Adyashanti Quotes

Love is a flame that burns everything
other than itself.
It is the destruction of all that is false and
the fulfillment of all that is true.

Grace is all aroudn us, if we only have the eyes to see it.

We're always held in the divine presence always.

Real meditation is not about mastering a technique;
it's about letting go of control.

Do not seek after what you yearn for,
seek after the source of the yearning itself.

There is no outside of you.
It's all an inside game.

As soon as you believe that a label 
you've put on yourself is true,
you've limited something that is literally limitless,
you've limited who you are into nothing but a thought.

It is one thing to realize the Self
it is something else altogether to embody that realization 
to the extent that there is no gap between inner revelation and its outer expression.

Make no mistake about it - 
enlightenment is a destructive process. 
It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier.
Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. 
It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. 
It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.

The real void is not the one you're looking at
It's the one you'are looking from.

Instead of striving towards some distant goal that 
you will never reach, 
I invite you to stop and ask: 
How am I avoiding the enlightenment that is already present in each moment?
How am I seeing separation where it doesn’t exist?”

Eternity knows no history. Eternity is the eternal presence.

The mind may accept or deny that you are awareness, 
but either way it can’t really understand.
It cannot comprehend. 
Thought cannot comprehend what is beyond thought.

This awake silence is available to anyone in this moment. 
All you have to do is stop using your mind to look for it. It doesn't know where to find it.

When we start to suffer, 
it tells us something very valuable. 
It means that we are not seeing the truth, 
and we are not relating from the truth. 
It's a beautiful pointer. It never fails.

Many Sages have said, 
“Your world is a dream. You’re living in an illusion.” 
They’re referring to this world of the mind and 
the way we believe our thoughts about reality. 
When we see the world through our thoughts, 
we stop experiencing life as it really is 
and others as they really are.

When someone says, “I love you,” 
he is telling you about himself, not you. 
When someone says, “I hate you,” 
she is telling you about herself, not you. 
World views are self views—literally.

True sincerity reveals a powerful form of clarity 
and discernment that is necessary 
in order to perceive yourself honestly 
without flinching or being held 
captive by your conditioned mind's judgments and defensiveness.

Suffering is how Life tells you that 
you are resisting or misperceiving 
what is real and true. 
It is the way Life suggests that 
you are not in harmony with what is.

Thoughts in your head are really no different than 
the sound of a bird outside. 
It is just that you decide that they are more or less relevant.

Enlightenment is the unaltered state of consciousness.

Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them, or to see things differently - until you have given the whole world its freedom - you'll never have your freedom.

In this moment, there is always freedom and 
there is always peace. 
This moment in which you experience 
stillness is every moment. 
Don't let the mind seduce you into the past or future. 
Stay in the moment, and dare to consider that you can be free now.

The truth is that you already are what you are seeking.

Truth is not over there, wherever over there is. 
Truth is neither housed in religious rituals 
nor secret doctrines, nor in a guru's touch or
beatific smile, nor in exotic locations 
or ancient temples. 
Truth is quite literally the only thing that does exist. 
It is not hidden but in plain view, 
not lacking but abundantly present.

When you inquire 'Who am I?' if you are honest,
you'll notice that it takes you right back to silence instantly. 
The brain doesn't have an answer, 
so all of a sudden there is silence.

Enlightenment is the natural state of consciousness, 
the innocent state of consciousness, 
that state which is uncontaminated 
by the movement of thought, 
uncontaminated by control or manipulation of mind.

All is always well 
All is always well even when 
it seems unbelievably unwell

The Truth is the only thing
you'll ever run into that has no agenda.

Question your thoughts.
Question your stories. 
Question your assumptions. .
Question your opinions. 
Question your conclusions. 
Question them all into utter emptiness, stillness and joy.
The keys to freedom are in your hands. Use them.

Actually, all paths lead away from the truth...
how's that? All paths. 
There's no such thing as a path to the truth. 
The truth's already here, where are you going?

Awareness isn't something we own; 
awareness isn't something we possess.
Awareness is actually what we are.

Our yearning for truth
actually comes from truth.

Whatever you resist you become. 
If you resist anger, you are always angry. 
If you resist sadness, you are always sad. 
If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. 
If you resist confusion,you are always confused. 
We think that we resist certain states because 
they are there, but actually they are there 
because we resist them.

