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The Only Enlightened Masters I Know Are The People That I See Every Day And The People That I've Seen Through My Life Who Have Had The Understanding, At Some Level, That We're Here To Express Love.

-Richard Bach

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The Only Enlightened Masters

Richard Bach

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The Only Enlightened Masters I Know Are The People That I See Every Day And The People That I've Seen Through My Life Who Have Had The Understanding, At Some Level, That We're Here To Express Love.

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The World Is Your Exercise Book, The Pages On Which You Do Your Sums. It Is Not Reality, Though You May Express Reality There If You Wish. You Are Also Free To Write Lies, Or Nonsense, Or To Tear The Pages.

In The Highest Sense, We Are All Creatures Of Light. And I Have A Very Difficult Time Talking With People Who Are Cynical About The World. "the World Is No Damn Good, And We're All Animals," And That Kind Of Thing. Well, I'm An Animal.

One Must First Learn To Fall If One Would Fly.

You'd Chosen To Be An Upright Biped On The Surface Of A Small Planet Of A Minor Sun On The Edge Of A Minor Galaxy Of One Of The Multiple Trillions Of Universes. That's Ok. It Doesn't Matter What Form You Take.

Jonathan Sighed. The Price Of Being Misunderstood, He Thought. They Call You Devil Or They Call You God.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

A Soulmate Is Someone Who Has Locks That Fit Our Keys, And Keys To Fit Our Locks. When We Feel Safe Enough To Open The Locks, Our Truest Selves Step Out And We Can Be Completely And Honestly Who We Are; We Can Be Loved For Who We Are And Not For Who We're Pretending To Be. Each Unveils The Best Part Of The Other. No Matter What Else Goes Wrong Around Us, With That One Person We're Safe In Our Own Paradise.

The More I Want To Get Something Done, The Less I Call It Work.

He Spoke Of Very Simple Things- That It Is Right For A Gull To Fly, That Freedom Is The Very Nature Of His Being, That Whatever Stands Against That Freedom Must Be Set Aside, Be It Ritual Or Superstition Or Limitation In Any Form. "set Aside," Came A Voice From The Multitude, "even If It Be The Law Of The Flock?" "the Only True Law Is That Which Leads To Freedom," Jonathan Said. "there Is No Other.

The Ideas Behind The Words Are Simple Ones That Work In Everyday Life; Find What We Most Want To Do; Do It, No Matter What; And In The Doing Be Guaranteed A Very Difficult And A Very Happy Lifetime.

You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

In Order To Win, You Must Expect To Win.

And Behind It Lies Not Blind Chance But A Principle That Works To Help Us Understand, A Thousand "coincidences" And Friends Come To Show Us The Way When The Problem Seems Too Hard To Solve Alone. Problems For Overcoming. Freedom For Proving. And, As Long As We Believe In Our Dream, Nothing By Chance.

Everything You've Said, Everything You Want To Believe Is Already True. You May Not Find Some Of It For A While, And Some Of It Might Take Longer Than That, But That Doesn't Stop It From Being True This Minute!

Build An Inner Place To Protect Your Truth.

If It's Never Our Fault, We Can't Take Responsibility For It. If We Can't Take Responsibility For It, We'll Always Be Its Victim.

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves. We Live In Denial Of What We Do, Even What We Think. We Do This Because We're Afraid.we Fear We Will Not Find Love,and When We Find It We Fear We'll Lose It. We Fear That If We Don't Have Love We Will Be Unhappy.

How Can A Deer Tell When A Leaf Falls Silent In The Forest? She Hears It Breathing Differently.

Your Friends Will Know You Better In The First Minute You Meet Than Your Acquaintances Will Know You In A Thousand Years.

At Last, The Answer Why. The Lesson That Had Been So Hard To Find, So Difficult To Learn, Came Quick And Clear And Simple. The Reason For Problems Is To Overcome Them. Why, That’s The Very Nature Of Man, I Thought, To Press Past Limits, To Prove His Freedom. It Isn’t The Challenge That Faces Us, That Determines Who We Are And What We Are Becoming, But The Way We Meet The Challenge, Whether We Toss A Match At The Wreck Or Work Our Way Through It, Step By Step, To Freedom.

Nothing Happens By Chance, My Friend... No Such Thing As Luck. A Meaning Behind Every Little Thing, And Such A Meaning Behind This. Part For You, Part For Me, May Not See It All Real Clear Right Now, But We Will, Before Long.

If You Want To Meet Someone Who Can Fix Any Situation You Don't Like, Who Can Bring You Happiness In Spite Of What Other People Say Or Believe, Look In A Mirror, Then Say This Magic Word: 'hello.'

