Joseph Nguyen Quotes

The thoughts in our minds are not facts.

Once we become aware of the fact that we are only feeling what we're thinking and that thinking is the root cause of our unpleasant experience, we see it for what it truly is. Then we allow it to settle by giving it space, and slowly we will see how we begin to have a clear mind again.

if your mind is completely full of old thinking, it is impossible to have any new thoughts come into your mind to create the change you seek.

A crowded mind leaves no space for a peaceful heart.” — Christine Evangelou

The root cause of our suffering is our own thinking.

Thought is not reality; yet it is through thought that our realities are created.

It's not about the events that happen in our lives, but our interpretation of them, which causes us to feel good or bad about something.

Stop thinking and end your problems.” ― Lao Tzu

This is when faith becomes of the utmost importance — having faith that things will be okay. Know that the Universe is working for you, not against you.

Therefore, it's not WHAT we're thinking about that is causing us suffering, but THAT we are thinking.

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.” - Sheryl Sandberg

the path to self-actualization isn’t to try to improve ourselves because we think we’re not enough but to let go of the illusion that we’re not already enough as we are

The only time we can really be in a state of non-thinking is in the present moment. We can only see reality in the present moment and when we are actively thinking, it means we are either in the past or future (which don’t exist).

We can either choose to be free and happy in the unknown or to be confined and suffer in the familiar.

In short, the moment we stop thinking is when our happiness begins.

You can also compare thinking to quicksand. The more that we fight our thinking, the more it amplifies the negative emotions and the worse it gets.

The only way to break free from our thinking is to let go and trust that our natural inner wisdom will guide us back to clarity and peace like it always has.

Each of us lives through our own perception of the world, which are vastly different from the person right next to us.

The feeling is really what we want in our lives, not the physical things, but the trap is that we believe the physical things will give us those feelings.

Our natural state of being is joy, love, and peace.

Never forget your own divinity because it is only through our divinity that we have our humanity.

His arrogance marked something new in the world, for this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors, courtesy of the most efficient propaganda machine ever created (with all due respect to Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis, who never achieved global domination). Hollywood’s high priests understood innately the observation of Milton’s Satan, that it was better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven, better to be a villain, loser, or antihero than virtuous extra, so long as one commanded the bright lights of center stage. In this forthcoming Hollywood trompe l’oeil, all the Vietnamese of any side would come out poorly, herded into the roles of the poor, the innocent, the evil, or the corrupt. Our fate was not to be merely mute; we were to be struck dumb.

Negative emotions are an indication of misunderstanding. When we are gripped by negative emotions, it means that we believe what we are thinking.

Even the people we deem as geniuses didn’t strain and effort their way into making the greatest discoveries in the world, so what makes us think that we have to?

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think that you can or can’t, you’re right.

An activation ritual is a morning routine that helps them get into a state of non-thinking and flow.

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished, that will be the beginning.” — Louis L’Amor

Today I make space for miracles. I recognize that it's not how big a miracle is that's important but how much room I create for it.” — Kyle Gray

every judgment we make about others is one we’ve already made about ourselves first (as without, so within)

One who looks around him is intelligent, one who looks within him is wise.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo

Thoughts create. Thinking destroys.

What we resist persists. What we accept and let be will inevitably leave.

most of us are chasing external things so that we can feel something inside innocently forgetting that all feelings are generated within us what is external is only a reminder that we can create the internal emotion we desire what you most want to experience can only be found within you don’t wait for something outside of you to give you permission to feel how you want inside (don’t wait for permission)

We may think that thinking is helping us, but all it’s really doing is causing us to feel all of these negative, unwanted emotions and making us create reasons as to why we can’t do it or why we shouldn’t want it.

we are ever only one thought away from experiencing something different and transforming our entire lives at any moment — through a state of no thought. In short, the moment we stop thinking is when our happiness begins.

If we know that we can only ever feel what we are thinking, then we know that we can change our feelings by changing our thinking. Thus, we can change our experience of life by knowing that it comes from our own thinking. And if that is true, then we are ever only one thought away from experiencing something different and transforming our entire lives at any moment — through a state of no thought. In short, the moment we stop thinking is when our happiness begins.

As soon as you begin thinking about those thoughts of the ways you can make the money you want, you’ll immediately feel heavy, restricted, limited, along with a whole onslaught of negative emotions. This is how you’ll know if you’re thinking.

