Is it possible to let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are? In other words, can you cease looking to conceptual definitions to give you a sense of self? Can you cease looking to thought for an identity?
Defining yourself through thoughts is limiting yourself. When you fully accept that you don’t know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
Everyone must have two pockets.
In the right pocket are to be the words: “For my sake was the world created.” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)
And in the left: “I am but dust and ashes.” (Genesis 18:27)
Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Przysucha in Martin Buber Tales of the Hasidim
If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.
Pablo Neruda, Keeping Quiet
The more narrow the attention,
the more focused we are on fleeting moments
of happiness and sadness.
The wider our attention becomes
the more aware we are
of an unending flow of joy.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro
There are many wrong tracks in society, but they are all basically the same: They all take us outside of ourselves to satisfy our inner needs.
Whether they take us toward material goods or towards social relationships and emotional co-dependence, they all ignore the mind’s own potential to provide us with happiness and peace
Dzigar Kongtrul, It’s Up to You
The idea of love is not love
The idea of the ocean is neither salt nor sand;
The face of the seal cannot rise from the idea
to stare at you,
to astound your heart
Mary Oliver
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