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I've Heard People Say That They Cling To Their Painful Thoughts Because They're Afraid That Without Them They Wouldn't Be Activists For Peace. “if I Feel Peaceful,” They Say, “why Would I Bother Taking Action At All?” My Answer Is “because That's What Love Does.” To Think That We Need Sadness Or Outrage To Motivate Us To Do What's Right Is Insane. As If The Clearer And Happier You Get, The Less Kind You Become. As If When Someone Finds Freedom, She Just Sits Around All Day With Drool Running Down Her Chin. My Experience Is The Opposite. Love Is Action.

-Byron Katie

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I've Heard People Say

Byron Katie

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I've Heard People Say That They Cling To Their Painful Thoughts Because They're Afraid That Without Them They Wouldn't Be Activists For Peace. “if I Feel Peaceful,” They Say, “why Would I Bother Taking Action At All?” My Answer Is “because That's What Love Does.” To Think That We Need Sadness Or Outrage To Motivate Us To Do What's Right Is Insane. As If The Clearer And Happier You Get, The Less Kind You Become. As If When Someone Finds Freedom, She Just Sits Around All Day With Drool Running Down Her Chin. My Experience Is The Opposite. Love Is Action.

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Thoughts Are Just What Is. They Appear. They're Innocent. They're Not Personal.

I Use The Word Inquiry As Synonymous With The Work...inquiry Is A Way To End Confusion And To Experience Internal Peace, Even In A World Of Apparent Chaos. Above All Else, Inquiry Is About Realizing That All The Answers We Ever Need Are Always Available Inside Us.

Maybe Everything We've Ever Done Has Been For Love.

I Invite Everyone To Question Their Thoughts About Their Children And Allow Their Children To Be Free. That's When We Stop Teaching Our Children Fear.

That's The Purpose Of Stress. It's A Friend. It's An Alarm Clock, Built In To Let You Know That It's Time To Do The Work.

Here's What I Would Want For Humanity, Because This Is What I Have Come To See Is True: It's So Simple When We Listen To People.

I Have Had The Privilege Of Losing Everything.

Losing Everything

When You Question What You Believe, You Leave The World, Really, And What The World Believes. It Puts You In A Very Interesting Position.

You Move Totally Away From Reality When You Believe That There Is A Legitimate Reason To Suffer".

No One Has Ever Been Angry At Another Human Being-we’re Only Angry At Our Story Of Them.

An Uncomfortable Feeling Is Not An Enemy. It's A Gift That Says, "get Honest; Inquire." We Reach Out For Alcohol, Or Television, Or Credit Cards, So We Can Focus Out There And Not Have To Look At The Feeling. And That's As It Should Be, Because In Our Innocence We Haven't Known How. So Now What We Can Do Is Reach Out For A Paper And A Pencil, Write Thought Down, And Investigate.

Uncomfortable Feeling

Those Questions - When You Think About A Thought, When You're Believing A Thought Or Concept And You Question It - You Realize That It Changes Things. Every Cell In Your Body Is Awake With Inquiry.

I Havent Had A Single Thought For 26 Years. I Have Only Understanding. Its Somewhat Complicated To Understand That. Ive Hardly Ever Spoken About It. Youre In A State Of Total Peace Of Mind. A Kind Of Nirvana.

To Think That I Know What's Best For Anyone Else Is To Be Out Of My Business. Even In The Name Of Love, It Is Pure Arrogance, And The Result Is Tension, Anxiety, And Fear. Do I Know What's Right For Me? That Is My Only Business. Let Me Work With That Before I Try To Solve Problems For You.

It's Not Easy To Find Your Own Way When You Believe That You Need Love, Approval, Appreciation, Or Anything From Your Family. It's Particularly Hard When You Want Them To See Things Your Way.

Everything Happens For Me, Not To Me.

I See The Goodness And Beauty In Everyone, And Everything Is A Gift Given For Me And For All Of Us. If You Don't Love It, Question Your Mind Until You Do.

It Is Not Your Business To Love Me. It Is Mine.

A Teacher Of Fear Can't Bring Peace On Earth. We Have Been Trying To Do It That Way For Thousands Of Years. The Person Who Turns Inner Violence Around, The Person Who Finds Peace Inside And Lives It, Is The One Who Teaches What True Peace Is. We Are Waiting For Just One Teacher. You're The One.