What we're ultimately looking for are feelings. We want more money to get a sense of security and peace. We want to spend time with our family because it makes us feel so much love and joy. We want to do what we love because it gives us a sense of fulfillment inside. These are all ultimately feelings that we are trying to get, but we keep thinking that the goal or object we want will give us those feelings. This idea is inherently flawed because our feelings can only ever be generated from within us, not from external things. External things can prompt us to create the feelings, but ultimately it is us that produces those feelings from within ourselves.

The only way you can enter this space of miracles is through non-thinking. If we think, we immediately get ejected out of this space and enter a state of anxiety, worry, and suffering. Our thinking will try to predict what might happen based on the past. This is why most people get more of the same of what they have always gotten.

All you have to do is remember that thinking is the root cause of how we’re feeling. Once this is brought into your awareness, don’t fight the thinking. Just become aware that it is your thinking that’s causing the ill feelings, welcome it with love, and it will slowly dissipate before your eyes. Not too long after, you’ll return to your natural state of peace, love, and joy.

Most things in life are out of our control. This is not to say that we should give up because we can’t control our lives; it’s quite the opposite. The path to peace is not to pursue certainty but to relax into uncertainty. To surrender to the ebbs and flows of life and accept things as they are instead of how you think they should be. It’s not about trying to force things to happen a certain way but about trusting that you will be okay no matter what happens.

We will forget sometimes, but when we do remember and realize that we are caught up in our thinking when we experience negative emotions, that alone will allow us to return back home to our natural beautiful state. All we have to do is remember it, know that this is just our thinking, and have peace knowing that the sun is not gone forever and that it will rise again soon enough. Having that understanding will allow us to also appreciate the nighttime for its existence and role in the Universe. From that we can see how it is meant to be a part of our human experience and begin to cherish its beauty as much as the sun.

I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.” — Jonathan Safran Foer

the moment we stop thinking is when our happiness begins.

become curious about your fears for they are the doorway to your dreams

The less thinking we have, the more space we create for positive emotions to naturally surface.

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

If you want to find the truth, look for simplicity.

Buddhists say that anytime we experience a negative event in our lives, two arrows fly our way. Being physically struck by an arrow is painful. Being struck by a second emotional arrow is even more painful (suffering). The Buddha explained, “In life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional.

Continue to live in this state of pure peace and let go of any thinking that may pop up in your mind. The longer you stay in this space, the more miracles will show up in your life.

We are ever only one thought away from peace, love, and joy — which come from a state of no thought.” — Dicken Bettinger

The goal isn't necessarily to completely stop feeling negative emotions. Some of the negative emotions can be helpful, such as feeling fearful when deciding to walk down a dark alley alone with no one else in sight. These negative emotions are only helpful to us in terms of survival, but if we don't constantly encounter life or death situations, negative emotions are more unhelpful than helpful for most of us.

To summarize, we do not have to try to "think positive" to experience love, joy, bliss, and any positive emotions we want because it is our natural state to feel those emotions. The only times we don't naturally feel these emotions is when we begin to think about the thoughts we're having, thus blocking the direct connection to Infinite Intelligence and we feel stressed, anxious, depressed, and fearful.

If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” — Sydney Banks

When you are doing your best work and are in a total state of flow, where there is no separation between you or the work you are doing, you are having no thoughts in the moment. And if you are having thoughts, it's just flowing right through you without you having to think about it. In other words, the state of peak performance for humans can be described as the state of non-thinking.

I learned to make my love for Makenna unconditional by not placing reasons or conditions for when I would love her (because if I did that, by default I place conditions on when I would not love her).

We are all connected to this pure, unconditional love, which is God, the Universe, or whichever name you choose to use. The only thing that gets in the way of this is our own thinking, which separates and cuts us off from that unconditional love.

You can also compare thinking to quicksand. The more that we fight our thinking, the more it amplifies the negative emotions and the worse it gets. The same is true for quicksand. If we’re in quicksand, the way out isn’t to fight it. If we panic and frantically try to fight it, it only makes things worse by tightening the grip it has on us and pulling us under faster. The only way out is to stop struggling and allowing the natural buoyancy of your body to take over to bring you back up to the surface with ease. The only way to break free from our thinking is to let go and trust that our natural inner wisdom will guide us back to clarity and peace like it always has.

The source of thoughts and the source of thinking are different, and the source is what will dictate whether it causes suffering or not.

Divine inspiration is what happens when groundbreaking creations and inventions are created that seemed to be impossible not too long ago. It knows no boundaries, limits, or constraints. It is an incredibly expansive force that energizes and lifts us, making us feel like we're "high" on life. In this state, we feel whole, complete, filled with unconditional love, joy, and peace. We don't analyze, compare, criticize, judge, or rationalize anything, but instead we truly live, love, share, give, create, grow, and nourish. It really is one of the greatest feelings we can experience, and it is truly a gift that we can experience the divine as humans (and it's because we're from the same source).

