“I’ve become more aware of myself. Because of the situation. Now that I’m no I’m leaving, I see things differently. I’ve been aware of little things that I would have missed before. ‘Like what?’ Like seeing the sun shine off the roof of our old barn. I saw that this morning and stood there, looking at it. I found it moving. It was beautiful - it really was. I don’t usually think about if a landscape is beautiful or not, but I couldn’t control this feeling. I saw it and recognized that it was beautiful. But you know what? It made me sad. ‘Sad?’ I can hear him typing. He’s trying to do it quietly, but I can hear. ‘Why?’ I don’t know. I have no idea. ‘Because beauty is fleeting, maybe?’ No, I say. It’s the opposite. Beauty isn’t fleeting. Beauty is eternal. But . . . I’m not. I’m fleeting. That’s more the point. He’s typing stops abruptly. ‘ that’s quite profound. You do seem more self-aware and introspective them when I first arrived. It makes me think of Baudelaire: ‘ I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy’.”
“If you can repeat what you are saying to others, to yourself, there is no doubting you!”
“Our assumptions and expressive elucidations of an intermeshed external universe make up our internal world of thought. How we perceive the world in turn makes up the continued evolution of the rust resistant self. Formulation of a mutable sense of self causes us humbly to take into account our human frailty. Active awareness of our feebleness provides us an apt sense of perspective that our personal wants and woes are trifle matters. While we routinely suppress the knowledge of our ultimate fate in order to maintain the steam to power through the turbulence of each day. The constant whisper of death advancing is what drives all people to perform acts that transcend the banality of everyday living and place an artistic stamp upon their lives. An ethical person attempts to live in that sweet spot half way between the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification.”
“Our human self is just a wrapper, a shell to hold us in, so that we can settle our debts and learn some things that we could not learn otherwise. We shall cast aside that shell as soon as the lesson is learned. In truth, we are the essence of the divine experiencing itself. We cannot be contained, we are expansive, formless and radiant. Our human self is no more than a transient vehicle, fit for purpose. Our true self is no less than empty, joyful, eternal love.”
“When I see you –I really see me, Heart to Heart, Soul to Soul, Look inside not outside. I am you and you are me.”
“When we change our perspective, we change our perception.”
“The key to happiness is to know the truth about yourself - to understand you really are. Most people wrongly identify themselves with their feeling, thoughts, likes and dislikes. When they feel anger, they think, ‘I am angry. This is my anger.’ They consequently spend their life avoiding some kinds of feelings and pursuing others. They never realise that they are not their feelings, and that the relentless pursuit of particular feelings just traps them in misery.”
“Hold this rope while I dive into my soul; don t even bother pulling it if I didn t come up on my own”
“He wondered why he felt real. He knew he was but how did he know? What was it that made him so sure? What was it he felt deep down inside of him? And then the answer came. The answer lay in the question. He was real because he could ask himself that question. If he wasn’t real, he couldn’t ask himself if he was real or not. He wouldn’t even be able to think about it if it wasn’t true. That’s what made him real, he thought. There was more to him than just his reflection in a mirror. There was something beneath his skin. Something that could listen to his thoughts. Something that was more.”
“If you can t make fun of yourself, someone else will do it for you.”
“Your internal conversation is an invitation for change.”
“Deep self-understanding is the foundation for a leader s potential impact.”
“Remember that when things don t go according to plan, they go according to truth. No matter how painful the reality, it is reality nonetheless. There is dignity in facing the truth without trying to cut it down to a more manageable size. There is honour in acceptance.”
“Early awareness is not a blessing. Not for the aware person.”
“When you finally make it, when you finally reach your level of greatness, the years of struggle that consumed you will all be swallowed up as if they were a moment in time. And you will come to realize that greatness was not the end result of being un-great, but that you demonstrated greatness every day along the way. #greatness”
“I have had the privilege of knowing my self for almost 40 years. That’s a lot of stories and tales to tell, but I’ll spare you those details. If there’s one thing I ve learned, It is that finding the person within oneself requires a very subtle alchemy.”
“We have to change the world to fit us, not the other way around.”