And As Long As We Believe What We Believe - Until That Is Questioned - There's No Progress As A Human Race. Again, We Still Have War. So, Effective Rehabilitation Is To Question What We Believe. When That Happens, Everyone Gets Out Of Prison.

Place Only Your Kindest Thoughts On Everything You Experience Today. Meet Yourself.

Until You Can See Everything In The World As Your Friend, Your Work Is Not Done.

It's Not The Darkness That People Fear; It's What They Imagine Into The Darkness.

If You Want Real Control, Drop The Illusion Of Control; Let Life Have You. It Does Anyway. You’re Just Telling Yourself The Story Of How It Doesn’t.

The Work Always Leaves You With Less Of A Story. Who Would You Be Without Your Story? You Never Know Until You Inquire. There Is No Story That Is You Or That Leads To You. Every Story Leads Away From You. Turn It Around; Undo It. You Are What Exists Before All Stories. You Are What Remains When The Story Is Understood.

Once The Mind Is Met With Understanding, It Can Always Find Its Way Home.

Who Would You Be Without The Thought That Happiness Depends On Someone Else?

The Last Story: God Is Everything, God Is Good.

You’ve Never Reacted To Someone Else. You Project Meaning Onto Nothing. And You React To The Meaning You’ve Projected

Stress Never Feels As Natural As Peace Does

The Ultimate And Dearest - And, Again, Only - Relationship We Have Is The Relationship We Have With Our Thoughts.

We Don't Attach To People Or To Things; We Attach To Uninvestigated Concepts That We Believe To Be True In The Moment.

So, How Can We Live In Joy - And How Can We Know That We're Supposed To Live In Joy The Way People Tell Us To - When We're Believing Thoughts That Bring On Sadness And Frustration And Anger And Alienation And Loneliness? When We're Believing Those Thoughts, We Think That's The World, Rather Than What We're Believing About The World. We're Like Lost Little Children.

When I Believed My Thoughts I Suffered.

When We Work With Our Thinking, Then To Have Great Wealth Is The Same As To Have Nothing. That's The Only Freedom.

When We're Not Defending And Justifying, And We're Being Very Still, Our Answers Can And Do Shock Us.

We Don’t Attach To Things; We Attach To Our Stories About Them.

The Nature Of Mind Is That It Loves Everything Once It Loves Itself, Just As It Opposes Everything When It Opposes Itself.

How Do I Know It Was Meant To Happen This Way? Because It Did.

Meant To Happen

The Greatest Stock Market You Can Invest In Is Yourself. Finding This Truth Is Better Than Finding A Gold Mine.

We All Begin To Do What We Can Do, Just Like We're Doing Now, To Clean Up The Planet And To Find Solutions Rather Than Fight. It Just Happens Everywhere.

Sadness Isn't A Natural Response.

The End Of Suffering Happens In This Very Moment, Whether You're Watching A Terrorist Attack Or Doing The Dishes. And Compassion Begins At Home. Because I Don't Believe My Thoughts, Sadness Can't Exist. That's How I Can Go To The Depths Of Anyone's Suffering, If They Invite Me, And Take Them By The Hand And Walk Them Out Of It Into The Sunlight Of Reality. I've Taken That Walk Myself.

When We Believe In Our Thoughts, When We Tell Ourselves A Story, We Suffer. 'my Husband Doesn't Respect Me.' 'i Should Be Thinner.' Those Are Stories. When There's No Story, There's No Suffering.

It's For Each Of Us To Look At What We Really Do Believe - What Our Belief System Really Consists Of.

If You Argue Against Reality You Will Suffer.

Self-realization Is Not Complete Until It Lives In Action.

The Mind Is So Tricky. It Will Say, "no One Cares. Is It True? Well, Someone Does. Let's See: So-and-so Doesn't Care. Well, Maybe They Do. Well, There Is Someone Who Doesn't Care." It Just Shifts And Shifts And Shifts, So It Can Keep All Of Its Concepts Intact.

Your Most Intimate Relationship Is The One You Have With Your Thoughts.

Intimate Relationships

The World Is Perfect. As You Question Your Mind, This Becomes More And More Obvious.

It Doesn´t Come Later. Everything You´re Supposed To Do Is Here Right Now.

It's Not A Little Thing To Lose Your Identification And Who You Believe Yourself To Be.

If You Knew How Important You Are, You Would Fragment Into A Billion Pieces And Just Be Light.

Any Story That You Tell About Yourself Causes Suffering. There Is No Authentic Story.

