More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
When you’re ready to lose your life, you live it.
An Italian poet said, “We live in a flash of light; evening comes and it is night forever.”
It’s only a flash and we waste it. We waste it with our anxiety, our worries, our concerns, our burdens.
when you see the sun, you’re seeing it where it was eight and a half minutes ago, not where it is now.
what are we, what’s this universe, what’s human life?
they no longer have the power to make you happy or miserable. That’s what aloneness means. In this solitude your dependence dies. The capacity to love is born.
Think of a life in which you depend on no one emotionally, so that no one has the power to make you happy or miserable anymore.
To see at last with a vision that is clear and unclouded by fear or desire. You will know what it means to love.
The love of work which you enjoy doing for the love of itself; the love of laughter and intimacy with people to whom you do not cling and on whom you do not depend emotionally but whose company you enjoy.
take on activities that you can do with your whole being, activities that you so love to do that while you’re engaged in them success, recognition, and approval simply do not mean a thing to you. It will help, too, if you return to nature.
Get back to things, get back to nature, go up in the mountains.
I admit the feeling is in me, not in the other person, e.g., in the person who didn’t write me a letter, not in the exterior world; it’s in me.
I don’t identify with the feeling. “I” is not that feeling. “I” am not lonely, “I” am not depressed, “I” am not disappointed.
A. S. Neill’s book Summerhill
“Every child has a god in him. Our attempts to mold the child will turn the god into a devil.
He lets children form their own values, and the values are invariably good and social.
When a child feels loved (which means: when a child feels you’re on his side), he’s O.K.
No fear, so no violence. The child begins to treat others the way...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
began to see the self-dissatisfaction that had been ingrained in me, the competition, the comparisons, the that’s-not-good-enough, etc.
I want to be happy, I want to be holy, I want to be loving, I want to be at peace, I want to be free, I want to be human.
The root of evil is within you. As you begin to understand this, you stop making demands on yourself, you stop having expectations of yourself, you stop pushing yourself and you understand.
I’m talking about sunsets, about nature, about a good movie, about a good book, about enjoyable work, about good company, and hopefully you will break your addictions to those other feelings.
when you’re really conversing with someone whose company you enjoy in openness and intimacy without clinging?
The latter feelings I call worldly feelings; the former feelings I call soul feelings.
You’ve lost your soul. Feed yourself on other, more nourishing material. Then you’ll see the transformation.
