Thoughts are just moving through consciousness. They have no power. Nothing has reality until you reach it, grab it, and somehow impregnate it with the power of belief.
The important thing is allowing the whole world to wake up. Part of allowing the whole world to wake up is recognizing that the whole world is free—everybody is free to be as they are. Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you’ll never have your freedom.
The moment that you are willing to step outside of tomorrow, outside of needing more time, or having more time, everything becomes possible. And you may finally notice where the Buddha has always been.
Awakening to the truth is a deep realization of what you are as an experience. What is it that is listening? What is it that is feeling? Feel it. Sense it. Welcome it.
Many people think that it is the function of a spiritual teaching to provide answers to life's biggest questions,
but actually, the opposite is true.
The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to
answer your questions, but to question your answers.
Trying to maintain a pleasant state and avoid an unpleasant state is actually the cause of sorrow. When you stop resisting, you see that what seems frightening is actually the absolute beauty of reality. When you see that everything is a momentary display of reality, then you stop resisting it. Resistance hurts, only every single time. Love is the state of nonresistance.
Nobody can give us what we really already are. Wouldn't it be terrible if somebody could give you what you really are? ...'cause if they could give it to you, they could take it away.
When you rest in quietness and your image of yourself fades, and your image of the world fades, and your ideas of others fade, what's left? A brightness, a radiant emptiness that is simply what you are.
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.
At a certain point we need to grow up; we need to look inside ourselves for our inner guidance. There are things most human beings know; they just don't want to know them. They know deep down that certain things in their lives are working or aren't working, that certain parts of their lives are functional and others are dysfunctional. But sometimes, as human beings, we don't want to know what's not convenient. So we pretend not to know.