My Happiness Isn't Dependent On Anyone Else's.

That's Huge: Just To Clean Up One Ecosystem.

We Say To Others Only What We Need To Hear

Interpersonal Relationship

If You Put Your Hand Into A Fire, Does Anyone Have To Tell You To Move It? Do You Have To Decide? No: When Your Hand Starts To Burn, It Moves. You Don’t Have To Direct It; The Hand Moves Itself. In The Same Way, Once You Understand, Through Inquiry, That An Untrue Thought Causes Suffering, You Move Away From It.

Once We Begin To Question Our Thoughts, Our Partners-alive, Dead Or Divorced-are Always Our Greatest Teachers. There's No Mistake About The Person You're With; He Or She Is The Perfect Teacher For You, Whether Or Not The Relationship Works Out, And Once You Enter Inquiry, You Come To See That Clearly.

Spare Yourself From Seeking Love, Approval, Or Appreciation-from Anyone. And Watch What Happens In Reality, Just For Fun.

Thinking That What You Want Equals What's Best For You Is A Dead End.

Everyone Has Equal Wisdom. It Is Absolutely Equally Distributed. No One Is Wiser Than Anyone Else.

When A Thought Appears Such As "do The Dishes" And You Don't Do Them, Notice How An Internal War Breaks Out... The Stress And Weariness You Feel Are Really Mental Combat Fatigue.

One Morning In February 1986, Out Of Nowhere, I Experienced A Realization. In An Instant, I Discovered That When I Believed My Stressful Thoughts, I Suffered, But When I Questioned Them, I Didn't Suffer.

Don't Be Careful. You Could Hurt Yourself.

I Have An Expression I Say A Lot: I'm In A Hurry. There's Suffering On This Planet That Is So Easy To Break Through If The Mind Is Open To Doing So.

When You Stay Present With Your Children, That’s Where Abundance Is. And When You Stay Out Of Their Business, That’s Where Everything You Deserve In Life Is. When You’re In Presence, There’s No Story, And You Are Abundance. And You Come To Trust That Space So Often That You Just Eventually Hang Out As That, Because There Is Nothing That Can Move You Out Of It, Not Even A Perceived Child Or A Perceived Anything.

When Safety Is Our Priority, We Live Our Lives Being Very, Very Careful, And We Wind Up Having No Lives

The Miracle Of Love Comes To You In The Presence Of The Uninterpreted Moment. If You Are Mentally Somewhere Else, You Miss Real Life.

You Can't Have An Up Without A Down. You Can't Have A Left Without A Right. This Is Duality. If You Have A Problem, You Must Already Have The Solution. The Question Is, Do You Really Want The Solution, Or Do You Want To Perpetuate The Problem?

It's Only Our Story That Keeps Us From Knowing That We Always Have Everything We Need.

I Can't Love You As You Have Been Or Will Be. I Can Only Love You As You Are.

There's Never A Mistake In The Universe. So If Your Partner Is Angry, Good. If There Are Things About Him That You Consider Flaws, Good, Because These Flaws Are Your Own, You're Projecting Them, And You Can Write Them Down, Inquire, And Set Yourself Free. People Go To India To Find A Guru, But You Don't Have To: You're Living With One. Your Partner Will Give You Everything You Need For Your Own Freedom.

You Are What Exists Before All Stories.

Judge Your Neighbor, Write It Down. Ask Four Questions, Turn It Around.

It's Not Your Job To Like Me - It's Mine

Insanity Is Arguing With Reality.

A Dishonest Yes Is A No To Yourself.

If You Are An Enemy To Your Own Mind, Other People Have To Become Enemies Too, Sooner Or Later. Until You Understand, Until You Can Love The Thoughts That Appear In Your Mind, Then You Can Love The Rest Of Us. You Work With The Projector -the Mind - Not The Projected World. I Can't Really Love You Until I Question The Mind That Thinks It Sees You Outside Itself . . .

All I Have Is All I Need And All I Need Is All I Have In This Moment.

Life Is Simple. Everything Happens For You, Not To You.

Some Children Are Afraid To Die Because Their Parents Are Afraid To Die. My Own Children Have Come To Understand That It's Totally Okay With Me If They Die. They Don't Have To Live For My Sake.

It's Difficult To Seek Other People's Love. It's Deadly. In Seeking It You Lose What Is Genuine. This Is The Prison We Create For Ourselves As We Seek What We Already Have.

