β
Not everything is about you," Clary said furiously.
"Possibly," Jace said, "but you do have to admit that the majority of things are.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
β
What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)
β
People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
One of the Silent Brothers is here to see you. Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually he offered to wake you himself, but since it's 5 a.m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at."
"Meaning you?"
"What else?
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikerβs Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
Iβm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody elseβs. Iβm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. Itβs disgusting.
β
β
J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)
β
Donβt sacrifice yourself too much, because if you sacrifice too much thereβs nothing else you can give and nobody will care for you.
β
β
Karl Lagerfeld
β
Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.
β
β
Tom Robbins
β
If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.
β
β
John Lennon
β
Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.
β
β
Rainer Maria Rilke
β
Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledgeβ¦ is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in anotherβs world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.
β
β
Bill Bullard
β
The problem with introspection is that it has no end.
β
β
Philip K. Dick
β
Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.
β
β
Terence McKenna
β
The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. Itβs called Denial.
β
β
Dan Brown (Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4))
β
A fight is going on inside me," said an old man to his son. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you."
The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf will win?"
The old man replied simply, "The one you feed.
β
β
Wendy Mass (Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life)
β
You will never find the real truth among people that are insecure or have egos to protect. Truth over time becomes either guarded or twisted as their perspective changes; it changes with the seasons of their shame, love, hope or pride.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose
β
β
Eckhart Tolle
β
The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.
β
β
Warsan Shire
β
We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything)
β
Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.
β
β
Tennessee Williams
β
I would prefer not to.
β
β
Herman Melville (Bartleby the Scrivener)
β
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche
β
Sure. My ego's had enough time to recover a modicum of dignity. Let's make sure we crush it again before I mistake myself for a god. -Acheron
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Acheron (Dark-Hunter, #14))
β
Every person needs to take one day away.Β A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.Β Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.Β Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.Β Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.
β
β
Maya Angelou (Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now)
β
Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.
β
β
John Lennon
β
The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.
β
β
C.G. Jung
β
We don't need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.
β
β
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
β
There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you're wrong and you can't face it; the other is when you're right and nobody else can face it.
β
β
Criss Jami (Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality)
β
A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.
β
β
Eckhart Tolle
β
Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.
β
β
Ayn Rand
β
Simon: 'You know men. We have delicate egos.'
Clary: 'I wouldn't describe Jace's ego as delicate.'
Simon: 'No, Jace's is sort of the antiaircraft artillery tank of male egos.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
β
Actors are by nature volatileβalchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.
β
β
M.L. Rio (If We Were Villains)
β
Do girls need kid-glove treatment? I thought they were tougher than that."
Dan's grin was approving. "Most of us are. Some of us are like boys, though, and have delicate egos.
β
β
Nora Sakavic (The Raven King (All for the Game, #2))
β
Help me, I canβt breathe, your ego is pushing all the air out of the room.
β
β
Ilona Andrews (Magic Slays (Kate Daniels, #5))
β
Most people are slow to champion love because they fear the transformation it brings into their lives. And make no mistake about it: love does take over and transform the schemes and operations of our egos in a very mighty way.
β
β
Aberjhani (Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry)
β
In the light of our egos, we are all dethroned monarchs
β
β
Charlie Chaplin
β
Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.
β
β
ChΓΆgyam Trungpa
β
The Ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear.
β
β
Deepak Chopra (The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams)
β
You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.
β
β
George Clooney
β
In this story
I am the poet
You're the poetry.
β
β
Arzum Uzun
β
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.
β
β
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
β
If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.
β
β
C.S. Lewis
β
The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.
β
β
Eckhart Tolle
β
A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul.
β
β
Jillian Michaels (Master Your Metabolism: The 3 Diet Secrets to Naturally Balancing Your Hormones for a Hot and Healthy Body!)
β
Love starts when we push aside our ego and make room for someone else.
β
β
Rudolf Steiner
β
I just noticed a lack of ego in the room and thought βhey, whereβs Braden?
β
β
Samantha Young (On Dublin Street (On Dublin Street, #1))
β
As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
β
Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
β
β
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
β
Writerβs block is only a failure of the ego.
β
β
Norman Mailer
β
Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
A man asked Gautama Buddha, "I want happiness."
Buddha said, "First remove "I," that's Ego, then remove "want," that's Desire.
See now you are left with only "Happiness.
β
β
Gautama Buddha (Sayings of Buddha)
β
The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.
β
β
Wilhelm Stekel (The Beloved Ego: Foundations of the New Study of the Psyche)
β
The Ego is a veil between humans and Godβ.β
βIn prayer all are equal.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Chasing a person doesnβt give you value or build values in you. You earn your value by chasing morality and practicing dignity.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
The weak are dominated by their ego, the wise dominate their ego, and the intelligent are in a constant struggle against their ego.
β
β
Hamza Yusuf
β
Accomplishments donβt erase shame, hatred, cruelty, silence, ignorance, discrimination, low self-esteem or immorality. It covers it up, with a creative version of pride and ego. Only restitution, forgiving yourself and others, compassion, repentance and living with dignity will ever erase the past.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.
