Sublime

Second layer: your ideas. If you hold on to an idea about someone, then you no longer love that person but your idea of that person.

All spiritual and psychological paths are attempts to answer the question, “Who am I?” Different paths focus on different levels of consciousness, different parts of the totality of our experience of being human. Psychological work will help us integrate the inner child and strengthen the positive ego. Some spiritual work will help us develop our i

Unless the mind is healed … there will be no end to our unhappiness.

The light of awareness must penetrate the fear, resentment, and shame of the child, in order to uncover the images that have become buried in the unconscious mind. We must be willing to see the truth of our mistreatment as children, including our parents’ flaws, without having to eradicate the good that may also have been present.

In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual “wisdom,” we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

Examination of the world without is never as personally painful as examination of the world within, and it is certainly because of the pain involved in a life of genuine self-examination that the majority steer away from it.

The second ingredient is equally important to see yourself, to ruthlessly flash the light of awareness on your motives, your emotions, your needs, your dishonesty, your self-seeking, your tendency to control and manipulate.

the decision to withhold the truth should never be based on personal needs, such as a need for power, a need to be liked or a need to protect one’s map from challenge.