Self-inquiry is a spiritually induced form of wintertime. It's not about looking for a right answer so much as stripping away and letting you see what is not necessary, what you can do without, what you are without your leaves.
When the eternal and the human meet, that's where love is born -- not through escaping our humanity or trying to disappear into transcendence, but through finding that place where they come into union.
In silence a question has great power, because in silence a question will always lead you deeper into your experience. If there is no grounding in silence, a spiritual question is going to lead you into your mind.
How do I integrate spirituality into my everyday life? Throw out the concept of "spiritual life" and "everyday life." There is only life, undivided and whole.
We think there’s someplace other than here to get to—that’s what drives the whole pursuit. Only when the pursuit ceases, is it possible to recognize what comprises you: pure being, pure consciousness. This is actually the very substance of your own self and being.
The mind wants to land, to fixate, to hold a concept, but the only way you can be really free is by not fixating. That's part of true maturity, and it's one of the hardest things for spiritual people who have had true and powerful revelations to go through - to accept the degree of surrender needed to literally let go of all experience and all self-reference. Even in great revelations, there is almost always something that wants to claim, "I am this." Every time you claim, "I am this", you just claimed another sense perception, thought, emotion, or feeling.
The biggest embrace of love you'll ever make is to embrace yourself completely. Then you'll realize you've just embraced the whole universe, and everything and everybody in it.
This one question-'What do I know for certain?'-is tremendously powerful. When you look deeply into this question, it actually destroys your world. It destroys your whole sense of self, and it's meant to. You come to see that everything you think you know about yourself, everything you think you know about the world, is based on assumptions, beliefs, and opinions-things that you believe because you were taught or told they were true. Until we start to see these false perceptions for what they really are, consciousness will be imprisoned within the dream state.
The willingness to not bypass illusion is very important. We come to nirvana by way of samsara. We come to see the true nature of things by seeing through the illusory nature of things. We don't come to nirvana by avoiding samsara. We don't come to clarity by avoiding confusion.
Actually, all paths lead away from the truth...how's that? All paths. There's no such thing as a path to the truth. The truth's already here, where are you going?
This moment in which you experience stillness is every moment. Don't let the mind seduce you into the past or future. Stay in the moment, and dare to consider that you can be free now.