Nothing You Believe Is True. To Know This Is Freedom.

Love Asks For Nothing. Only Personalities Want Something.

When Your Mind Opens, The Whole World Falls Into Place.

You Don't Have To Feel Bad To Act Kindly. Love Doesn't Stand By, It Moves With The Speed Of Clarity.

What I Invite People To Do Is To Look At Their Lives Just The Way That They Have Lived Them. Not To Change Anything, And Not To Do Positive Thinking At All.

Positive Thinking

Whenever You Think That Your Needs Are Not Being Met, You’re Telling The Story Of A Future

People Who Believe Their Unquestioned Thoughts Cannot See What Is Obvious And Directly In Front Of Their Faces At All Times, Because They Are Invested In What They Believe To Be True. As Long As They Live Out Of An Unquestioned Mind, They Must Continue To Argue With What They Believe Is Happening Rather Than The Reality Of What Is Really Happening.

Ultimately, I Am All I Can Know.

The World Is As You Perceive It To Be. For Me, Clarity Is A Word For Beauty. It’s What I Am. And When I’m Clear, I See Only Beauty. Nothing Else Is Possible.

Asking The Questions - That's What Changes Lives. Every Cell In Your Body Is Awake With Inquiry. And You Cannot Believe The Old Thoughts Again.

I Shouldn't Steal In This World.

To Exclude Anything That Appears In Your Universe Is Not Love. Love Joins With Everything. It Doesn't Exclude The Monster. It Doesn't Avoid The Nightmare - It Looks Forward To It.

If I Want Something, I Go Get It. Anything That I Believe Will Stop Me, I Question.

The Work: 1. Is It True? 2. Can You Absolutely Know That It’s True? 3. How Do You React, What Happens, When You Believe That Thought? 4. Who Would You Be Without The Thought?

The Mind Usually Says, “i Know, I Know, I Know.” But The “don’t-know Mind” Is Where Wisdom Lives.

If Your Beliefs Are Stressful And You Question Them, You Come To See That They Aren't True - Whereas Prior To Questioning, You Absolutely Believe Them. How Can You Live In Joy When You're Believing Thoughts That Bring On Sadness, Frustration, Anger, Alienation, And Loneliness?

When You Run In Fear, It's Square Into The Wall.

My Mother Became A Believer, And Then I Became A Believer. But When I Was 43 Years Old, I Began To Think For Myself, Somehow, By Fluke And By Grace. And I Thought, "oh, My. I Was So Mistaken." The World Isn't What I Believed It To Be. I Am Not What I Believed Me To Be, And Neither Is Anyone.

I Think Our Children Are Afraid To Die Because We're Afraid To Die.

Happiness Is A Clear Mind. A Clear And Sane Mind Knows How To Live, How To Work, What Emails To Send, What Phone Calls To Make, And What To Do Do To Create What It Wants Without Fear.

The Ability To Understand The Cause Of Your Own Suffering Gives You The Ability To Understand Ours.

Life Is Simple. Everything Happens For You, Not To You. Everything Happens At Exactly The Right Moment, Neither Too Soon Nor Too Late. You Don't Have To Like It... It's Just Easier If You Do.

Nothing Can Cost You Someone You Love. The Only Thing That Can Cost You Your Husband Is If You Believe A Thought. That's How You Move Away From Him. That's How The Marriage Ends. You Are One With Your Husband Until You Believe The Thought That He Should Look A Certain Way, He Should Give You Something, He Should Be Something Other Than What He Is. That's How You Divorce Him. Right Then And There You Have Lost Your Marriage.

Realizing That People Should Lie When They Do Makes Me A Little More Open-minded, A Little More Tolerant, When My Child Or My Partner Lies.

If I Think The Environment In The World Needs To Be Cleaned Up, Let Me Clean Up My Own Environment. Let Me Clean Up The Environment In My Head - Let Me Work With That Pollution And That Ecosystem.

I'm Not In Iraq. I'm Here In California. Have I Had An Argument With My Husband Today? Have I Been At War With Someone In My Life Today - Or With Myself? Let Me Work On That. That Way War Is Ending Somewhere In The World.

As Far As Intellect, What Else Is There? Without Intellect, No Story And No World.

Fear Has Only Two Causes: The Thought Of Losing What You Have Or The Thought Of Not Getting What You Want.

Some Of Us Are Returning To Sanity, Because We're Tired Of The Pain. We're In A Hurry. No Time To Mess Around.

