SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Coming Home to the Authentic You

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“It is important to reflect calmly, again and again, that death is real and comes without warning. Don’t be like the pigeon in the Tibetan proverb: He spends all night fussing about, making his bed, and dawn comes up before he has even had time to go to sleep.” Excerpt From: Sogyal, Rinpoche. “Glimpse After Glimpse: Daily Reflections on Living and Dying.”

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What you are is what you have been, what you will be is WHAT YOU DO NOW.

Buddha

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Make your mind pure as a silversmith blows away the impurities of silver, little by little, instant by instant.

Buddha

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The secret of genius is FOCUS.

Alan Cohen

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We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: BLAMING — or damning. If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally—about anything. Yes, anything.

Albert Ellis

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Relax into the true nature of your mind. It is like pouring a handful of sand onto a flat surface, and each grain settles of its own accord. This is how you relax into your true nature, letting all thoughts and emotions naturally subside and dissolve into the state of the nature of mind.

Sogyal, Rinpoche.

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Nothing is Impossible!

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. - Charles R Swindoll “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” - Christopher Reeve “We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.” - Vince Lombardi “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” - Paulo Coelho “Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” - Charles F. Kettering By striving to do the impossible man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward. - Mikhail Bakunin There is nothing impossible to him who will try. – Alexander the Great The difficult is what takes a little time the impossible is what takes a little longer. – Fridtjof Nansen

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It’s not about how much wealth, fame and hotness we can accumulate during our lives but rather how much VIRTUE, CHARACTER and HOLINESS we can generate.

[curiouscrook]

What Are You Focusing On?

Tony Robbins has a great little exercise. OK. Ready? Do me a favor. For the next 60 seconds, I’d like you to think of the color brown and look around you and find EVERYTHING that has even a hint of brown in it. Got it? Cool. Go!! Find the brown stuff! Keep looking!! Brown brown brown brown brown! More brown! OK. Now, what did you see that was…hhhmmmmmm…BLUE? Oh, snap! You didn’t see anything blue cuz you were so focused on the brown, eh?!!? Hate when that happens. Time to change our life lenses… Brian Johnson

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Tranquility can’t be grasped except by those who have reached an unwavering and firm power of judgment—the rest constantly fall and rise in their decisions, wavering in a state of alternately rejecting and accepting things. What is the cause of this back and forth? It’s because nothing is clear and they rely on the most uncertain guide - COMMON OPINION.

Seneca

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The impediment to action ADVANCES action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Marcus Aurelius

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Euthymia - A Sense of Our Own Path

According to Seneca, the Greek word euthymia is one we should think of often: it is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most that you’re capable of in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less. (By the way, euthymia means ‘tranquility’ in English.) …

So why do you do what you do? That’s the question you need to answer. Stare at it until you can. Only then will you understand what matters and what doesn’t. Only then can you say no, can you opt out of stupid races that don’t matter, or even exist. Only then is it easy to ignore ‘successful’ people, because most of the time they aren’t—at least relative to you, and often even to themselves. Only then can you develop that quiet confidence Seneca talked about.

- Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

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The pain and ANXIETY we experience in our lives are in equal measure to the size of our SELF-IMPORTANCE.

Dzigar, Kongtrul. “Light Comes Through: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence.”

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In the Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu said “It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure. It is easy to deal with a situation before symptoms develop; Deal with a thing while it is still nothing; keep a thing in order before disorder sets in.” In The Art of War Sun Tzu told us “He who excels at resolving difficulties does so before they arise. He who excels in conquering his enemies triumphs before threats materialize.” Shakespeare took a similar approach: “Meet the first beginnings; look to the budding mischief before it has time to ripen to maturity.”