β
β
Ryan Holiday (Ego Is the Enemy)
β
Show me someone without an ego, and I'll show you a loser.
β
β
Donald J. Trump
β
Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.
β
β
C.G. Jung
β
If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
β
β
John Cage
β
You Chose
You chose.
You chose.
You chose.
You chose to give away your love.
You chose to have a broken heart.
You chose to give up.
You chose to hang on.
You chose to react.
You chose to feel insecure.
You chose to feel anger.
You chose to fight back.
You chose to have hope.
You chose to be naΓ―ve.
You chose to ignore your intuition.
You chose to ignore advice.
You chose to look the other way.
You chose to not listen.
You chose to be stuck in the past.
You chose your perspective.
You chose to blame.
You chose to be right.
You chose your pride.
You chose your games.
You chose your ego.
You chose your paranoia.
You chose to compete.
You chose your enemies.
You chose your consequences.
You chose.
You chose.
You chose.
You chose.
However, you are not alone. Generations of women in your family have chosen. Women around the world have chosen. We all have chosen at one time in our lives. We stand behind you now screaming:
Choose to let go.
Choose dignity.
Choose to forgive yourself.
Choose to forgive others.
Choose to see your value.
Choose to show the world youβre not a victim.
Choose to make us proud.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
And I realized that Iβd tolerated him this long because of self-doubt.
β
β
Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1))
β
Your potential, the absolute best youβre capable ofβthatβs the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.
β
β
Ryan Holiday (Ego Is the Enemy)
β
The ego relies on the familiar. It is reluctant to experience the unknown, which is they very essence of life.
β
β
Deepak Chopra (The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore)
β
I don't know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.
β
β
Jim Butcher (Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, #3))
β
Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the "love" of
ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.
β
β
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
β
No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves
β
β
Hugh Prather (I Touch the Earth, the Earth Touches Me)
β
The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.
β
β
Erich Fromm
β
Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.
β
β
Carlos Castaneda (The Active Side of Infinity)
β
This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart.
β
β
Bill Hicks
β
It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.
β
β
Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)
β
The way you think about yourself determines your reality. You are not being hurt by the way people think about you. Many of those people are a reflection of how you think about yourself.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.
β
β
Terence McKenna
β
-You think Iβve got a big ego and an attitude problem?
-I donβt think you do, Carlos. I know it. Unfortunately, itβs a Fuentes flaw.
-Iβd call it an asset. Itβs what makes us Fuentes brothers irresistible.
Carlos and Brittany
β
β
Simone Elkeles (Rules of Attraction (Perfect Chemistry, #2))
β
If not to God, you will surrender to the opinions or expectations of others, to money, to resentment, to fear, or to your own pride, lusts, or ego. You were designed to worship God and if you fail to worship Him, you will create other things (idols) to give your life to. You are free to choose, what you surrender to but you are not free from the consequence of that choice.
β
β
Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?)
β
Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness" is the real reason you find it hard to get started
β
β
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Phaedrus, #1))
β
Ego is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviors are acceptable.
β
β
Terence McKenna
β
And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.
β
β
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
β
Humans who thought they were advancing around the chessboard of life as knights and bishops were actually among the multitude of pawns, advancing like fodder to their inevitable demise for the true kings residing behind the curtains, whose presence was invisible to virtually all the pieces on the chessboard.
β
β
Jasun Ether (The Beasts of Success)
β
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
A monster. I despise my true form. (Acheron)
I canβt imagine why. Other than killing me, you were actually cute in a very Papa Smurf kind of way. (Tory)
Papa Smurf? I donβt look like Papa Smurf. (Acheron)
No, baby, you donβt at all. You look like sex on a stick. Now is your ego all better? (Tory)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Acheron (Dark-Hunter, #14))
β
The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.
β
β
Eckhart Tolle
β
All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.
And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.
β
β
Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye)
β
Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourselfβ¦
Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the self at all. You donβt know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problemβ then you are not seeking opinions. Then you are not worried what others say about youβ it is irrelevant!
When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you donβt know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.
β
β
Osho
β
He grinned. βBusted. Iβm a monster. Jev is my deceptively harmless β and shockingly handsome β alter ego.β
βAnd Iβm on top of it,β she announced with witty triumph.
βIs that a Freudian slip?β
His bluntness caught her off guard. A self-conscious blush rose in her face.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Silence (Hush, Hush, #3))
β
The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with βWow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?β and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you donβt know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
β
β
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable)
β
I have a theory. Hating someone feels disturbingly similar to being in love with them. I've had a lot of time to compare love and hate, and these are my observations.
Love and hate are visceral. Your stomach twists at the thought of that person. The heart in your chest beats heavy and bright, nearly visible through your flesh and clothes. Your appetite and sleep are schredded. Every interaction spikes your blood with adrenaline, and you're in the brink of fight or flight. Your body is barely under your control. You're consumed, and it scares you.