When You Realize That Suffering And Discomfort Are The Call To Inquiry, You May Actually Begin To Look Forward To Uncomfortable Feelings. You May Even Experience Them As Friends Coming To Show You What You Have Not Yet Investigated Thoroughly Enough.

Uncomfortable Feeling

Behold Your World! The Judgments You Believe Just Created It.

We Begin To Not Be Human, As We've Known It, Any Longer. But To Be Just Creative Minds And Action, Whereas Right Now We're Confused Minds And Actions, And Our Environment Mirrors That Back To Us.

Mind Is Everything. There's Nothing That It's Not.

I Suffered From Severe Depression For Over A Decade. My Condition Deteriorated Steadily. I Was Suicidal.

People Try So Hard To Let Go Of Their Negative Behaviors And Thoughts, And It Doesn't Work, Or It Works Only For A Short Time. I Didn't Let Go Of My Negative Thoughts; I Questioned Them, And Then They Let Go Of Me, And So Did My Addictions And Depression.

What Would It Be Like To Let Go Of Wanting Things To Be Other Than They Are?

I Didn't Fight Or Shame My Thoughts, I Questioned Them, And They Stopped Shaming Me.

Even Breathing Is A Contribution.

Love Is Who We Are Without Our Stories.

Our Parents, Our Children, Our Spouses, And Our Friends Will Continue To Press Every Button We Have, Until We Realize What It Is That We Don't Want To Know About Ourselves, Yet. They Will Point Us To Our Freedom Every Time.

There's No Nightmare You Can't Wake Yourself Up From.

Hurt Feelings Or Discomfort Of Any Kind Cannot Be Cause By Another Person. No One Outside Me Can Hurt Me. That’s Not A Possibility. It’s Only When I Believe A Stressful Thought That I Get Hurt. And I’m The One Who’s Hurting Me By Believing What I Think. This Is Very Good News, Because It Means That I Don’t Have To Get Someone Else To Stop Hurting Me. I’m The One Who Can Stop Hurting Me. It’s Within My Power.

What Is Perfect Health? The Unraveling Of All Imagined States Of Mind

The World Is Perfect. As You Question Your Mind, This Becomes More And More Obvious. Mind Changes, And As A Result, The World Changes. A Clear Mind Heals Everything That Needs To Be Healed. It Can Never Be Fooled Into Believing That There Is One Speck Out Of Order.

When You Act Like A Teacher, It's Usually Because You're Afraid To Be The Student.

If Our Thinking Is Clear, How Could Work Or Money Be The Problem? Our Thinking Is All We Need To Change.

You Might Believe That It's Only For Their Own Good, But How Does It Feel When You Try To Manipulate The People You Love? Are You Teaching Them That Your Love Is Conditional? Maybe Through Inquiry We Can Find Another Way.

I Am Never Unhappy, You Can Achieve That As Well.

I Am The Perpetrator Of My Suffering - But Only All Of It.

There Is No Security For Those Who Seek It Outside Of Themselves.

Peace Doesn't Require Two People; It Requires Only One. It Has To Be You. The Problem Begins And Ends There.

Do You Want To Meet The Love Of Your Life? Look In The Mirror.

I Can Find Only Three Kinds Of Business In The Universe: Mine, Yours And God's. Much Of Our Stress Comes From Mentally Living Out Of Our Business. When I Think, "you Need To Get A Job, I Want You To Be Happy, You Should Be On Time, You Need To Take Better Care Of Yourself," I Am In Your Business. When I'm Worried About Earthquakes, Floods, War, Or When I Will Die, I Am In God's Business. If I Am Mentally In Your Business Or In God's Business, The Effect Is Separation.

Joy Is A Natural Way Of Being.

We Suffer Only Until We Realize That We Can't Know Anything.

No One Can Give You Freedom But You.

Freedom Of Expression

They Say, "katie, You're Wrong." And If I Say, "how Dare You Say That? I Have Studied And Studied." Or, "i Am An Expert In" Whatever Area We're Talking About. Or, "no, You Are Wrong! And I Think You're Rude!" Or Anything Like That, And If We Don't Say It Out Loud, Maybe We Think It, But That's Stressful. The Moment I've Defended, In Any Way, I've Started The War.

When You're Comfortable And Secure, It's Not Enough. The Mind Doesn't Stop There Because It Has To Continue To Focus Itself As This Body, So It Moves To Pleasure. And Pleasure Really Is A Non-existent Thing. When We're Experiencing Pleasure, We're Trying To Hold Onto It As It Leaves, So It Really Isn't Pleasure. Pleasure Is Pain Because We're Grasping.

