Aphorisms
A pleaser avoids conflict only to end up creating it. What you run from, you run into.
There’s a difference between standing up for yourself and indulging your desires.
You are who and what you complain about.
Your value is not in what you do but in who you are.
It’s the job of inferior people to keep superior people in their place.
The way to be superior is to be equal.
The way to always be right is to admit when you’re wrong.
God as concept is limited; God as experience is limitless.
Love’s only condition is unconditional.
Live within and enjoy the world.
If we are in harmony with the ego, we are out of sync with reality.
Look within. It’s the only way out.
Deception is nobody’s friend. Has it ever worked for you?
Grown-ups are people pretending to be adults.
Narcissism is when people look outside themselves into their minds for happiness.
Go into the darkness and the darkness is dissolved.
Bring into harmony how you feel about yourself, how you think you come across, and how others perceive you.
Keep the mind quiet so you can hear what God says.
Deep secrets make our alienation special.
Withheld communication is louder than silence.
“I love you. I don’t have to be good to you. Why should I treat you any better than I treat myself?”
Divestment of attention is not divestment of responsibility.
No matter how many times you’ve been born, someday you have to grow up.
Guilt is the acceptable alternative to unacceptable feelings.
Destiny can’t change, but your attitude can.
Enthusiasm is a fair-weather friend.
Surrender to God is a sign of strength, not weakness.
Surrender to God does not rob us of personality or vitality.
To look within your heart and out at the world is to see as God sees.
One hundred percent (fe)male is only fifty percent human.
Discipline is the vessel from which all creativity pours.
Insights and breakthroughs are like seeds: unplanted, they bear no fruit.
Romance is the invitation to relationship, not the goal.
Romance is how grown-ups play make-believe.
The path to God is long, arduous, and joyful; the path to personal power is short, fast, and deadly.
Shoveling the dirt out of the mind lightens the load of the heart.
The mind has a mind of its own that has a mind of its own that has a mind of its own.
A calm ocean lies beyond the storm of boredom.
The real world is wherever you are real.
Our world is a reflection of our inner condition.
Are you persuaded by substance or delivery?
Trusting words alone and not the experience behind them brings disaster.
The mind thinks, the intellect decides, the ego identifies with the decision.
To be effective tools, the mind and body should be relaxed, efficient, and agile.
Only when the mind loses control of you can you gain control of it.
The way to be special is to be honest.
The degree to which life works is the degree to which we are honest.
Discrimination and discernment are judgment purified.
To love with respect is to love without attachment.
Respect yourself and respect from others will follow.
I am, therefore I can think.
Everything in you is in the others; everything in the others is in you.
There is nowhere where spiritual growth is not possible.
Clean up the outside by first cleaning up the inside.
Sentiments are of the mind; true feelings are of the heart.
Do you love others or your concept of others?
Self-effort is an insistence on being fully present to the Reality of the moment.
Real change happens only with surrender to God, because only God is real.
Be a nobody, and only the true are with you. Be humble and you’ll be free.
Simple is not dumb.
Rebel against your wrong understanding, not against Reality.
It defies reason that an unreasonable proposition, reasonably expressed, is received as reasonable.
A reasonable proposition, unreasonably expressed, is still reasonable, though unreceived.
We are responsible for speaking out, not for whether others hear what we say.
Repentance is not guilt. It is awakening.
In the power plays within a pair, the one who initiates contact is inferior.
If need equals love, then love thrives on incompetence.
The goal is to continue to love the process.
When you’re in your mind, you can’t use your intellect.
Being cut off from your feelings makes us behave irrationally.
“Your life doesn’t exist when I’m not there.”
You take your problems with you, so why go anywhere?
The spark of ego gets mistaken for the spark of freedom.
Silence is not always peace, and peace is not always silent.
Compassion is love with detachment.
Dispassion is detachment with compassion.
Don’t fix people. Encourage people to fix themselves.
If I weren’t worthless, I’d be a nothing.
“My needs are sincere; others’ are selfish.”
Lying is not conflict resolution.
“I thought it, so you must have heard it.”
“Positive feelings” are those that do not challenge or threaten your limited sense of self.
Ego and pretense are mistaken for intelligence.
“Being egotistical is okay, as long as it’s unconscious.”
Will others like you more if you like you less?
Cult + your = culture.
Do you feel like a winner only when there is a loser?
Relating from the mind is win/lose; relating from the heart is win/win.
To give up failure, you have to give up success.
The nurtured soul brings fulfillment; the nurtured ego, abuse.
People in pain win the dependency game.
Low and high self-esteem are both egotistical.
Nice is a euphemism for victim.
Putting up with something is not forgiveness.
For a victim, pity is the surrogate of love.
Discipline from the ego is behavior modification. Discipline from the heart is personal transformation.
The real world, to some, is getting reality to coincide with fantasy.
Numbing is not being cool or in control. It doesn’t even fool the world, does it?
Worrying is a form of numbing.
Abandonment is conflict without the other person.
When idea and reality do not coincide, anger arises.
We become what we meditate on. Meditate on God.
If in what you do you can’t be who you are, it’s not worth doing.
If with someone you can’t be who you are, it’s not worth being with them.
Grace under pressure is pretending the problem doesn’t exist.
When people lose control of their minds, they seek to gain power over others.