It's Like A Pulsar Inside Me. There Is This Great Burst Of Energy, Forcing Me To Write, And Then The Star Goes Quiet For A Time, And I Think It's Gone, But It's Gathering Energy For Another Burst. And I Seem To Be Almost Unwilling Participants In This.

The Mark Of Your Ignorance Is The Depth Of Your Belief In Injustice And Tragedy. What The Caterpillar Calls The End Of The World, The Master Calls The Butterfly.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . Was No Ordinary Bird. Most Gulls Don't Bother To Learn More Than The Simplest Facts Of Flight How To Get From Shore To Food And Back Again. For Most Gulls, It Is Not Flying That Matters, But Eating. For This Gull, Though, It Was Not Eating That Mattered, But Flight. More Than Anything Else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull Loved To Fly.

If We Change In Different Directions, Then We Don't Have Any Future Anyway, Do We? I Think It's Possible For Two People To Change Together, To Grow Together And Enrich Instead Of Diminish Each Other. The Sum Of One And One, If They're The Right Ones, Can Be Infinity! But So Often One Person Drags The Other Down; One Person Wants To Go Up Like A Balloon And The Other's A Dead Weight. I've Always Wondered What It Would Be Like If Both People, If A Woman And A Man Both Wanted To Go Up Like Balloons!

Jonathan Seagull Discovered That Boredom And Fear And Anger Are The Reasons That A Gull's Life Is So Short, And With Those Gone From His Thought, He Lived A Long Fine Life Indeed.

You're Master Of What You've Lived, Artisan At What You're Living, Amateur At What's Next To Live.

Why, Jon, Why?" His Mother Asked. "why Is It So Hard To Be Like The Rest Of The Flock, Jon? Why Can't You Leave Low Flying To The Pelicans, The Alhatross? Why Don't You Eat? Son, You're Bone And Feathers!" "i Don't Mind Being Bone And Feathers Mom. I Just Want To Know What I Can Do In The Air And What I Can't, That's All. I Just Want To Know.

I'll Quote The Truth Wherever I Find It Thank You.

Rebuilding Us. Isn't That What The Spirit Requires, When We Climb Over The Wreckage Of Our Lives, Sometimes, We Go On To Make Our Lives Our Own Affirmation? We Are Perfect Expressions Of Perfect Love, Here And Now. There Is No Permanent Injury.

Of Course There’s Destiny, But Destiny Doesn’t Push You Where You Don’t Want To Go. You’re The Ones Who Choose. Destiny Is Up To You.

You Are Led, When You Share Your Loves, To An Enchanted Life Of Inner Happiness, Which Unsharing Others Cannot Know.

Inner Happiness

Passionately Obsessed By Anything We Love - An Avalanche Of Magic Flattens The Way Ahead, Levels, Rules, Reasons, Dissents, Bears Us With It Over Chasms, Fears, Doubts. Without The Power Of That Love.

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

Everybody Is Given A Dream... You May Have To Work For It However.

When You Dream, All The Scenery, Characters, Events, Perils, And Outcomes Are Built From Your Own Consciousness, The Darks And Oppressions As Well As The Delights. Same With The World Awake, Though It Takes You Longer To Build It.

Our Soulmate Is The One Who Makes Life Come To Life.

Good And Evil Are Not What Our Parents Told Us, Not What Our Church Tells Us, Or Our Country, Not What Anybody Else Tells Us! All Of Us Decide Good And Evil For Ourselves, Automatically, By Choosing What We Want To Do!

How Easy It Is To Be Compassionate When It's Yourself You See In Trouble.

Happiness Is The Reward We Get For Living To The Highest Right We Know.

There Is A Family Of Us Who Have This Yearning For A Kind Of Excellence That We Can Manifest Every Day Of Our Lives, A Family Who Wants To Believe We're Not Pawns, We're Not Victims On This Planet, That Knows We Have The Power Within Us Here And Now To Change The World We See Around Us!

If You Don't Want To Be A Teacher, You'd Better Get Off This Planet.

I Don't Think Creativity Is Mine To Maintain. It Automatically Comes When We Declare That "i Am An Expression Of Life, And Life Will Express Itself Through Me In The Most Playful And Wonderful Of Ways, If I Let It."

Does Anybody Learn Writing, Or Do They Just Touch Someone Who Lets Them See The Power Of The Deleted Word?

Thanks To You, I Always Am So Happy. Now I Want To Give You All The Happiness On Your Birthday.

We All Know Those Who Draw Their Boundaries Carefully And Say, "i'm Only Human. Nobody's Perfect. I Accept My Limitations." And We Know Others Who Take An Opposite View And Say, "i Can Do Anything I Choose To Do. It Is In My Power To Change The World." And Those Are The Ones Who Most Often Change The World.

