All dependence on another is futile, for what others can give others will take away. Only what is your own at the start will remain your own in the end. Accept no guidance but from within, and even then sift out all memories for they will mislead you. Even if you are quite ignorant of the ways and the means, keep quiet and look within; guidance is sure to come. You are never left without knowing what your next step should be. The trouble is that you may shirk it. The Guru is there for giving you courage because of his experience and success. But only what you discover through your own awareness, your own effort, will be of permanent use to you. Remember, nothing you perceive is your own. Nothing of value can come to you from outside; it is only your own feeling and understanding that are relevant and revealing. Words, heard or read, will only create images in your mind, but you are not a mental image. You are the power of perception and action behind and beyond the image.

~ Sri Nisargadatta

[I am That - Chapter 98]

The ego totally ceases to exist and is fully absorbed into the Overself only in special, temporary, and trance-like states. At all other times, and certainly at all ordinary active and everyday times, it continues to exist.The failure to learn and understand this important point always causes much confusion in mystical circles. The state arrived at in deep meditation is one thing; the state returned to after such meditation is another. The ego vanishes in one but reappears in the other. But there are certain after-effects of this experience upon it which bring about by degrees a shift in its relation to the Overself. It submits, obeys, expresses, and reflects the Overself.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 8: The Ego > Chapter 1: What Am I? > # 213]

Make no mistake about it--enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's see through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagine to be true.

~ Adyashanti

Whoever has dealings with others cannot afford to ignore the double nature
of human nature. Failure to recognize it leads to confusing consequences.
Looking neither for the good alone nor for the bad alone, but remaining
emotionally detached during such an act of recognition, is a philosophical
attribute. He who possesses it may hold no illusion about the mixed motives
in others and yet still practise goodwill toward them. This must be so, for
the primal source of all Goodness inspires him daily and constantly to hold
to this practice.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 2: Living in The World >
# 408]

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

~ Francis Bacon

The internal suffering of the person who does not reciprocate the criticism and abuse hurled at him burns down the abuser taking away all the latter's merit.

~ Mahabharata

[Adiparva 87.7]

Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to have run away.

~ Dag Hammarskjold

Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.

~ Dag Hammarskjold

Dharma protects those who protect it.

~ Mahabharata

[Vana Parva 313.128]

there comes a time
when you have to let go
all the words
all the teaching
and trust the infinite

~ Billy Doyle

We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young -- not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age -- and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.

~ Krishnamurti

What the soul sees and has experienced, that it knows; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.

~ Sri Aurobindo

And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.

~ John Milton

Do not try to keep quiet, do not make being quiet into a task to be performed. Don't be restless about being quiet, miserable about being happy.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

For whoever seeks God in some special way,
will gain the way and lose God who is hidden in the way.
But whoever seeks God without any special way,
finds Him as He really is...He is Life itself.

~ Meister Eckhart

Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.

~ Teilhard de Chardin

So many things which once had distressed or revolted him — the speeches and pronouncements of the learned, their assertions and their prohibitions, their refusal to allow the universe to move — all seemed to him now merely ridiculous, non-existent, compared with the majestic reality, the flood of energy, which now revealed itself to him: omnipresent, unalterable in its truth, relentless in its development, untouchable in its serenity, maternal and unfailing in its protectiveness.

~ Teilhard de Chardin