Essence of Reality Quotes

“Regardless of type, however, the mechanism of a religion works like this: children, from the time they can communicate, are taught to see reality in a certain way. They are indoctrinated with a pre-defined belief structure and value set. Naive, open to such teaching, given only the religious viewpoint and perhaps punished or ostracized if they don’t accept it, most ultimately absorb and mimic the religion outright.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“The scientist would look at a sphere, measure the surface in great detail, categorize the skin qualities and components, then predict evolving surface tensions and potentials. The use of that sphere, however, along with its beauty and potential would not be of interest. Science would count the bricks of a house, but not care about living in it, thus missing the point – but thinking that, by quantifying the physical, everything had been covered.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“However, science, by its very nature, forms its own inherent boundaries to man’s progress. . . Focused as it is on the world out there, categorizing and measuring, theorizing and concluding all things based on external evidence and proof, science misses the core of life: the consciousness doing the experiencing.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“There is no other force, no other determining factor, no external cause to the cohesive unfolding of your life’s episodes – only your composite inner nature. Change that and you change your life.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“When, and only when, you clearly see the inner roots to an outer condition, can you change them and thus it.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Clear Awareness is not a magical state to be attained by secret rituals, chants, pleading to some external source or emergence into astral planes, nor a status bestowed by a certified master. Nor is it a capability of yours that needs to be developed, strengthened or discovered. Awareness is the core attribute of your existence; it only needs to be freed from all the synthetic definitions, beliefs, misconceptions, fears and other hindering fallacies your mind has absorbed through the course of your life.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Beliefs and definitions never clarify how Reality works -- they only distort perception of it.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Indeed, of the major religions, Islam offers no discernible sliver of valid notion for How Life Works.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“For deep adherents, the Koran would seem to echo great truths given directly to a vaunted and hallowed prophet by a deity of overwhelming power and grandeur. If you don’t hold any such archaic notions, however, the words attributed to Allah come across as harshly self-defensive, crude in reemphasizing old cultural standards, shaky in trying to establish new standards, brutal in places, mostly repetitious and monotonous – and thoroughly unbelievable. When you have outgrown all such unfounded religious notions, the Koran doesn’t offer much by way of piercing perspective.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Above, in discussing the perceptive notions of Jesus, remarkable concepts of Plato or the highly introspective lessons of Gautama and Lao Tzu, it took considerable discussion to explore the meaning and relate it to How Life Works. Islam presents no such deep pool of thought to pierce.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“One always has to wonder anew how anyone could imagine a god, who, so overwhelmingly intelligent and powerful as to have been able to create this enormously complex world and the vast universe it floats around in, would populate it with a bunch of humans whose primary purpose consisted of bowing subserviently in worship.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“You never saw an angel, because they don’t exist – at least not in this Reality. They do exist in the realm of imagination – but then, just about anything can be conjured up there in a mind steeped in myth and lore.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“But what you are looking for is not “truth,” not a collection of fine and polished answers emanating from grand buildings, expert acknowledgement and advanced academic degrees. What you are looking for is your Self, and what I provide here are some tools and perspectives to aid a Journey through the jungle of explanations and definitions and up a mountain of perspective to where you can see that Self clearly.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Even though this deity (the Christian God with a capital "G") has evolved through its 2000 years, it somehow maintains in its current version all old characteristics, whether conflicting or consistent: readiness to punish but ability to heal, vindictiveness yet forgiveness, utter cruelty to outside nonbelievers but looking for converts, etc.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“However, in regards to the theological aspects of each religion, tradition or philosophy, the same exacting standard must be set as measurement: does it clearly and accurately depict the functionality of Reality? That is, does the cosmology precisely describe how Reality works? If not, then the religion is invalid.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Clearly, when western cultures absorbed Christianity, they got an all-inclusive package: ancient Hebrew rituals and myths steeped in lost purpose, scantily recorded and broadly misinterpreted teachings of Jesus, revisions and distortions by Paul, twisted cosmology and superstitions supplied by priesthoods and bureaucratic/political distortions innate to man’s traditional
endeavors.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“But Lao Tzu’s teaching suffers from the major problem endemic to such visionaries. In the intervening two and a half millennia, his words have been misinterpreted and distorted by generations of adherents until his message is riddled with meaningless ritual and dogma. Taoism contracted the conceptual plague: it became a religion.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Of the hundreds of religions and philosophies ever entertained by the mind of man, each considered by the convinced holder to be the only valid one, only at the very most one can be accurate. . . Just as obvious should be the possibility, if not likelihood, if not certainty, that none of those hundreds of religions accurately depicts How Life Works.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“It must be obvious that the Reality we all encounter only works one way, and it functions that way regardless of what the experiencer believes.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“But there is only one mechanism to life, one way in which Reality functions. Theology, the rendered definition behind religion, philosophy and science all purport to depict that functionality. But if each fails to do so accurately, that invalidity needs to be exposed – and the only way to do that is to point out the fallacious elements of the description.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“You are the only real authority in your life, but you yield that status to so many externals by believing in them, by having been punished or forced into accepting them.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Simply put, the relative age of a philosophical perspective has nothing to do with its veracity. It is pure illusion to imagine that just because a view of life was held and put to words long ago, that it is more valid.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Vocal cords are not rental units. No Hebrew prophet, nor Mohammed, nor any founder of any cult or religion ever spoke the words of anybody but themselves.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“. . . And the consequence to that is, you can never attain a Clear Awareness of life’s flow by absorbing and following Old Teachings, however revered by our culture, however vaunted by institutions and fancy buildings, however nice they sound, because you must already hold adequate wisdom in order to even identify it. Unless you can tell which expressions are wise because you are aware of life’s nature yourself, you will invariably be soundly, profoundly fooled.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“So how do you teach your kids Awareness – to trust in themselves, to love without judging, to expect health without having to manipulate their bodies with drugs, to expect and accept abundance, not eternal struggle? Simply put: you can’t – unless you have that Awareness yourself. In that case, you
don’t have to “do” anything – just be yourself.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“One vital aspect in the Path toward Clear Awareness is the beginning of differentiation between belief-induced appearance and Reality. In many ways I can illustrate illusions and point out artificial concepts that are commonly accepted as real, but the onus of recognition is for you to come to see these things as what they are.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“If you picture other people as superior to yourself, you will realize that
mental image. Putting a preacher, a saint, a prophet, an expert or anybody up on a pedestal in your personal view, fundamentally accomplishes nothing but the effect of putting you in a pit.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Since the effects of your life that lead to pain and annoyance are always consequences of inner elements, what you commonly regard as “problems” are more accurately seen as outer symptoms of inner, causal problems. The practical approach is to begin looking at those specific aspects of your life that are not as you desire to find their source, rooted in your mindset.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“The key realization to delving inwards to deal with the roots of outer symptoms is this: once you have clearly identified the core, inner roots to a problem, you then have authority over the situation. . . If, though, you never delve within. . . you will not eliminate the inner source of the
problem and thus never fully extinguish the external symptom.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“There is no “other self” to the unconscious, no independent entity with its own agenda; it is only information and stored value relationships – a broad array of raw information that undergirds the more superficial “knowledge” learned through rational processes and impacts in all ways the emerging Reality that each conscious Self encounters.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works