Awesome Quotes | INFJ Forum

Awesome Quotes

Black Swan

Community Member
Sep 28, 2008
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MBTI
INFJ
I was only going to pick a few, but they're all so amazing. And even if you disagree, they are still provocative and will make you dig deeper. These are all from Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now...and I must share because I love them already, I must get this book ASAP (has anyone read it)?

Quotes:
  • "I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don't know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten" - Page 6
  • "The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly–you usually don't use it at all. It uses you." - Page 13
  • "all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind" - Page 14
  • "All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness" - Page 19
  • "Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind – or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body" - Page 20
  • "It wasn't through the mind, through thinking, that the miracle that is life on earth or your body were created and are being sustained" - Page 20
  • "You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware." - Page 22
  • "Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance" - Page 24
  • "Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within" - Page 24
  • "Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind" - Page 25
  • "Nobody’s life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn’t it a question of learning to live with them rather than trying to avoid them?

    The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.

    The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind." - Page 27
  • "Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath" - Page 32
  • "The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now." - Page 35
  • "an emotion is the body's reaction to your mind" - Page 36
  • "Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power if within, and it is available to you now" - Page 36
  • "The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you." - Page 37
  • "Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" – and find that there is no death" - Page 38
  • "When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind in itself is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are" - Page 40
  • "To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation" - Page 40
  • "Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be" - Page 41
  • "Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now" - Page 41
  • "The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future – which, of course, can only be experienced as the Now"- Page 50
  • "Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are cause by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence" - Page 50
  • "To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment" - Page 59
  • "Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place" - Page 64
  • "Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally" - Page 68
  • "You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present" - Page 75
  • "...words in themselves are not important. They are not the Truth; they only point to it" - Page 85
  • "Don't get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It's an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself" - Page 90
  • "At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is" - Page 105
  • "...the ultimate purpose of the world lies not within the world but in the transcendence of the world" - Page 117
  • "You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God" - Page 122
  • "[Relationships] do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you" - Page 127
  • "As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter" - Page 131
  • "Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time" - Page 147
  • "It seems that most people need to experience a great deal of suffering before they will relinquish resistance and accept – before they will forgive." - Page 149
  • "You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be a failure" - Page 152
  • "Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disappointments before you realize that truth" - Page 155
 
I have got to get that book. Thanks for posting that.
 
Interesting...I saw the pain portions, and was reminded of this from Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet"


And a woman spoke, saying, "Tell us of Pain."
And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.


I think Gibran's view is different though...
 
Ender, I love The Prophet by K.G.

At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is - Page 105


Reminds me of this saying

I am because you are - Zulu proverb
 
Love one another for I love you and if you love me too then our love must be true ~
I wrote that, didn't you?
 
Love one another for I love you and if you love me too then our love must be true ~
I wrote that, didn't you?

You WROTE that adaptation yourself ? O M G it is almost better than the real haha. aaah I feel like I let you down now, no i didn't write it and I'm sorry if it wasnt clear.