The Person Who Finds Peace Inside And Lives It, Is The One Who Teaches What True Peace Is.

It's Not The Problem That Causes Our Suffering; It's Our Thinking About The Problem.

When The Creative Mind Is Unleashed And Understands Its True Nature, It's Unlimited. There's Nothing You Cannot Do.

Nothing Terrible Has Ever Happened Except In Our Thinking. Reality Is Always Good, Even In Situations That Seem Like Nightmares. The Story We Tell Is The Only Nightmare That We Have Lived.

Every Mind Deserves To Be Free.

When You're Operating On Uninvestigated Theories Of What's Going On And You Aren't Even Aware Of It, You're In What I Call "the Dream." Often The Dream Becomes Troubling; Sometimes It Even Turns Into A Nightmare. At Times Like These, You May Want To Test The Truth Of Your Theories By Doing The Work On Them. The Work Always Leaves You With Less Of Your Uncomfortable Story. Who Would You Be Without It? How Much Of Your World Is Made Up Of Unexamined Stories? You'll Never Know Until You Inquire.

Times Like These

The Worst Loss You've Ever Experienced Is The Greatest Gift You Can Have.

Until We Question Our Stressful Thoughts, We Remain Victims Of The Images In Our Head.

Nothing Outside You Can Ever Give You What You're Looking For.

If Your Happiness Depends On Your Children Being Happy, That Makes Them Your Hostages. So Stay Out Of Their Business, Stop Using Them For Your Happiness, And Be Your Own Happiness. And That Way You Are The Teacher For Your Children: Someone Who Knows How To Live A Happy Life.

If People Are Living Their Lives For Security And Comfort And Pleasure, Then Mind's Every Waking Moment Will Be Plotting Those Things. That's How It Stays Identified - As A Body, As A You.

I Was Clinically Depressed. I Was Paranoid. I Was Agoraphobic. I Would Have Days At A Time Of Not Being Able To Even Bathe Or Brush My Teeth.

I Like To Say It Was Born Out Of Laughter.

I Was Full Of Rage. My Self-esteem Was So Low That I Actually Slept On The Floor Every Night, Because I Didn't Believe I Deserved A Bed To Sleep In.

When They Attack You And You Notice That You Love Them With All Your Heart, Your Work Is Done.

God, As I Use The Word, Is Another Name For What Is. I Always Know God's Intention: It's Exactly What Is In Every Moment.

In My Experience, We Don't Make Thoughts Appear, They Just Appear. One Day, I Noticed That Their Appearance Just Wasn't Personal. Noticing That Really Makes It Simpler To Inquire.

That's What I Love About Integrity. Each Time We Go Inside, That's Where It Is.

It's Just A Constant Thing When The Mind Starts To Wake Up To Itself.

Do You Want To Be Right More Than You Want To Know The Truth? It's The Truth That Set Me Free. Acceptance, Peace, And Less Attachment To A World Of Suffering Are All Effects Of Doing The Work. They're Not The Goals. Do The Work For The Love Of Freedom, For The Love Of Truth.

When A Thought Hurts, That’s The Signal That It Isn’t True.

Defense Is The First Act Of War.

The Ego’s Job Is To Kill Everything But Itself

How Do You React When You Think You Need People's Love? Do You Become A Slave For Their Approval?

When You Do The Work, You See Who You Are By Seeing Who You Think Other People Are. Eventually You Come To See That Everything Outside You Is A Reflection Of Your Own Thinking. You Are The Storyteller, The Projector Of All Stories, And The World Is The Projected Image Of Your Thoughts.

Low Self-esteem Is Not Possible When You Understand The Nature Of Everything. Depression Is Not Possible. The Universe Is Absolutely Friendly.

Nothing Belongs To Me. Everything Comes And Goes. Serenity Is An Open Door.

When You Discover That All Happiness Is Inside You, The Wanting And Needing Are Over, And Life Gets Very Exciting.

To Me, Health Is A Balanced Mind. A Balanced Mind Knows How To Get Enough Rest, How To Eat Properly, How To Exercise. I Have Come Out As Just A Balanced Human Being, And I Don't Know Anything Finer Than That.

I Am A Lover Of What Is, Not Because I'm A Spiritual Person, But Because It Hurts When I Argue With Reality.