Both love and hate are mirror versions of the same game - and you hΓ‘ve to win. Why? Your heart and your ego. Trust me, I should know.
β
β
Sally Thorne (The Hating Game)
β
Enough, Qhuinn thought. Enough with the excuses and the avoidance, and trying to be someone else, anyone else.
Even if he got shanked, even if his precious little ego and his dumbass little heart got shattered into a million pieces, it was time to stop the bullshit. It was time to be a male.
As Blay started to straighten like a message had been received, Qhuinn thought, That's right buddy:
Our future has come
β
β
J.R. Ward (Lover Reborn (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #10))
β
COMING FORTH INTO THE LIGHT
I was born the day
I thought:
What is?
What was?
And
What if?
I was transformed the day
My ego shattered,
And all the superficial, material
Things that mattered
To me before,
Suddenly ceased
To matter.
I really came into being
The day I no longer cared about
What the world thought of me,
Only on my thoughts for
Changing the world.
β
β
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
β
Bill: Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He's weak... he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.
β
β
Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill)
β
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.
β
β
Bertrand Russell
β
When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.
β
β
D.H. Lawrence
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A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, and losses of all kinds- but these events don't have to be the cause of ongoing suffering. Yes, these events cause grief and sadness, but grief and sadness pass, like everything else, and are replaced with other experiences. The ego, however, clings to negative thoughts and feelings and, as a result, magnifies, intensifies, and sustains those emotions while the ego overlooks the subtle feelings of joy, gratitude, excitement, adventure, love, and peace that come from Essence. If we dwelt on these positive states as much as we generally dwell on our negative thoughts and painful emotions, our lives would be transformed.
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Gina Lake (What About Now?: Reminders for Being in the Moment)
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Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid.
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Richard Rohr (Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the 12 Steps)
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Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself.
We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful moment we remember that we forget.
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G.K. Chesterton
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Iβm not laughing.β I was actually crying. βAnd please donβt laugh at me now, but I think the reason itβs so hard for me to get over this guy is because I seriously believed David was my soul mate. βHe probably was. Your problem is you donβt understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and thatβs what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything thatβs holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person youβll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just canβt let this one go. Itβs over, Groceries. Davidβs purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of your marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now itβs over. Problem is, you canβt accept that his relationship had a real short shelf life. Youβre like a dog at the dump, baby β youβre just lickinβ at the empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if youβre not careful, that canβs gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.βBut I love him.β
βSo love him.β βBut I miss him.β βSo miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it. Youβre just afraid to let go of the last bits of David because then youβll be really alone, and Liz Gilbert is scared to death of what will happen if sheβs really alone. But hereβs what you gotta understand, Groceries. If you clear out all that space in your mind that youβre using right now to obsess about this guy, youβll have a vacuum there, an open spot β a doorway. And guess what the universe will do with the doorway? It will rush in β God will rush in β and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed. So stop using David to block that door. Let it go.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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You know that feeling at the end of the day, when the anxiety of that-which-I-must-do falls away and, for maybe the first time that day, you see, with some clarity, the people you love and the ways you have, during that day, slightly ignored them, turned away from them to get back to what you were doing, blurted out some mildly hurtful thing, projected, instead of the deep love you really feel, a surge of defensiveness or self-protection or suspicion? That moment when you think, Oh God, what have I done with this day? And what am I doing with my life? And how must I change to avoid catastrophic end-of-life regrets?
I feel like that now: tired of the Me I've always been, tired of making the same mistakes, repetitively stumbling after the same small ego strokes, being caught in the same loops of anxiety and defensiveness. At the end of my life, I know I won't be wishing I'd held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me...
--"Buddha Boy
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George Saunders (The Braindead Megaphone)
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When your mind wants to bolt, but your heart hangs on, it is because you donβt know with absolute certainty what the truth is. When you waste so much time on something that you want to believe is true, you begin to overthink things. Eventually, something obvious becomes twisted into something absurd, which keeps us from believing a simpler answer. Over time, you believe your own lies and fantasies to shield yourself from hurt, when following what is logical would have been the quickest way to healing. It is through your own self-imposed delusions that you lose your perspective. The world then becomes different to you when in fact you are different. Why? Because your own ego gets in the way. Everyone wants to feel special. Everyone wants to have faith in others. Everyone wants to believe in fairytales, happy endings and have all bad interactions with others explained. It is easier to sit in denial with your delusions and pray God will intervene, not realizing he has. He gave you commonsense and intuition, but you didnβt like how it made you feel. This is what true mental illness really is: Following your gut instinct through hell because you want to prove you are right, either to yourself or others. You sacrifice choosing to do right, in order to avoid pain. However, you don't realize that you have been in pain for a really long time and believed this was how happiness felt.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Ego Tripping
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me
For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission
I mean...I...can fly
like a bird in the sky...
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Nikki Giovanni