Great Throughts Treasury

"Complete health and awakening are really the same."

"Because our problems are often painful and disturbing, our natural tendency is to try to avoid them; we seek ways to get out of difficult situations, or to go around the obstacles we encounter. But our problems are like clouds: though they appear to obscure the serenity of a clear sky, they contain life-giving moisture that nourishes growth. When we face our problems directly and go through them, we discover new ways of being."

"As you become familiar with the stories you typically tell, you will notice how many of them express a characteristic negativity. There are stories that explain inaction or justify distraction, that feed daydreams of escape, excuse failures, and calm fears. There are other stories that fuel anxiety and intensify concern. Pay close attention to the patterns of the stories that you typically tell, looking for those that consistently repeat themselves. Can you touch the energy bound up in those stories? Can you release it?"

"By means of meditation we can teach our minds to be calm and balanced; within this calmness is a richness and a potential, an inner knowledge which can render our lives boundlessly satisfying and meaningful. While the mind may be what traps us in unhealthy patterns of stress and imbalance, it is also the mind which can free us. Through meditation, we can tap the healing qualities of mind."

"Dreams are a reservoir of knowledge and experience, yet they are often overlooked as a vehicle for exploring reality."

"Energy is our most precious resource, for it is the means by which we transform our creative potential into meaningful action."

"Every kind of work can be a pleasure. Even simple household tasks can be an opportunity to exercise and expand our caring, our effectiveness, our responsiveness. As we respond with caring and vision to all work, we develop our capacity to respond fully to all of life. Every action generates positive energy which can be shared with others. These qualities of caring and responsiveness are the greatest gift we can offer."

"Forget descriptions of meditation and just sit quietly. Be very still and relaxed, and do not try to do anything. Let everything—thoughts, feelings, and concepts—go through your mind unheeded. Do not grasp at ideas or thoughts as they come and go or try to manipulate them. When you feel you have to do something in your meditation, you only make it harder. Let meditation do itself."

"How we live, what is happening in our lives, how we are affected by our experience—this is the ground of reality, and the source of spiritual awareness."

"If you want to do your best for future generations of humanity, for your friends and family, you must begin by taking good care of yourself."

"If you haven't discovered who you truly are, your assumed competence is just a wall of sand against the oncoming tide."

"In the dream state our bodies are at rest, yet we see and hear, move about, and are even able to learn. When we make good"

"It is important to recognize the power of our emotions--and to take responsibility for them by creating a light and positive atmosphere around ourselves. This attitude of joy that we create helps alleviate states of hopelessness, loneliness, and despair. Our relationships with others thus naturally improve, and little by little the whole of society becomes more positive and balanced."

"Kum Nye is the art of developing true balance. Through relaxation we can discover a new way of being, a perspective that is open and delights in the integration of the body, mind, senses, feelings, and environment...The moment practice begins, you are planting the seed of a healthy, positive attitude."

"In order to awaken understanding in others, one has first to know and then to live what one knows."

"Sitting quietly, let the mind involve itself in the stories that flow through consciousness. Notice the dynamic that powers each story: the concerns and desires, worries and distractions. As you become more familiar with these patterns, look for second-level stories that support the stories on the surface; for instance, stories about who you are and what you stand for, or stories that make sense of longstanding patterns or conditions. Notice which stories refer more to the past and which to the future. How does the `objective' time that measures out events and sequences figure in the stories you tell? Is it a minor character? Does it have a role to play at all? ..."

"Our perception of space alters the space. It is consciousness that finds meanings in all spaces."

"The suggestion that instead of seeing rigid connections and interactions between objects, we could view objects as being mostly space, as coming from and returning to space: "space projecting space into space."

"The world will be balanced when we are balanced."

"We can take responsibility for deciding what patterns we wish to enact or promote."

"Use of the dream state, it is almost as if our lives were doubled: instead of a hundred years, we live two hundred."

"You can practice inner observation wherever you are, whatever you are doing, by being aware of each thought and the feelings that accompany it. You can be sensitive to how your actions affect your thoughts, your body and your senses. As you do this, you reopen the channel between your body and your mind, and gain a greater awareness of who you are; you become familiar with the quality of your inner being. Your body and mind begin to support one another, lending a vital quality to all your efforts. You enter into a living, dynamic process of learning about yourself, and the self-knowledge that you gain enhances all that you do."

"Beyond the beliefs of any one religion, there is the truth of the human spirit. Beyond the power of nations, there is the power of the human heart. Beyond the ordinary mind, the power of wisdom, love, and healing energy are at work in the universe. When we can find peace within our own hearts, we contact these universal powers. This is our only hope."

"Although all of us desire happiness, few of us reach that goal because of the seemingly endless cycle of expectation and disappointment."

"Meanings generating meanings - the process has backed us into a particular corner, a kind of cave, where sunlight seldom enters."

"Loving compassion is like sunlight, awakening and bringing joy to beings. Its beauty is like a rainbow, lifting the hearts of all who see it."

"Once our hearts are open, all existence appears naturally beautiful and harmonious."

"Reality is all-encompassing: the absolute nature is one. Although we may feel separate from the original uncreated reality - whether we call it 'God,' 'peak experience,' or 'enlightened mind' - through awareness we can contact this essential part of ourselves."

"The basis of the spiritual path is the development in ourselves of what is truly balanced, natural, and meaningful."

"Ultimately, there is no way to escape taking responsibility for ourselves."

"Try to notice-in all your thoughts, sensations, and direct encounters-the objects and 'outside-standers' that make appearance meaningful. For each object encountered or referred to, note it and embrace it in its immediate givenness as being part of 'you'. You can do this both by saying to yourself, That too is 'I', and by extending your sense of located awareness to embrace the apparently separate and distant object. This exercise helps to counteract the tendency to polarize experience, which creates a self that is cut off from the rest of reality. It might at first seem to set up a monomaniacal selfishness, but actually, if practiced carefully, it will undermine the idea of a solid and continuous 'self'. The exercise might also seem to cultivate confusion between things themselves and thoughts about these things and about the world. But this is not the case. By initially forcing the subject and object together in this way, we can soon progress to the perception of a 'time' which naturally gives the subject and object as together. This process also shows the felt difference between the thought about a thing and the 'thing itself'-between the reference and its referent-in a new light. We can progress from an artificial intimacy to an uncontrived one, and further, to an intimacy which simply is and which involves neither a self nor an object. This intimacy does not reach out to things elsewhere, nor does it assimilate them all in an ordinary location 'here'."

"When we learn to deal directly with our complaints and difficulties, romanticized ideas about the spiritual path are no longer meaningful. We see that what is important is to take responsibility for ourselves, and to always be aware of our thoughts, feelings, and actions."

"We have become captivated by the idea that satisfaction is ?out there?? if only we look, work, (shop), or play hard enough. The faster we run, the farther away we run from true satisfaction, which remains within. Intrinsic to the practice of Kum Nye is the decision to find satisfaction within yourself."

"We can look at it in terms of the head, throat, and heart energy centers. Avoiding the feeling of confusion creates an imbalance in the flow of energy through these three energy centers. The energy flow through the heart center decreases, so we lose some contact with our sensations and feelings. As a result we no longer have the natural fulfillment of full contact with feelings of the heart."