One Brain at a Time

We have so much more power over what's going on
inside our heads than we have ever been taught and
I do believe that sanity will come to the planet
one brain at a time.

Jill Bolte Taylor

Stay in the Center

Stay in the center and you will be ready
to move in any direction.

Alan Watts

The Power to Choose

We have the power to choose who and how

we want to be in world each and every moment,

regardless of what external circumstance

we find ourselves in.

Jill Bolte Taylor

No Mistake

There is no mistake
in nature.

Byron Katie

That's About It

We do only three things in life: we sit, we stand,

and we lie horizontal. That's about it. Everything else

is a story. Life is not difficult; it's your thinking

that makes it difficult. That's where your happiness

or misery comes from. There are two ways to sit

or stand or lie horizontal: you can do it comfortably,

or you can do it with stress.

Byron Katie

This is What We Throw

If we love everything we think,
we start to love ourselves.
And when we love ourselves,
this is what we throw at others.

Byron Katie

At Long Last

At fifteen, I was committed to learning.
At thirty, I took my rightful position.
At forty, I was no longer totally perplexed.
At fifty, I began to understand the unfolding

   of my true nature.
At sixty, I was in harmony with contradictions

   and ambivalence.
At seventy, at long last, I may follow my hearts' desire

   without going astray.

Confucius

It Doesn't Work

Taoist thought is for older people
because they have tried everything else
and found it doesn't work.

Alan Watts

Who You Were Meant to Be

Maybe the journey isn't about becoming anything.
Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that
isn't really you, so you can be who you were
meant to be in the first place.

Paulo Coelho

Their Own Masterpiece

Your children are not a masterpiece that you create.
They are their own masterpiece creating themselves,
and you have been given the privilege of
watching them be the artist.

J. Warren Welch

Your Own Salvation

Stand still and be
your own salvation.

Byron Katie

Nothing to Get

There is nothing to get!
Nothing to change!

U.G. Krishnamurti

Awareness Beyond Life and Death

There is an awareness beyond life and death.
The Buddha-mind, the questioned mind,
wakes up to itself, sees that it's nothing,
and thus is free to lead its infinite, unstoppable,
creative, brilliantly kind, unimaginable life.

Byron Katie

That Will Be Your Answer

It is nice of you to come here, but you have come
to the wrong place - because you want an answer,
and you think that my answer will be your answer.
But that is not so. I may have found my answer,
but that is not your answer. You have to find out
for yourself and by yourself the way in which
you are functioning in this world,
and that will be your answer.

U.G. Krishnamurti

At the Same Time

We have to accept the reality as it is imposed on us
by the culture, by society, or whatever you want to call it,
and at the same time understand that there is nothing
that we can do to experience the reality of anything.
Then you will not be in conflict with the society,
and the demand to be something other than what you are
will also come to an end.

U.G. Krishnamurti

A Flower Blooms

From the withered tree,
a flower blooms.

The Shoyo Roku

Great Happiness

There is great happiness in not wanting,
in not being something, in not going somewhere.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Only Important Thing

You don't need to know anything
about enlightenment, and you can't know.
The only important thing to know is this:
if a thought hurts, question it.

Byron Katie

Only a Result of Consciousness

You are not in the world,
but the world is in you.
It is only a result of consciousness.

Nisargadatta

The Ego

The ego is a social institution
with no physical reality.
The ego is simply your symbol
of yourself.

Alan Watts

Predominate Gratitude

I cannot pretend that I am without fear.
But my predominate feeling is one of gratitude.
I have loved and been loved; I have been given much
and I have given something in return.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal,
on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been
an enormous privilege and adventure.

Oliver Sacks, "Gratitude"

Humanity Awakened

When real trouble comes,
your humanity is awakened.

Joseph Campbell

Your Intuition Knows

Your intuition knows what to write,
so get out of the way.

Ray Bradbury

The Key to Everything

Intuition is the key to everything,
in painting, filmmaking, business - everything.
I think you could have an intellectual ability,
but if you can sharpen your intuition,
a knowingness occurs.

David Lynch

Form and Emptiness

Form is emptiness,
emptiness is form.
Emptiness is not separate from form.
Form is not separate from emptiness.
Whatever is form is emptiness.
Whatever is emptiness is form.