Real Integrity Is Doing The Right Thing, Knowing That Nobody's Going To Know Whether You Did It Or Not. Sooner Or Later, Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

Not Being Known Doesn't Stop The Truth From Being True.

No Matter How Qualified You Are, You Won't Reach A Better Life Until You Imagine It.

Law Of Attraction

Here's How The People Live Here, In Big House-shaped Boxes To Keep Off 'rain' And 'snow,' Holes Cut In The Sides So They Can See Out. They Move Around In Smaller Boxes, Painted Different Colours, With Wheels On The Corners. They Need This Box-culture Because Each Person Thinks Of Herself And Himself As Locked In A Box Called A 'body,' Arms And Legs, Fingers To Move Pencils And Tools, Languages Because They've Forgotten How To Communicate, Eyes Because They've Forgotten How To See. Odd Little Planet. Wish You Were Here. Home Soon.

Win By Losing. Before Your Outer Walls Break, As Break They Must, Build An Inner Place To Protect Your Truth. Protect That You Are Infinite Life, Choosing Its Playground; Protect That The World You Know Exists With Your Consent And For Your Own Good Reasons; Protect That Your Purpose And Mission Is To Shine Love In Your Own Playful Way, In The Moments You Decide Will Be Most Dramatic.

We Think, Sometimes, There’s Not A Dragon Left. Not One Brave Knight, Not A Single Princess Gliding Through Secret Forests... What A Pleasure To Be Wrong. Princesses, Knights, Enchantments And Dragons, Mystery And Adventure... Not Only Are They Here-and-now, They’re All That Ever Lived On Earth!

Everything Of This Life As A Mortal Is Fiction. It Seems Real, But...

I Was A Microscopic Life-form, Infinitely Large, Stumbled Backstage Of Its Playhouse, Caught A Nanosecond Glance Of Its Own Reality And Nearly Vaporized In Shock.

Strong Beliefs Win Strong Men, And Then Make Them Stronger.

Our Disasters Have Been Some Of The Best Things That Ever Happened To Us. And What We Swore Were Blessings Have Been Some Of The Worst.

Don't Turn Away From Possible Futures Before You're Certain You Don't Have Anything To Learn From Them.

Illusions Of Life

Character Comes From Following Our Highest Sense Of Right, From Trusting Ideas Without Being Sure They’ll Work.

Life's Battles Don't Always Go To The Strongest Or Fastest; Sooner Or Later Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

Do You Ever Have The Feeling You're A Tourist On Earth?

Grief Is No More Necessary When We Understand Death Than Fear Is Necessary When We Understand Flying.

You Teach Best What You Most Need To Learn.

The Airplane Is Just A Bunch Of Sticks And Wires And Cloth, A Tool For Learning About The Sky And About What Kind Of Person I Am, When I Fly. An Airplane Stands For Freedom, For Joy, For The Power To Understand, And To Demonstrate That Understanding. Those Things Aren't Destructable.

Choose A Love And Work To Make It True, And Somehow, Something Will Happen, Something You Couldn’t Plan, Will Come Along To Move Like To Like, To Set You Loose, To Set You On The Way To Your Next Brick Wall.

Fly Free And Happy Beyond Birthdays And Across Forever, And We'll Meet Now And Then When We Wish, In The Midst Of The One Celebration That Never Can End.

We Design Our Lives Through The Power Of Our Choices. We Feel Most Helpless When We've Made Choices By Default, When We Haven't Designed Our Lives On Our Own.

Yesterday Is History, Tomorrow Is A Mystery, Today Is A Gift, That's Why We Call It The Present. If I Am Not For Myself, Who Will Be For Me? And If I Am Only For Myself, What Am I? And If Not Now, When? A Brick Alone Is Nothing But A Brick. It Takes A Collection Of Bricks To Build A House. Instructor, What?? You Mean You Teach Best What You Most Need To Learn

So This World, I Think, And An Indefinite Number Of Other Worlds Of Our Creation, Are Also - We're Here For Fun; We're Here For Learning; We're Here For Remembering Who We Are, And Who We Are, Are Expressions Of Life So Absolutely Linked With The Life That Is, Always Was, Always Will Be.

The Best Way To Avoid Responsibility Is To Say, 'i've Got Responsibilities.

Dying Is Like Diving Into A Deep Lake On A Hot Day. There's The Shock Of That Sharp, Cold Change, The Pain Of It For A Second, And Then Accepting Is A Swim In Reality. But After So Many Times, Even The Shock Wears Off.

Nobody Means To Get Carried Away In Mediocrity, But It Happens, It Happens Unless You Think About Everything You Do, Unless You Make Every Choice The Best One You Know How To Make.

