Go ahead, climb up onto the velvet top of the highest stakes table. Place yourself as the bet. Look God in the eyes and finally, for once in your life, lose.
When you inquire 'Who am I?' if you are honest, you'll notice that it takes you right back to silence instantly. The brain doesn't have an answer, so all of a sudden there is silence.
When someone says, 'I love you,' he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, 'I hate you,' she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views-literally.
Whatever you resist you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion,you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.
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 but a thought.
As soon as the mind pulls out an agenda and decides what needs to change, that's unreality. Life doesn't need to decide who's right and who's wrong. Life doesn't need to know the "right" way to go because it's going there anyway.
The realization of Truth and Reality can never be created by the mind ... it always comes as a gift of grace. Inquiry clears away misperceptions and illusions, making one available to the movements of grace.
You can't lose what you serve. That's the secret. What you serve, you can't lose. What you don't serve and what you try to hold onto, you can't hold onto. It's always slipping out of your fingers.
Wisdom without love is like having lungs but no air to breathe. Do not seek wisdom in order to acquire knowledge but in order to live and love more fully.
Many Sages have said, "Your world is a dream. You're living in an illusion." They're referring to this world of the mind and the way we believe our thoughts about reality. When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are.
Enlightenment is a destructive process. It
has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing
through the facade of pretence. It's the
complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true.