A simple way to know if a goal or dream is created out of inspiration is to remember the distinction between thoughts and thinking. Goals and dreams that come in the form of thought are created out of inspiration. Goals and dreams that come from thinking are created out of desperation.

Think of the flow of inspiration to create like a river. The river always flows until man puts something there to block it, like a dam. Then when the dam is there, we ask why there are so many fish dying, animals disappearing, and forests dwindling, when all we need to do was return the river back to its natural state and everything will be working perfectly fine, the way nature intended it to. This is the same for our minds and our goals. We always dream, have big goals, and know what to do at all times when we're tapped into our inner wisdom and inner intelligence, free from thinking. If we simply do not think about our thoughts, any sort of thoughts about dreams, goals, and desires that naturally arise are all from the divine and that is how you "create" goals out of inspiration versus desperation.

To a mind without the limits of thinking, anything is possible.

Thought is like the DVD that contains all the information for us to be able to watch the movie on the TV. The TV and DVD player is like Consciousness — it allows us to have a mechanism to bring the information on the DVD to life for us to be able to watch and experience the movie. The electricity that's needed to power the DVD player and TV is like Universal Mind in the sense that it is the invisible energy/force that connects and powers all things. It is the Source from which everything can work and function.

It's not possible to just entirely stop thinking, but what we can do is reduce the time we spend thinking so that it gets smaller and smaller each day that passes. Eventually we can get to the point where we spend most of our day not caught up in our thinking and live in a blissful state most of the time.

If life begins to feel unclear, disorganized, stressful and you're not sure what to do next, you now know that it's only because your thinking is stirring up the dirt, making your mind cloudy and difficult to see ahead. You can use this as an indicator to help you realize that you're thinking way too much.

Thoughts vs. Thinking Chart Attribute Thought Thinking Source Universe Ego Weight Light Heavy Energy Expansive Restrictive Nature Infinite Limited Quality Creative Destructive Essence Divine Mortal Feeling Alive Stressful Emotion Love Fear Belief Infinite Possibilities Confining Sense Wholeness Separateness Effort Effortless Laborious

Our natural state of being is joy, love, and peace. Therefore, any thinking that we do will only take us away from those natural states of being, which is why whenever we feel extremely stressed, we are having a LOT of thinking going on. The strength of the negative emotion we feel is in direct proportion to how much thinking we are doing in the moment.

If we want to see the natural state of anything, one of the best ways is to look at nature and the state of it in its infancy (before it is affected and conditioned by its environment).

In life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional.

No matter who you are, where you're from, what your background is, what you've done and haven't done, what status or wealth you do or don't have, Martian or not, you can find total peace, unconditional love, complete fulfillment, and an abundance of joy in your life. I promise that you are not the exception, even though it may seem like it. Love knows no boundaries. An open mind and a willing heart are all you need to receive every answer you've been looking for.

Sydney Banks once said, “Thought is not reality; yet it is through thought that our realities are created.

You do not have to be fixed because you are not broken.

Similarly, where our goals and dreams come from will determine whether we feel great about pursuing them or not. Like everything in this world, there is nothing inherently good or bad, only our thinking makes it so. Goals, dreams, and ambitions are not good or bad, so it's not really an either-or situation, but more about where those goals are coming from. There are two sources of goals: goals created out of inspiration and goals created out of desperation. When goals are created out of desperation, we feel a large sense of scarcity and urgency. It feels heavy, like a burden, we may even feel daunted by the colossal task we've just committed ourselves to, imposter syndrome and self-doubt begin to manifest, and we always feel like we never have enough time for anything. We go about our life frantically, desperately searching for answers and ways that we can accomplish our goal faster, always looking externally, never feeling enough or that we can ever get enough. Worst of all, if we happen to accomplish our goal, within a few hours or days afterwards, all of those same feelings of lack begin to resurface. We begin not feeling content with what we have done, unable to savor our accomplishments and because what we did never feels like it’s enough, we feel that same way about ourselves. Not knowing what else to do, we look around for guidance externally to see what others are doing and see they're continuing to do the same thing. Thus, we go ahead and proceed to set another goal out of desperation in an attempt to escape all of the negative feelings gnawing away at our soul. When we dig a little deeper into these types of goals we set, they are all typically “means goals” and not “end goals”. In other words, the goals we set in this state of desperation are all a means to an end. There's always a reason we want to accomplish the goal and it's always for something else. For example, we want to create a multi-million-dollar business because we want financial freedom, or we want to quit our job so that we can escape the stress and anxiety that comes from it. We feel like we HAVE to do these things instead of WANT to. Goals created from desperation are typically "realistic" and created from analyzing our past and what we think to be "plausible" in the moment. It feels very confining and limiting. Although these types of goals and dreams may excite us in the moment, as soon as we begin to try to create it, we feel a lack, and we are desperate to bring the dream to life. Paradoxically, if we do end up achieving a goal created out of desperation, we end up feeling even more empty than we did before it. The next "logical" thing we tend to do is to set an even bigger goal out of even greater desperation to hopefully make us feel whole inside.