When I'm Writing It's As If I'm The Observer. It's As If That Computer Screen There -it Used To Be The Typewriter - Just Kind Of Dissolves And There's This Whirling Tunnel Of Mist And There's A Kind Of Proscenium Arch, And Then There Are My Characters, And They Say What They Say, And I Laugh Sometimes In Surprise At What They Say.

For Pilots Sometimes See Behind The Curtain, Behind The Veil Of Gossamer Velvet, And Find The Truth Behind Man, The Force Behind A Universe.

There Are Two Tests That We [writers] Have For All Of Our Writing: So What? And Who Cares? There Is An Answer To Both. The Answer To Who Cares Is That A Reader Cares, If The Writing Is Good. The Answer To So What Is That These Ideas Give Us Completely New Understanding, Change Our Sense Of Who We [people] Are And Why We're Here [on This Planet].

One Way To Pick A Future Is To Believe It’s Inevitable.

Care About Understanding And Before You Know It, In Just A Few Decades, You'll Have A System Of Thinking That Gives You Answers Whenever You Ask.

Thousands Of Volumes Have Been Written About Aviation, But We Do Not Automatically Have Thousands Of True And Special Friends In Their Authors. That Rare Writer Who Comes Alive On A Page Does It By Giving Of Himself, By Writing Of Meanings, And Not Just Of Fact Or Of Things That Have Happened To Him. The Writers Of Flight Who Have Done This Are Usually Found Together In A Special Section On Private Bookshelves.

Two Words: Love Leads. Listen To That Ring Of Love Within. If We Follow That Leading Of Love We'll Be Guaranteed An Adventurous, Positive, Joyful Life.

You Are Free To Smile In The Midst Of Massive Tests And Challenges, Knowing That You Have Chosen To Play This Game, And That You Have Dominion Over All The Appearances Of Earth.

If You Want Magic, Let Go Of Your Armor. Magic Is So Much Stronger Than Steel.

Your Life Is A Treasure And You Are So Much More Than You Know.

True Enjoy Stories Never Ever Have Endings.

Reality Lies Far Beyond Space And Time, And I Need To Know Why.

In The Path Of Our Happiness Shall We Find The Learning For Which We Have Chosen This Lifetime.

Your Whole Body, From Wingtip To Wingtip," Jonathan Would Say, Other Times, "is Nothing More Than Your Thought Itself, In A Form You Can See. Break The Chains Of Your Thought, And You Break The Chains Of Your Body, Too.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

There Is Something To Astrology For Those Who Believe In Astrology, As There Is Something To Medicine For Those Who Believe In Medicine. Every System Works When We Give Our Heart To It.

Life Does Not Listen To Your Logic; It Goes On Its Own Way, Undisturbed. You Have To Listen To Life.

Books Arent Written On Whim Or Promises. Books Are Written On Years Turned Inside Out By Ideas That Never Let Go Until You Get Them In Print, And Even Then Writings A Last Resort, A Desperate Ransom You Pay To Get Your Life Back.

If Our Friendship Depends On Things Like Space And Time, Then When We Finally Overcome Space And Time, We've Destroyed Our Own Brotherhood! But Overcome Space, And All We Have Left Is Here. Overcome Time, And All We Have Left Is Now. And In The Middle Of Here And Now, Don't You Think That We Might See Each Other Once Or Twice?

The Gulls Who Scorn Perfection For The Sake Of Travel Go Nowhere, Slowly. Those Who Put Aside Travel For The Sake Of Perfection Go Anywhere, Instantly.

I Am Tired Of Clinging. Though I Cannot See It With My Eyes, I Trust That The Current Knows Where It Is Going. I Shall Let Go, And Let It Take Me Where It Will. Clinging, I Shall Die Of Boredom.

You Can Achieve A Goal; You Never Really Achieve Your Purpose, Because Your Purpose Is Ongoing. It Never Stops.

If You Will Practice Being Fictional For A While, You Will Understand That Fictional Characters Are Sometimes More Real Than People With Bodies And Heartbeats.

The Creative, Loving-something Life Is Also The Healthy One. There Is Healing And Protection In Doing What Makes You Happy.

Your Conscience Is The Measure Of The Honesty Of Your Selfishness. Listen To It Carefully.

Why Fly? Simple. I'm Not Happy Unless There's Some Room Between Me And The Ground.

Listen To What You Know Instead Of What You Fear.

