Wisdom Quotes

[lightsun]

 “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~ Lao-Tzu
 
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” ~Richard Bach

"Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world." - Sri Ramana Maharshi

"What is very Tao is learning to become one with the universe. Not fighting what you can-not change, it is a waste of energy and life force. Learn to be more accepting. It is a lesson to let go of one’s ego and transcend it. It is actually a learning exercise and can take a lifetime to master.” LightSun

[lightsun]

“I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” Isaac Asimov

 “The thought of my sons carrying on after I’m gone is about as close to belief in an afterlife as an aging pagan like myself is likely to get. But curiously, it’s close enough for comfort.” Unknown

[lightsun]

"Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all.
As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies." Joseph Campbell

"The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of woman's emancipation" Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)


"Every premise imaginable is real to the recipient. Truth is not a single entity, not one knows truth. It is what our internal data tells us and is not proven by science, god or existence. My saying, ""What i fervently hold to be the truth and feel in every fiber of my being. I know it. I feel it. I believe it. With a passion! (May not be existence).

I respect your God. He is for you. As such he is your belief. It is part of your belief system. You can believe no other like Agnosticism can believe no other for we are defined by belief and not a proven reality." LightSun Paul Peaceweaver

[lightsun]

"A Belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses it is an idea that possesses the mind." Robert Oxton Bolton

"Nothing is real or what we can see, feel, touch, taste, and hear is real, which is it? Both are elements of the truth. What we perceive through are perceptions are part of the real world or reality. But the labels that we prescribe to our experiences are projections of perceptions. In other words one event will be witnessed by five people and five “realities” will be experienced and reported and not the actual reality.

Our perceptions are blinded, distorted, and also colored by fears, prejudices, blind spots, stereotypes, false and limited information, and superstition. Our understandings and perceptions change with time and experience. Our realities thus change as well. What we perceive as real is only a temporary perception. One can thus say that what we perceive as real is an illusion. Only God can know what is real and the truth but there is no “God." LightSun Paul Peaceweaver

[lightsun]

“Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people's behavior, it would all make sense.” Sigmund Freud

"If something does not make sense on the surface, there is an unconscious reason. We are a rational-irrational species. We have the gift of logic, and reason. But too many times are reasoning is circumvented by our emotions and feelings. Yet we need feelings to connect to others and have interpersonal relationships. It is finding the mixture and balance between the two." LightSun

[lightsun]

“We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.” Charles R. Swindoll

“Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.” - Irving Berlin

[lightsun]

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Albert Einstein
 
 
“When you realized that it is the planet that is evolving and we, humanity, are just a small, yet relatively important, part of this planetary evolution. Then your personal state of awareness can be absorbed, briefly, into the great collective awareness of the planet. The more you make this connect and work with planetary awareness the more you can grow spiritually.” David (Janus aka dbm.)

"No man is an island." John Donne 1572-1631 Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1624

[lightsun]

"Poetry reaches deeper than prose because it speaks the language of the subconscious and sow seeds beneath the surface layers of the mind through metaphor, archetype, and symbol." ~Dan Millman

"Bach gave us God's word. Mozart gave us God's laughter. Beethoven gave us God's fire. God gave us Music that we may pray without words." Unknown

” Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos.

There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity, even life give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.” Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.” Oscar Wilde

“We rely upon the poets, the philosophers, and the playwrights to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy and sorrow. They illuminate the thoughts for which we only grope; they give us the strength and balm we cannot find in ourselves. Whenever I feel my courage wavering I rush to them. They will give me the wisdom of acceptance, the will to push on.” Helen Hayes

“Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted."  Joseph Campbell


  "Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being." - Carl Jung

[lightsun]

"Everyone who is marching to the beat of their own drummer has a much greater chance of happiness than those who are trying to please this one and this one and this one." ~ Abrham-Hicks

"Insist on yourself, never imitate." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Find yourself and express yourself in your own particular way. Express your love openly. Life is nothing but a dream, and if you create your life with love, your dream becomes a masterpiece of art."  Don Miguel Ruiz

"Live your life from your hearts. share from your heart. and your story will touch and heal people's souls." Melody Beattie

[lightsun]

"She walks in Beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes."-Lord Byron

"Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are the eternity and you are the mirror." Kahlil Gibran (1883 –1931)

[lightsun]

"Your mind is right now filled with old thoughts not only old thoughts, but mostly someone else’s old thoughts. It’s important now—it’s time now—to change your mind about some things. This is what evolution is all about." Conversations with God™

"A Belief is no merely an idea the mind possesses it is an idea that possesses the mind." Robert Oxton Bolton

[lightsun]

“A number of disciples went to the Buddha and said, Sir, there are living here in Savatthi many wandering hermits and scholars who indulge in constant dispute, some saying that the world is infinite and eternal and others that it is finite and not eternal, some saying that the soul dies with the body and others that it lives on forever, and so forth.
What sir, would you say concerning them?" The Buddha answered, "Once upon a time there was a certain raja that called to his servant and said, 'Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind and show them an elephant.' 'Very good sire, ' replied the servant, and he did as he was told.

He said to the blind men assembled there, 'Here is an elephant,' and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another it's ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant. When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each, 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?" "Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, 'Sire, an elephant is like a pot. And the men who had observed the ear replied, 'An elephant is like a winnowing basket.'

Those who had been presented with a task said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a granary; the foot, a pillar; the back a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush. "Then they began to quarrel, shouting, 'Yes it is!' 'No, it is not!' 'An elephant is not like that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' And so on, till the came to blows over the matter. "Brethren, the raja was delighted with the scene.”

Just so are these preachers and scholars holding views blind and unseeing. In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality I thus and thus." Then the Exalted One rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift, Oh how they cling and wrangle, some who claim for preacher and monk the honored name! For, quarreling, each to his view they cling. Such folk see only one side of a thing."

Jainism and Buddhism. Udana 68-69: Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant

[lightsun]

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another."  Anatole France

"A desperate disease requires a desperate remedy" Guy (Guido) Fawkes

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy ~

“The truth is our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer ways." M. Scott Peck

[lightsun]

“A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” - Max Planck

[lightsun]

""The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists." Martin Luther King Jr.

“However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act upon them?" Buddha

"The world that we seem so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working.

To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds." William James

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind." Earl Russell

"Rarely do you find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think." Martin Luther King Jr.

“Peace cannot be kept by force: it can only be achieved by understanding. Small is the number of people who see with their own eyes and think with their minds.Few are those who see with who see with their own eyes and feel with their own heart." Albert Einstein

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew." Abraham Lincoln

“We are one world community. Whether we wish to embrace this view now or later will determine the degree of unnecessary suffering we must endure until we embrace this truth, to allow it to enter our hearts, and brains so that it finally comes a part of us.” LightSun Paul Peaceweaver