Just

Just like how there are no wrong keys on the piano, there are no "wrong" decisions in life. There’s only thinking that give us pleasant or not so pleasant feelings. When we put things into a bucket of right or wrong, good or bad, this creates duality and conditions in our lives, which determines how we feel.

Mushin is achieved when [the] mind is free of random thoughts, free of anger, free of fear, and particularly free of ego. It applies during combat, and or other facets of life. When mushin is achieved during combat there is an absence of loose or rambling thoughts. It leaves the practitioner free to act and react without hesitation. He reacts according to all of the study and training that has brought the karateka to this point. Relying on, not what you think should be your next move, but on what your trained, instinctive, subconscious reaction directs you to do.

how people treat you is a reflection of how they treat themselves this goes both ways (third law of e-motion)

daily reminder: you are what is beyond your conditions and circumstances

wholeness and feeling enough aren’t things you attain but something for you to realize is your true nature (you are what you seek)

when you become aware that you don’t need to be fixed because you’re not broken all illusions that aren’t actually you begin to d i s s o l v e (if it ain’t broke…)

never forget that what you do and create is part of who you are but not who you are

gratitude is acceptance of what is hope is understanding nothing lasts forever peace is being unattached to what is in the mind you’ll know you’re healing when you can find the beauty in pain (signs of healing)

when the world around you seems overwhelmingly chaotic remember that you can always find the eye of the storm peace is when you realize you are the eye (you are the “I”)

Universal Mind Universal Mind is the Intelligence behind all living things. It is the life force and energy that is in all things. It is how an acorn knows how to grow into a tree, how the planets know how to stay in orbit, and how our bodies know how to heal itself when we get a cut. It's how our bodies know how to self-regulate and keep us alive without us having to manually do everything like breathing and beating our heart. The Intelligence that knows how to do all of this and is in all things is called the Universal Mind. Many people call this God, Infinite Intelligence, the Quantum Field, Source, and other names. This is where Thoughts come from as well as everything else in the Universe. All things are connected by Universal Mind. There is no separation between anything, and any time there seems to be separation between things, it is merely an illusion of our thinking. When we are connected to Universal Mind, we feel whole, fulfilled, filled with love, joy, peace, and inspiration. It is only when we begin thinking (believing the illusion or ego) that we block this flow of Universal Mind and begin to feel separated, frustrated, lonely, angry, resentful, sad, depressed, and fearful.

Goals and dreams that come in the form of thought are created out of inspiration. Goals and dreams that come from thinking are created out of desperation.

although we can’t control a lot of things, what we can have a say in is what we want in our lives, but not necessarily the how.

Our part is to hold in our minds what we want and get into a state of non-thinking. This enables us to access our Infinite Intelligence (God) so that the answers are revealed to us exactly when we need it. The path forward is only revealed

your intuition. Our intuition does come to us in the form of thoughts, but remember that there’s a stark difference between thoughts and thinking, as we discussed in a previous chapter.

Your intuition will almost always go against your logical, rational mind, so be prepared for that. It will whisper to you

is ironic how much could be written about nothing. That’s what space is: nothing.

Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” — Dalai Lama

Once you begin living your life in non-thinking, you’ll be having the time of your life not having very many worries, stress, or problems in your life.

If you begin to feel like something’s wrong because you feel way too peaceful and content, know that it’s only your mind trying to make you think again.

Thinking and thoughts are two different things. Thinking is a verb and requires our manual effort, which causes suffering. Thoughts are nouns, which do not come from us and are divine downloads from the Universe.

Create space in your day to be able to decompress, relax, and return to a state of non-thinking.

It could be journaling, taking a walk, meditating, playing with your pets, taking a nap, doing yoga, or anything relaxing.

Don’t try to find the root cause, thinking is the root cause.