The Conversation Between Fletcher And Jonathan Livingston Seagull Is Centered On Why Some Have Achieved More Than Others . . . Are They Divine . . . Ahead Of Their Times . . . Fletcher Says, Well, This Kind Of Flying Has Always Been Here To Be Learned By Anybody Who Wanted To Discover It; That's Got Nothing To Do With Time. We're Ahead Of The Fashion, Maybe. Ahead Of The Way Most Gulls Fly. Poor Fletch. Don't You Believe What Your Eyes Are Telling You? All They Show Is Limitations. Look With Your Understanding, Find Out What You Already Know, And You'll See The Way To Fly.

Individuals Somehow Are Led To Find My Books At Times That Are Important To Them. The Mail That I Get Very, Very Often Will Say, "i Was At A Difficult Time In My Life, And Someone Gave Me A Copy."

Your Only Obligation In Any Lifetime Is To Be True To Yourself. Being True To Anyone Else Or Anything Else Is Not Only Impossible, But The Mark Of A Fake Messiah.

Remember The High Board At The Swimming Pool? After Days Of Looking Up At It You Finally Climbed The Wet Steps To The Platform. From There, It Was Higher Than Ever. There Were Only Two Ways Down: The Steps To Defeat Of The Dive To Victory. You Stood On The Edge, Shivering In The Hot Sun, Deathly Afraid. At Last You Leaned Too Far Forward, It Was Too Late For Retreat, And You Dived. The High Board Was Conquered, And You Spent The Rest Of The Day Diving. Climbing A Thousand High Boards, We Demolish Fear, And Turn Into Human Beings.

Sense Of Family Is Enormously Important To Me. In The Larger Sense, We're All Of Us Family; We're All Of Us Soulmates.

There’s No Disaster That Can’t Become A Blessing, And No Blessing That Can’t Become A Disaster.

There Is Something That Is Transcendental About When We Are Immersed In That Which We Most Love.

You Can't Solve Problems For Someone Whose Problem Is That They Don't Want Problems Solved.

Most Gulls Don't Bother To Learn More Than The Simplest Facts Of Flight - How To Get From Shore To Food And Back Again

I Relax My Body Completely, Relax My Mind Completely, And Then Imagine Myself At A Level Where Anything Can Happen.

You're Never Given A Dream Without The Power To Make It True.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

It’s Okay Is A Cosmic Truth…it’s Okay. If There Were Nothing Here For Us To Learn, We Wouldn’t Bother To Pay The Fare.

To Fly As Fast As Thought, To Anywhere That Is, You Must Begin By Knowing That You Have Already Arrived.

Part One: I Do Not Exist To Impress The World. I Exist To Live My Life In A Way That Will Make Me Happy. Part Two: Everybody Else Is Free To Do Whatever They Feel Like Doing, For A Living. Part Three: Responsible Is Able To Respond, Able To Answer For The Way We Choose To Live. There's Only One Person We Have To Answer To, Of Course, And That Is Ourselves.

I Think The Source Of Our Sorrow And The Source Of Our Joy Are Intimately Entwined. Our Sorrow Is That We Have Forgotten Who We Are, We Have Forgotten We Are One With That Source Of All Life - Absolutely Indestructible, Perfect, Joyful. The Source Of Our Joy Is When We Remember That.

We [people] Have The Power To Destroy Ourselves As Well As The Environment. As A Species We Love What I'd Call Brinks-person-ship, Going Right To The Edge Of Disaster And Somehow Managing To Pull Back And Recover. But My Bet Is Still On The Creative And Playful And Positive In The Species. I Think We Will Manage To Survive And Gradually Turn Things Around.

In Order To Live Free And Happily You Must Sacrifice Boredom. It Is Not Always An Easy Sacrifice.

Whatever Happens On The Surface, It's Leading Us In A Direction. That Beautiful Core Within Us That Is Our Character Will Make Choices That Will Inevitably Leads Us To A Higher Understanding Of Who We Are And Why We're Here. And It's Best To Be Aware Of That While It's Happening.

Don't Fear Change. It's Always For The Best.

Thought Plus Belief Equals Manifestation.

Sooner I'd Try To Change History Than Turn Political, Than Try Convincing Others To Write Letters Or To Vote Or To March Or To Do Something They Didn't Already Feel Like Doing.

Only A Few People Are Interested In What You Have To Say, But That Is All Right. You Don't Have To Tell The Quality Of A Master By The Size Of His Crowds.

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know. Doing Is Demonstrating That You Know It. Teaching Is Reminding Others That They Know Just As Well As You. You Are All Learners, Doers, Teachers.

Know That Ever About You Stands The Reality Of Love, And Each Moment You Have The Power To Transform Your World By What You Have Learned.

You Choose, You Live The Consequences. Every Yes, No, Maybe, Creates The School You Call Your Personal Experience.

