Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always
known in thought . . .
Say not, “ I have found the truth,” but rather,
“I have found a truth.”
Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.”
Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.

He who does not really feel himself lost, is lost without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality.

We exist as phantom, monster, miracle, each a theme park all one's own, and mainly unknowable in the end, not just to others, but to ourselves as well.

Prospective Immigrants Please Note

Either you will go
through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your positions
to die bravely

But much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself makes no promises
It is only a door.

We should not for a moment consider even our best-established knowledge of existence as true.

It is awareness only of the colors that our own vision paints on the film of one bubble in one strand of foam on the ocean of being.

To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge. It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging.

Centering is a verb. It is an ongoing process . . . Centering is not a model, but a way of balancing, a spiritual resource in times of conflict, an imagination. It seems in certain lights to be an alchemical vessel, a retort, which bears an integration of purposes, an integration of levels of consciousness. It can be called to, like a divine ear.

Centering . . . is the discipline of bringing in (i.e., of sympathy or empathy) rather than of leaving out. Of saying “Yes, Yes” to what we behold. To what is holy and to what is unbearable. But my experience tells me now that there is an important crucial stage of saying Yes to a No. For resistance also must be embraced. Not only accepting resistance but practicing it.

Everything is always falling out of balance against a background of perfect harmony.

More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown.

"I am your own way of looking at things," she said. "When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation."

Stories move in circles. They don’t go in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is getting lost. And when you’re lost, you start to listen.

My plan, then, in so far as the negation of all effort and purpose may be said to be a plan, is to stop evolving, to remain what I am and to become more and more only what I am -- that is, to become more miraculous.

Who is doing the work? In process painting, which is a tool for self-exploration, which is a type of meditation, who is doing the work? Is it you, as a conscious entity, or is it the unconscious itself, the creative source that is doing the work?

To make art is to sing with the human voice.
 To do this you must first learn that the only voice you need is the voice you already have.


seeker of truth
 
follow no path
all paths lead where
 
truth is here
 

Your hand needs time to wander enough to be able to find something you weren’t aware of, like an expedition partner who can see things you can’t. The hand is experiencing the same world in a different way. It’s you but it’s not you.

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego, and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power, we shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down, we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.