Heart Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism

Forget That You Are There

The ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle.
Totally fascinated by the realm of the senses,
it swings from one desire to the next,
one conflict to the next,
on self-centered idea to the next.
If you threaten it, it actually fears for its life.
Let this monkey go. Let the senses go. Let desires go.
Let conflicts go. Let ideas go.
Let the fiction of life and death go.
Just remain in the center, watching.
And then forget that you are there.

Huahu Jing

Honest About Yes and No

Every no I say is a yes to myself.
It feels right to me. People don't
have to guess what I want or don't want,
and I don't need to pretend.
When you're honest about
your yes's and no's,
it's easy to live a kind life.

Byron Katie

More Like a Verb

The self is more like a verb than a noun.
It only exists when we think it does
because the process of thinking creates it.

Chris Niebauer

My World is Real

In your world, the unspoken has no existence.
In mine, the words and their contents have no being.
My world is real, while your is made of dreams.

Nisargadatta

If You Have to Ask

If you have to ask
what jazz is,
you'll never know.

Louis Armstrong

A Why to Live

He who has a why to live
can bear almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Are You Insane?

If you think that someone else
is the cause of your problem,
you're insane.

Byron Katie

No Such Thing

Generosity is what's left of you after you realize
that there's no such thing as a self.

Byron Katie

Seeing Through

The Buddha has seen through all the thoughts
that would override the experience of gratitude.

Byron Katie

Impossible Things

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said.
"One can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.
"When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour
a day. Why, sometimes I've believe as many as
six impossible things before breakfast."

Lewis Carroll

Game or Not

Life is a game,

the first rule of which
is that it is not a game.

Alan Watts

Hopelessly Inventive

Biography is fiction,
autobiography is

hopelessly inventive.

Michael Gazzaniga

Invented Self

The self is a fiction
invented by the brain.

Michael Gazzaniga

However Spurious

Our right brain behaves more like the rats.
It does not try to interpret its experience
to find the deeper meaning; it lives only
in the thin moment of the present.
But when the left brain is asked to explain
why it is attempting to psych out
the whole sequence, it always comes up
with a theory, however spurious.

Michael Gazzaniga

Implications of the Interpreter

To my knowledge, psychology has never considered
the real implications of the (left brain) interpreter
and this may be because most do not think
anything exists beyond it.

Chris Niebauer

A Strange Sort of Hope

A strange sort of hope emerges when
one resigns from clinging to hope.
Hope is like everything else, the less one
needs it the more one finds it in abundance.

Chris Niebauer

The Only Possible Chance

It is perfectly obvious the whole world is going to hell
and the only possible chance that it may not is that
we do not attempt to stop it from doing so.

Robert Oppenheimer

Nowhere Mind

Develop a mind
that abides nowhere.

The Buddha

Stand Still and Do Nothing

Having a goal to become enlightened is like

trying to lose weight by jumping up on a scale.

You may be lighter for a brief second in the air

but in the end you will hit much harder than

if you simply stood still and did nothing.

Chris Niebauer

That's Institutionalized

These walls are funny.
First you have 'em,
then you get used to 'em.
Enough time passes,
you get so you depend on them.
That's institutionalized.

Red, Shawshank Redemption

Further Away from Reality

Our modern mind would trade
intellectual puzzle solving for peace
and that is very strange as it takes us
further and further away from reality.

Chris Niebauer

Losing Touch with Reality

A person who thinks all the time has
nothing to think about except thoughts.
So he loses touch with reality,
and lives in a world of illusion.

Alan Watts

Rock It Back and Forth

Breaking up is like knocking over a coke machine.
You can't do it in one push, you got to rock it back
and forth a few times, and then it goes over.

Jerry Seinfeld

However Real

To believe a thought is to exist
in an imaginary world,
however real it may seem.

Byron Katie

We Are Free

In the presence of one who doesn't see a problem,
the problem falls away, which shows you there isn't
a problem. All our problems are from our imagination.
When we break through our imagination, we are free.

Byron Katie

Bonds Will Vanish

Although you appear in earthly form,
your essence is pure consciousness.
When you lose all sense of self,
the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

Somewhere Else

Listen: this world is the lunatic's sphere,
Don't always agree it's real,
Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door
My address is somewhere else.

Hafiz

It Never Occurs to You

Mostly what gets in the way are basic certainties,
certainties so completely assumed that it never
occurs to you to question them.

Judy Cohen

Rearranging Prejudices

A great many people think they are thinking when
they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

David Bohm

The Illusion

You do not exist to serve the illusion.
The illusion exists to serve you.