Personal Experiences

Never Had I Understood That I Command, With Absolute Authority, The Ship Of My Life! I Decide Its Mission And Rules And Discipline, At My Word Waits Every Tool And Sail, Every Cannon, The Strength Of Every Soul On Board. I'm Master Of A Team Of Passionate Skills To Sail Me Through Hell's Own Jaws The Second I Nod The Direction To Steer.

The Original Sin Is To Limit The Is. Don't.

Laughing On The Way To Your Execution Is Not Generally Understood By Less-advanced Life Forms, And They Call You Crazy.

Remember Where You Came

No Matter How Qualified Or Deserving We Are, We Will Never Reach A Better Life Until We Can Imagine It For Ourselves And Allow Ourselves To Have It.

This Kind Of Thinking, He Found, Is Not The Way To Make One's Self Popular With Other Birds. Even His Parents Were Dismayed As Jonathan Spent Whole Days Alone, Making Hundreds Of Low-level Glides, Experimenting.

Then Be Sure Of One Thing: The Is Has Imagined It Quite A Bit Better Than You Have. The Original Sin Is To Limit The Is. Don't.

Fail At Love, And The Other Tests Don't Matter.

Shop For Security Over Happiness And We Buy It At That Price.

Every Step In Every Proud Life Is A Run From Safety To The Dark, And The Only Thing To Trust Is What We Think Is True.

Everything Is Exactly As It Is For A Reason. The Crumb On Your Table Is No Mystical Reminder Of This Morning's Cookie, It Is There Because You Have Chosen Not To Remove It. No Exceptions.

Bad Things Are Not The Worst Things That Can Happen To Us. Nothing Is The Worst Thing That Can Happen To Us!

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

We Choose Our Next World Through What We Learn In This One. Learn Nothing, And The Next World Is The Same As This One, All The Same Limitations And Lead Weights To Overcome.

For Most Gulls It Was Not Flying That Matters, But Eating. For This Gull, Though, It Was Not Eating That Mattered, But Flight.

He Who Argues For His Limitations Gets To Keep Them

Evolution Made Civilization Steward Of This Planet. A Hundred Thousand Years Later, The Steward Stood Before Evolution Not Helper But Destroyer, Not Healer But Parasite. So Evolution Withdrew Its Gift, Passed Civilization By, Rescued The Planet From Intelligence And Handed It To Love.

Fear Not, Nor Be Dismayed At The Appearance That Is Darkness, At The Disguise That Is Evil, At The Empty Cloak That Is Death, For You Have Picked These For Your Challenges. They Are Stones On Which You Choose To Whet The Keen Edge Of Your Spirit.

Why Had Such A Promising World Been Crucified On The Tree Of Obligation, Thorned By Duties, Hanged By Hypocrisy, Smothered By Customs?

I Gave My Life To Become The Person I Am Right Now. Was It Worth It?

You Don't Want A Million Answers As Much As You Want A Few Forever Questions. The Questions Are Diamonds You Hold In The Light. Study A Lifetime And You See Different Colors From The Same Jewel.

Boredom Between Two People Doesn't Come From Being Together Physically. It Comes From Being Apart Mentally And Spiritually.

You Are Not The Child Of The People You Call Mother And Father, But Their Fellow-adventurer On A Bright Journey To Understand The Things That Are.

And Like No Other Sculpture In The History Of Art, The Dead Engine And Dead Airframe Come To Life At The Touch Of A Human Hand, And Join Their Life With The Pilot's Own.

What A Story That Would Make! How Many Men And Women Go Through The Same Rivers, Menaced By The Same Sharp Clichés, The Same Jagged Dangers That Have Threatened Us! If The Idea Stands Up, I Thought, It Would Be Worth Uncovering The Typewriter! How Richard-years-ago Would Have Wanted To Know: What Happens When We Set Off Searching For A Soulmate Who Doesn't Exist, And Find Her?

We Thought Humble And Proud At The Same Time, All At Once In Love Again With This Painful Bittersweet Lovely Thing Called Flight.

Don't You Think Between Here And Now We Will See Each Other Once Or Twice?

For A Moment, Off Balance, Was I Annoyed? Anger Is Always Fear, I Thought, And Fear Is Always Fear Of Loss. Would I Lose Myself If He Made Those Choices? It Took A Second To Settle Down: I'd Lose Nothing. They'd Be His Wishes, Not Mine, And He's Free To Live As He Wants. The Loss Would Come If I Dared Force Him, Tried To Live For Him And Me As Well. There'd Be Disaster Worse Than Life On A Bar Stool.

I'm Not Approachable By Someone Who Says, "let's Try Some Drugs," Or Something Like That. I'm Absolutely Close-minded About That Kind Of Thing. But I'm Wide Open To Anyone Who Says, "i've Been Wondering Why We're Here And Where We're Going, And I've Got A Few Answers, But I Wondered If Anything Ever Happened To You That Suggests..." Then They Have Me, And I Become A Chatterbox And Can Just Talk Away Literally For Days.

