- "My religion is not to deceive myself." -- Milarepa
- The greatest deception is not what the world tells us is true, but rather that we are caught up in a great lie.
- Every reaction implies that there will be a consequence to the moment if it does not unfold the way it wants.
- Real peace is not an escape from the pain that you are in. Rather, real peace is seeing the truth about the nature that creates the pain.
- The lie is that you can own something from which you can derive an identity that will stand the test of time.
- Time disappears in a moment of perceiving beauty because there is no distance between the observer and the observed. The peace that passes all understanding is that consciousness.
- Time is a lie. The time that you think you need in order to become a different person is a lie. Every time you identify with a time to come is a betrayal.
- Wanting to control a reaction is a product of the reaction, and that is the lie and the loop. You can't stop the reaction, but you can be aware of it. The self that believes that it knows what to do is a product of the reaction.
- The Greek word "Chronos" refers to the measurable flow of psychological time, the time of cause and effect, of minutes, seconds, hours and calendars.
- Chronos is the world in which effect follows cause. The Greek word "Kairos" refers to another order of time, the timeless moment in which something entirely new becomes possible, in which cause and effect appear simultaneously.
- The horizontal line of the Cross is Chronos, the vertical line is Kairos. We keep looking for something new on the horizontal order of time that has nothing new in it. The vertical line can see the meaning of the horizontal passage of time.
- Pausing in order to figure out how to respond is not the same as pausing in order to SEE the response.
- Memory interprets today. Habit re-creates yesterday.
- If we remain entirely passive within the circle of passing time, then transformation is not impossible.
- No amount of determination to change on the part of your will is going to lead to real spiritual transformation.
- Creatures in nature do not know that they are the embodiment of a reaction. The creature IS the reaction. It does not resist the reaction and therefore it does not suffer. We can know that we are having a reaction, but presently we don't know because we listen to what the reaction tells us about what is happening.
- To notice fear requires that there be something that is not afraid. The awareness of that fear cannot belong to the mechanical process that it is observing. The awareness of the state proves that there is a field -- an order of being -- that is above the state.
- As long as we identify with either side of any conflict, we remain imprisoned within the stream of time that exists because of that very separation.
- You deceive yourself by default every time that you are not aware of the reaction that explains the stimulus and knows what to do in response.
- In the instant that you are aware of stimulus and reaction at same time, you are connected to something that is not part of the line of time. Awareness of stimulus and response interrupts the mechanical stream of time, and cannot be deceived into taking sides.
- A reaction to a thought gives you something to do and someone to be. Whereas awareness sees without being defined by what is seen.
- There is no struggle in genuinely separating yourself from reactions because seeing performs the separation for you. However, entering the space between stimulus and response does require conscious suffering, ie: losing "your" life.