Lauren Zimmerman

I Seem to Be a Verb

I know that I am not a category.
I am not a thing, a noun.
I seem to be a verb,
an evolutionary process,
an integral function of the universe.

Buckminster Fuller

No More Thinking

You can't solve a thinking problem
with more thinking. It's doing. It's action.

Chris Niebauer

All One Being

All forms of life and being are simply variations
on a single theme: we are all in fact one being doing
the same thing in as many different ways as possible.

Alan Watts

What You Say About Reality

It's not reality that matters, but
what you're saying to yourself about it.

Anthony de Mello

A Willingness to Unlearn

That's what learning is all about
where spirituality is concerned:
unlearning, unlearning almost
everything you've been taught.
A willingness to unlearn, to listen.

Anthony de Mello

The Greatest Learning

The greatest learning of the ages
lies in accepting life exactly
as it comes to us.

Anthony de Mello

Absolute Cooperation

Enlightenment is:
absolute cooperation
with the inevitable.

Anthony de Mello

Beyond Words and Thoughts

Silence means going beyond words and thoughts.
What's wrong with words and thoughts?
You know what's wrong with them?
They're very wonderful.
But God is nothing like what we say He is.
And He is nothing like what we imagine or think He is.
That is what is wrong with words and thoughts.

Anthony de Mello

Sick of Your Sickness

What was I doing as a psychotherapist?
People were coming to me
with their relationship problems,
with their communication problems, etc.,
and sometime what I did was a help.
But sometimes, I'm sorry to say,
it wasn't, because it kept people asleep.
Maybe they should have suffered a little more.
Maybe they ought to touch rock bottom
and say, "I'm sick of it all." It's only when
you're sick of your sickness that you'll get out of it.

Anthony de Mello

Psychology or Spirituality?

Is psychology more practical than spirituality?
Nothing is more practical than spirituality.
What can the poor psychologist do?
He can only relieve the pressure.
I'm a psychologist myself, and
I practice psychotherapy, and
I have this great conflict within me
when I have to choose sometimes
between psychology and spirituality.

Anthony de Mello

When They're Ready

No one changes unless they want to.
Not if you beg them. Not if you shame them.
Not if you use reason, emotion, or tough love.
There's only one thing that makes someone change;
their own realization that they need to do it.
And there's only one time when it will happen:
when they're ready.

Lori Deschene

Fear Keeps You

Fear keeps you alive, but it also keeps you from
letting go into your soul, your true inner self.

Ram Dass

Obstacles to the Truth

I can speak to you, not of the truth,
but of obstacles to the truth.
Those I can describe.
I can not describe the truth.
No one can. All I can do
is give you a description
of your falsehoods so
that you can drop them.

Anthony de Mello

The Job of Comedy

Comedy should be a means of exposing and
ridiculing the follies and failings of mankind.
That's what it's for. The job of comedy is to offend.
If there's no offense, there's probably little true comedy.

Rowan Atkinson

The Entire Ocean

You are not a drop in the ocean.
You are the entire ocean in a drop.

Jalāl al-Dīn Rumi

Where You Are Caught

Conscious dying is really
no different from conscious living.
Dying brings to awareness those things 
that we have a difficult time with and push away.
Your fear of death is almost an exact outline
of where it is you are caught.

Dale Borglum

You Forget

That is why you are so moody
and not fully alive because
you forget you are to die;
you live as if you were 
going to live forever.

Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan

What Not to Do

As a teacher, I always use my life experiences as
a lesson plan, often as an example of what not to do.

Ram Dass

Home Now

If you lived in your heart,
you'd be home now.

Bumper Sticker

For the Good

See everything
in the universe
for the good.

Neem Karoli Baba ("Maharaj-ji")

The Bees Come

When the flowers bloom,
the bees come uninvited.

Ramakrishna

You Have to Come Back

A trip is just that, a trip,
and you have to come back.
At the end of the day,
for all your new insight,
you still have to take
out the garbage.

Ram Dass

Our Job

Our job is not to comprehend or control everything,
but to learn which story we are in and which of
the many things calling out in the world is calling to us.
Our job is to be fully alive in the life we have,
to pick up the invisible thread of our own story
and follow where it leads.

Michael Meade

The Character of a Man

You can easily judge
the character of a man
by how he treats those
who can do nothing
for him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Reality"

There is no way you can use the word "reality"
without quotation marks around it.

Joseph Campbell