Wrong Turns Are As Important As Right Turns. More Important, Sometimes.

Mistakes - Call Them Unexpected Learning Experiences.

To Me, One Of The Most Profound Questions We Can Ask Is: "so What?" And So What If There's An Indefinite Number Of Worlds With Alternate "us-es" In Them? The "so What," To Me, Comes Alive When I Ask Myself: "what If I Could Find A Way To Get In Touch With Those Alternate Mes Who Made Those Choices?" That Is, Persons Who, If I Saw Them Now, I Wouldn't Even Recognize Because Their Choices, Once Small, Have Multiplied To Make Them Such Different People.

What Matters Is How I Use What I Know, Every Minute Of Every Day; How I Use It To Remember, In The Midst Of The Game.

We're Different, We're The Same. You Thought You'd Never Find A Word To Say To A Woman Who Didn't Fly Airplanes. I Couldn't Imagine Myself Spending Time With A Man Who Didn't Love Music. Could It Be It's Not As Important To Be Alike As It Is To Be Curious? Because We're Different, We Can Have The Fun Of Exchanging Worlds, Giving Our Loves And Excitements To Each Other. You Can Learn Music, I Can Learn Flying. And That's Only The Beginning. I Think It Would Go On For Us As Long As We Live.

How Is It We’re The Lucky Ones, Living A Life That The Children-we-were Took For Dreams?

One Of The Delights Of The New Age Is That It's A Turning Of Consciousness To Give Us Permission To Look Beyond Appearances. But There Are Traps That Come With It. It's Brave To Throw Off The Old Altars And Churches And Ceremonies That Kept Us From Discovery, It's Not So Brave To Replace Them With Chants And Rituals And New Priests Who Are Retreads Of The Old.

The Opposite Of Loneliness Is Not Togetherness , It's Intimacy.

He Was Not Bone And Feather But A Perfect Idea Of Freedom And Flight, Limited By Nothing At All

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

When We're Born On This Planet, We're Taught To Believe That What We See Is Real. But As We Grow In Understanding, We Recognize First That We've Been Hypnotized By That Reaching, And Second That It's Within Our Power To De-hypnotize Ourselves. And As We Do That, The Illusion Appears To Change, To Come In Harmony With What We Most Value. If We Most Value Love, We Will Begin To See More And More Love And Joy And Adventure-creative Expressions Of Life Shimmering Everywhere Around Us.

Humanity Is Not A Gift Of Nature, It Is A Spiritual Achievement To Be Earned.

Remember Where You Came From, Where You're Going, And Why You Created This Mess You Got Yourself Into In The First Place.

Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

The World Is A Dream, You Say, And It’s Lovely, Sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.” “no. The Image Is A Dream. The Beauty Is Real. Can You See The Difference?

I Take The Paraglider To The Mountain Or I Roll Daisy Out Of Her Hangar And I Pick The Prettiest Part Of The Sky And I Melt Into The Wing And Then Into The Air, Till I'm Just Soul On A Sunbeam.

The Only Thing That Shatters Dreams Is Compromise.

Isn't It Strange How Much We Know If Only We Ask Ourselves Instead Of Somebody Else.

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know.

Learning Knowledge

There Is No Such Thing As A Problem Without A Gift.

The Books Remind Us That Way Down Deep In Our Hearts, Part Of Us Knows That We Are Creatures Of Light And We Cannot Be Touched Or Destroyed By Anything Made Out Of Atoms Or Destroyed At All - That Light Is Indestructible. And We May Reflect That And Express That In Multiple Trillions Of Discrete Ways, But Nevertheless, That Indestructible Sense Of Joyful Capacity To Express Life And Express Love Is Always There.

Compelling Reason Will Never Convince Blinding Emotion.

Compelling Reason

Hell Is A Place, A Time, A Consciousness, In Which There Is No Love.

If Our Body Is A Perfect Expression Of Our Thought About Body, And If Our Thought About Body Is That It’s Condition Has Everything To Do With Inner Image And Nothing To Do With Time, Then We Don’t Have To Be Impatient For Being Too Young Or Frightened Of Being Too Old.

Do You Have Any Idea How Many Lives We Must Have Gone Through Before We Even Got The First Idea That There Is More To Life Than Eating, Or Fighting, Or Power In The Flock? A Thousand Lives, Jon, Ten Thousand!

The One Thing We Fear Most Is The One Thing That Is Not Possible: We Cannot Die, We Cannot Be Destroyed.

