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pretty as you please in the lemon-emerald hay.
didn’t feel like work. The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
the whole motion of our time is from the material toward the spiritual …
‘There is no problem so big that it cannot be run away from.’
“You are quoting Snoopy the Dog, I believe?” “I’ll quote the truth wherever I find it, thank you.”
if you want freedom and joy so much, can’t you see it’s not anywhere outside of you? Say you have it, and you have it! Act as if it’s yours, and it is!
Perspective — Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you’re forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place.
Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers. Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.
The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while, and watch your answers change.
You teach best what you most need to learn.
Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world — even if what is published is not true.
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, “I’ve got responsibilities.”
“The pages don’t have numbers on them, Don.” “No,” he said. “You just open it and whatever you need most is there.” “A magic book!” “No. You can do it with any book. You can do it with an old newspaper, if you read carefully enough. Haven’t you done that, hold some problem in your mind, then open any book handy and see what it tells you?”
You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them. You’re always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.
Believe you know all answers, and you know all answers. Believe you’re a master, and you are.”
“This world? And everything in it? Illusions,
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.
A person gets used to being alone, but break it just for a day and you have to get used to it again, all over from the beginning.
The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
never to let a book replace my own thinking.
“Some of us start learning these things subconsciously. Our waking mind won’t accept it, so we do our miracles in our sleep.”
We’re all on our way to learning more. It will come to you a little faster now, and you’ll be a wise old spiritual maestro before you know it.” “What do you mean, before I know it? I don’t want to know it! I don’t want to know anything!” “You don’t want to know anything.” “Well, I want to know why the world is and what it is and why I live here and where I’m going next: .. I want to know that. How to fly without an airplane, if I had a wish.” “Sorry.” “Sorry what?” “Doesn’t work that way. If you learn what this world is, how it works, you automatically start getting miracles, what will be
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There was part of me listening that didn’t think what I said was fiction. I was making up a true story.
“For another thing, I don’t have to keep talking, because you already know what things people know. But if I didn’t say these things, you wouldn’t know what I think that I know, and without that I can’t learn any of the things I want to learn.”
“If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.”
I went on talking to him for hours about how we had met and what there was to learn, all these ideas firing through my head like morning comets and daylight meteors.
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.
why would anybody want to be horrified? Or bored?” “Because they think they deserve it for horrifying somebody else, or they like the excitement of horrification, or that boring is the way they think films have to be. Can you believe that lots of people for reasons that are very sound to them enjoy believing that they are helpless in their own films?
They are unhappy because they have chosen to be unhappy, and, Richard, that is all right!”
“We are game-playing, fun-having creatures, we are the otters of the universe.
We cannot die, we cannot hurt ourselves any more than illusions on the screen can be hurt. But we can believe we’re hurt, in whatever agonizing detail we want. We can believe we’re victims, killed and killing, shuddered around by good luck and bad ...
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“Isn’t it strange how much we know if only we ask ourselves instead of somebody else?
“Reality is divinely indifferent, Richard. A mother doesn’t care what part her child plays in his games; one day bad-guy, next day good-guy. The Is doesn’t even know about our illusions and games. It only knows Itself, and us in its likeness, perfect and finished.”
the sea is always a perfect sea, and it’s always changing, too,”
Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect,
“Amazing. You were so attached to it, and still it disappeared for you.” “Attached! I was whocking that cloud with everything I had! Fireballs, laser beams, vacuum cleaner a block high …” “Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.”
the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
don’t forget what you did today. It is easy to forget our times of knowing, to think they’ve been dreams or old miracles, one time. Nothing good is a miracle, nothing lovely is a dream.” “The world is a dream, you say, and it’s lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.” “No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?”
The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.
you don’t do anything. You see it done already, and it is.”
“Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them,”
Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt somebody else. He even told you he’d be hurt if …” “He was going to suck my blood!” “Which is what we do to anyone when we tell them we’ll be hurt if they don’t live our way.”
“The thing that puzzles you,” he said, “is an accepted saying that happens to be impossible. The phrase is hurt somebody else. We choose, ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides. Nobody else. My vampire told you he’d be hurt if you didn’t let him? That’s his decision to be hurt, that’s his choice. What
“Listen,” he said, “It’s important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.”
Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
Like attracts like. Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright. Automatically, as we shine who we are, asking ourselves every minute is this what I really want to do, doing it only when we answer yes, automatically that turns away those who have nothing to leam from who we are and attracts those who do, and from whom we have to learn, as well.”
