Here are some more quotes I highlighted while reading:
“Sometimes the best thing that can happen to us is to be awakened to reality, for calamity to strike, for then we come to faith, as C.S. Lewis did.”
“All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.” – Thomas Aquinas
“Don’t carry over experiences from the past. In fact, don’t carry over good experiences from the past either. Learn what it means to experience something fully, then drop it and move on to the next moment, uninfluenced by the previous one. You’d be traveling with such little baggage that you could pass through the eye of a needle. You’d know what eternal life is, because eternal life is now, the timeless now.”
“No great merit in it if it’s mechanical. The beauty of an action comes not from its having become a habit but from its sensitivity, consciousness, clarity of perception, and accuracy of response.”
“An attachment is a belief that without something you are not going to be happy.”
“Exhortations are of no great help.”
“There’s only one way out and that is to get deprogrammed! How do you do that? You become aware of the programming.”
“The day you cease to travel, you will have arrived.” – Japanese adage
“You always empower the demons you fight.”
“You don’t chase darkness out of the room with a broom, you turn on a light.”
“There is no salvation till they have seen their basic prejudice.”
“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished.”
“Life only makes sense when you perceive it as a mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”
“A terrorist to you is a martyr to the other side.”
“It’s only when you’re afraid of life that you fear death.”
“If you would die to the past, if you would die to every minute, you would be the person who is fully alive, because a fully alive person is one who is full of death.”
“First, cope with your negative feelings so that when you move out to change others, you’re not coming from hate or negativity but from love.”
It’s not a question of imitating Christ, it’s a question of becoming what Jesus was. It’s a question of becoming Christ, becoming aware, understanding what’s going on within you.”
“There is nothing so cruel as nature. In the whole of the universe there is no escape from it, and yet it is not nature that does the injury, but the person’s own heart.”
“If the eye is unobstructed, it results in sight; if the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing; if the nose is unobstructed, the result is a sense of smell; if the mouth is unobstructed, the result is a sense of taste; if the mind is unobstructed, the result is wisdom.” – Oriental sage
“If the heart is unobstructed, the result is love.” – Anthony de Mello
“Wisdom occurs when you drop barriers you have erected through your concepts and conditioning… Wisdom is to be sensitive to this situation, to this person, uninfluenced by any carryover from the past, without residue from the experience of the past.”
“Freedom lies not in external circumstances; freedom resides in the heart.”
“Seeing is the most arduous thing that a human being can undertake, for it calls for a disciplined, alert mind.”
“A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within.”
“Now, you need awareness and you need nourishment. You need good, healthy nourishment. Learn to enjoy the solid food of life. Good food, good wine, good water. Taste them. Lose your mind and come to your senses.”
“And if I can’t get you to peep out of your little narrow beliefs and convictions and look at another world, you’re dead, you’re completely dead; life has passed you by.”
“So love the thought of death, love it.”
“It will also help if you take on activities that you can do with your whole being, activities that you love to do so that while you’re engaged in them success, recognition, and approval simply do not mean a thing to you.”
“I’ve told you what a spiritual exercise it is to gaze at things, to be aware of things around you.”
“It is not from lack of religion in the ordinary sense of the word that the world is suffering, it is from lack of love, lack of awareness.”
“Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something that you have; love is something that has you.”
“‘It’s the ‘Aha’ experience that counts.'”
“Living is to have dropped all the impediments and to live in the present moment with freshness.”
“Anything you’re aware of keeps changing; clouds keep moving.”
“Every child has a god in him. Our attempts to mold the child will turn the god into a devil. Children come to my school, little devils, hating the world, destructive, unmannerly, lying, thieving, bad-tempered. In six months they are happy, healthy children who do no evil.” – from Summerhill by A. S. Neill
“There’s no violence in those children, because no one is practicing violence on them, that’s why.”
“No fear, so no violence.”
“Do you know where wars come from? They come from projecting outside of us the conflict that is inside.”
“The religion that makes people good makes people bad, but the religion known as freedom makes all people good, for it destroys the inner conflict [I’ve added the word “inner”] that makes people devils.” – from Summerhill by A. S. Neill
“I have run into individuals, here and there, who suddenly stumble upon this truth: The root of evil is within you. As you begin to understand this, you stop making demands on yourself, you stop having expectations of yourself, you stop pushing yourself and you understand. Nourish yourself on wholesome food, good wholesome food. I’m not talking about actual food, I’m talking about sunsets, about nature, about s good movie, about a good book, about enjoyable work, about good company, and hopefully you will break your addictions to those other feelings.”