Listening from the Heart of Silence Quotes

“Who or what is reading these words? What is noticing your reactions to them? Your mind may answer, “I am.” Who is this “I”? What is your experience in this moment? What is your experience of “I” without the mind’s judgments, memories, or comments about it? What is aware of that experience? Do you at any point come up with “I don’t know?” What is here experientially when you allow yourself not to “know”? Do you actually find an “ego” when you go to look for it?”
― John J. Prendergast, Listening from the Heart of Silence (Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy

“Traditional psychotherapy gives “problems” great reality. An enormous amount of time and energy is frequently expended trying to get rid of emotions that would simply pass through, like changing weather, if we weren’t judging them to be a problem to be solved, or a statement about a “me” rather than about a moment. Years can be spent trying to change a negative self-image into a positive one without ever questioning whether an image is really who we are. Clients want to feel better, and they come to a therapist in order to effect that change. That is fine. But while a positive self-image may feel better, it is just as limiting, untrue, and temporary as any other image. What is here beneath the image? “What is actually true?” becomes a much more interesting question than “How can I manipulate life, ‘me,’ ‘you,’ or ‘them’ to feel/be a certain way?”
― John J. Prendergast, Listening from the Heart of Silence (Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy