
to happen, for grace and love to enter.

Eckhart Tolle

Forgiveness

Forgiveness means giving up all hope
for a better past.

Lily Tomlin

What's Happened to You?

An important question in psychiatry
shouldn’t be what’s wrong with you,
but rather what’s happened to you?

Eleanor Longden

Two Journeys

Everyone has two journeys
to make through life.
There is the outer journey,
with its variety of incidents
and the milestones ...
There is also an inner journey,
a spiritual Odyssey,
with a secret history of its own.

William R. Inge