Affecting The World Is Obviously Possible When We See People In The World Who We Really Love And Respect And We See How That They Affect Our Lives.

Love And Respect

I Can Find Only Three Kinds Of Business In The Universe: Mine, Yours, And God's.

I Teach People To Question Their Thinking, And This Changes Their World.

The Whole Planet Is Waiting For Someone To Do It First

Love Is Action. It's Clear, It's Kind, It's Effortless, And It's Irresistible.

Do You Know Anyone Who Hasn't Changed His Mind? This Door Was A Tree, Then It Will Be Firewood For Someone, Then It Will Return To Air And Earth. We're All Like That, Constantly Changing. It's Simply Honest To Report That You've Changed Your Mind When You Have. When You're Afraid Of What People Will Think If You Speak Honestly, That's Where You Become Confused.

The Most Important Relationship Is The Mind's Relationship With Itself. In Other Words, The Ultimate - And, Really, The Only - Relationship You Have Is The Relationship With Your Own Thoughts.

Important Relationships

Just Keep Coming Home To Yourself, You Are The One Who You've Been Waiting For.

Until The Mind Is Open, The Heart Stays Closed. The Open Mind Is The Key To The Open Heart.

I Love What I Think, And I'm Never Tempted To Believe It.

I Can Just Talk About My World, And People Relate To It Because It's So Familiar To Them. It's Them, It's Not Me. They're Hearing Themselves.

I'm Most Inspired Whenever I Hear Of Even The Smallest Act Of Human Kindness.

The Nightmare Always Becomes Laughter, Once It's Understood.

Every (stressful Thought) Is A Variation On A Single Theme: This Shouldn't Be Happening. I Shouldn't Be Having This Experience. God Is Unjust. Life Isn't Fair.

Any Stressful Thought That You Have About The Planet, For Example, Shows You Where You Are Stuck, Where Your Energy Is Being Exhausted In Not Fully Meeting Life As It Is, Without Conditions.

The Voice Within Is What I'm Married To. All Marriage Is A Metaphor For That Marriage. My Lover Is The Place Inside Me Where An Honest Yes And No Come From. That's My True Partner. It's Always There. And To Tell You Yes When My Integrity Says No Is To Divorce That Partner.

I've Heard People Say That They Cling To Their Painful Thoughts Because They're Afraid That Without Them They Wouldn't Be Activists For Peace. “if I Feel Peaceful,” They Say, “why Would I Bother Taking Action At All?” My Answer Is “because That's What Love Does.” To Think That We Need Sadness Or Outrage To Motivate Us To Do What's Right Is Insane. As If The Clearer And Happier You Get, The Less Kind You Become. As If When Someone Finds Freedom, She Just Sits Around All Day With Drool Running Down Her Chin. My Experience Is The Opposite. Love Is Action.

If You Don't Like Your World, Question Your Thoughts About It.

I Could Go On And On About How The Statements And Concepts That Used To Depress Me Now Bring Me Joy, But That Is Not Easily Understood For People Who Think The Way I Used To Think And Believe What I Used To Believe.

The World Is Nothing But My Perception Of It. I See Only Through Myself. I Hear Only Through The Filter Of My Story.

Nothing Comes Ahead Of Its Time, And Nothing Ever Happened That Didn't Need To Happen.

It Takes Only One Person To Have A Successful Relationship.

Successful Relationship

Until You Look Forward To All Criticism, Your Work's Not Done.

You Cannot Hurt Me. Only I Can Do That.

The More You Reveal, The More You Have To Question And The Freer You Get. Until, Finally, You're Absolutely Exposed. And That Leaves You In A Fearless Position, Because You Can Work In The World Without The Fear Of Being Found Out. That Is Freedom.

I Would Go Out Into The Desert. The Desert Was My Teacher. I Didn't Know About Gurus And Wise People-i Wasn't A Reader.

If I Had A Prayer, It Would Be This: "god, Spare Me From The Desire For Love, Approval, Or Appreciation. Amen."

It's Important To Realize That Inquiry Is About Noticing, Not About Dropping The Thought... Inquiry Is Not About Getting Rid Of Thoughts; It's About Realizing What's True For You, Through Awareness And Unconditional Self-love. Once You See The Truth, The Thought Lets Go Of You, Not The Other Way Around.

This Is The Time. This Is The Place. This Is The Vastness. Right Here Is Paradise. Always. Always.

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