There Is A Kind Of Silver Spiderweb That's Spun Around The World, And The Strands Of That Web Are Certain Loves And Certain Understandings. And If We Follow Those, And If We Walk Those Strands, We're Going To Meet Others At The Intersections Who Have Been Walking The Same Way Across This Web. And When We Meet, There's A Kind Of "i Know Who You Are."

If Your Happiness Depends On What Somebody Else Does, I Guess You Do Have A Problem.

Life Tells You Nothing, It Shows You Everything.

Argue For Your Limitations, And Sure Enough, They're Yours. Do You Think, If You Say The Word "impossible" Enough Times, That Difficult Things Will Suddenly Become Easier For You?

The Simplest Things Are Often The Truest.

Judge Not By The Form Of The Messenger, But The Form Of The Message.

One Of The Cosmic Laws, I Think, Is That Whatever We Hold In Our Thought Will Come True In Our Experience.

Law Of Attraction

You Are Always Free To Change Your Mind And Choose A Different Future, Or A Different Past.

Any Powerful Idea Is Absolutely Fascinating And Absolutely Useless Until We Choose To Use It.

One Of The Great Cosmic Laws, I Think, Is That Whatever We Hold In Our Thought Will Come True In Our Experience. When We Hold Something, Anything, In Our Thought, Then Somehow Coincidence Leads Us In The Direction That We've Been Wishing To Lead Ourselves.

Responsible Is Able To Respond, Able To Answer For The Way We Choose To Live. There's Only One Person We Have To Answer To, Of Course, And That Is Ourselves.

That’s What Learning Is, After All; Not Whether We Lose The Game, But How We Lose And How We’ve Changed Because Of It, And What We Take Away From It That We Never Had Before, To Apply To Other Games. Losing, In A Curious Way Is Winning.

Whatever It Is That Calls Us, That's Our Path. And As We Walk That Path, We Have A Chance To Shine Forth Who We Are. It Affects Other People Around Us.

If Perfection Is Stagnation, Then Heaven Is A Swamp.

What A Delighted Fascination It Is, To Stand Aside And Watch Our Dearest Friend Perform On Stage Without Us.

The Bond That Links Your True Family Is Not One Of Blood, But Of Respect And Joy In Each Other's Life.

If We Must Lose Wife Or Husband When We Live To Our Highest Right, We Lose An Unhappy Marriage As Well, And We Gain Ourselves. But If A Marriage Is Born Between Two Already Self-discovered, What A Lovely Adventure Begins, Hurricanes And All.

You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self. Don't Turn Away From Possible Futures Before You're Certain You Don't Have Anything To Learn From Them. You're Always Free To Change Your Mind And Choose A Different Future, Or A Different Past.

I'm A Writer As Rarely As Possible, When Forced By An Idea Too Lovely To Let Die Unwritten

I Belong To A Group Of Men Who Fly Alone. There Is Only One Seat In The Cockpit Of A Fighter Airplane. There Is No Space Alotted For Another Pilot To Tune The Radios In The Weather Or Make The Calls To Air Traffic Control Centers Or To Help With The Emergency Procedures Or To Call Off The Airspeed Down Final Approach. There Is No One Else To Break The Solitude Of A Long Cross-country Flight. There Is No One Else To Make Decisions.

When We Come To The Last Moment Of This Lifetime And We Look Back Across It, The Only Thing That's Going To Matter Is 'what Is The Quality Of Our Love?'

I'm Utterly Convinced Of The One-ness Of Love And Us As Its Perfect Reflection. I Am Absolutely Convinced That The World Around Us Is A World Of Appearances And Anyone Who Wants To Can Practice It. Change Your Thought And Your Environment Will Change. It's Not Instantaneous And Sometimes We Have To Work Very Hard To Make What We Want Happen. Working Hard And Holding That Thought, It Will Change.

It Took Time To Learn That The Hard Thing About Writing Is To Let The Story Write Itself, While One Sits At The Typewriter And Does As Little Thinking As Possible. It Happened Over And Over Again, And The Beginner Learned - When You Start Puzzling Over An Idea, And Slowing Down On The Keys, The Writing Gets Worse And Worse.

What Was The Question? ...oh. Where Do I Get My Crazy Ideas? Answer: Sleep-fairy, Walk-fairy, Shower-fairy. Book-fairy. And In These Last Few Years, From My Wife. Now When I Have Questions I Ask Her And She Tells Me The Answer. If You Haven't Already, I'd Suggest You Want To Find Your Soulmate, As Soon As You Can. Next Question?

Cherish Yesterday, Dream Tomorrow, Live Today.

Yesterday And Today

That Which Most Concerns And Worries You - Your Survival - Is The Only Certainty You Have.

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Benjamin Franklin

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