The biggest embrace of love you’ll ever make 
is to embrace yourself completely. 
Then you’ll realize you’ve just embraced the whole universe,
and everything and everybody in it.

The paradox is that when resistance is fully accepted, 
the resistance disappears.

The true heart of all human beings 
is the lover of what is.

This awake silence is available 
to anyone in this moment. 
All you have to do is stop using your mind to look for it. 
It doesn't know where to find it.

What if you let go of every bit of control
and every urge that you have,
right down to the most infinitesimal urge to control anything, anywhere, including anything that may be happening with you at this moment? 
Imagine that you were able to completely and absolutely give up control on every level. 
If you were able to give up control absolutely, totally, and completely, then you would be a spiritually free being.

When you let go of the egoic self
what you're getting in exchange is
the whole universe.

The Truth doesn't answer anything.
The Truth is everything.

Now don't think that awakening is the end. 
Awakening is the end of seeking, the end of the seeker, 
but it is the beginning of a life lived from your true nature.

When you realize what you are now,
the issue of death will sovle itself.

Be still.
Question every thought.
Contemplate the source of Reality.
and keep your eyes open. You never know when something that seems entirely insignificant will split your whole world wide open into eternal delight.

To be lost in not knowing 
is a wonderful place to be. 
When you're lost in not knowing, 
you come to know, 
but not in the way that you knew before. 
You come to know 
as a moment-to-moment experience of being. 
That's your knowing. 
And you know that That is who you really are. 
You are that ever-unfolding mystery beyond the mind.

Life itself is often our greatest teacher. Life is full of grace.
Each experience we have is the divine invitation.
It may be a beautifully engraved invitation, 
or it may be a very fierce invitation, but each moment is the invitation.
Our illusions—the beliefs we hold on to—
are the very doorways to our freedom. 
we see that our emotional life is a portal. 
It offers an invitation to look deeply, to look from the awakened state—
a state that is not trying to change or alter anything, 
but is itself a lover of truth. 
Each moment is the moment that needs to be happening. 
The texture and flow of our lives, from moment to moment, 
is itself what reveals freedom. 
Life itself shows us what we need to see through in order to be free.

The journey of awakening is not just the journey of waking up, 
being free of self, and realizing that life as we knew it was a dream. 
It is also a reentering, coming back down from the summit 
of the mountain, as it were. Quite surprisingly, upon reentry,
life becomes very simple and ordinary. 
We no longer feel driven to have extraordinary moments, 
to have transcendent experiences. 
Sitting at the table in the morning and drinking a cup of tea is experienced as a full expression of ultimate reality. 
The cup itself is a full expression of everything we have realized. 
Walking down the hallway,
each step is a complete expression of the deepest realization. 
Raising a family, dealing with children, going to work, going on vacation 
- all of it is a true expression of that which is inexpressible.

True meditation has no direction or goal.
It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer.

We let go into this grace. It’s something we fall into, like when we fall into the arms of another, or we put our head on the pillow to go to sleep. It’s a willingness to relax, even in the midst of tension. It’s a willingness to stop for just a moment, to breathe, to notice that there’s something else going on other than the story our mind is telling us. In this moment of grace, we see that whatever might be there in our experience, from the most difficult emotional challenges to the most causeless joy, occurs within a vast space of peace, of stillness, of ultimate well-being.

We begin to awaken from this dream of separateness and struggle, and we realize that the grace we were always seeking is actually right there at the center of our own existence. This is the heart of spiritual awakening: to realize that what we have always yearned for is the very thing, in our deepest source, that we have always been. Freedom is always available to us. In those very moments when we know we don’t know, when we take the backward step, heart wide open, we fall into grace.

When we begin to look at our experience clearly, 
we’ll see that there are at least two phenomena going on: 
one is the movement of mind, 
including all of the descriptions, 
self-images, ideas, beliefs, and opinions 
that arise moment to moment. 
The other phenomenon is the awareness of mind. 
Very rarely do we take into account the awareness of mind, 
the space in which mind arises and subsides.

You can have the thought of a glass of water, but if you're thirsty, 
you can't drink the thought. You can think about a glass of water 
until you die, but to actually pick up a physical glass and
drink the water is a totally different experience.
A thought has no truthfulness to it. 
As we awaken on the level of mind, we begin to perceive from 
beyond the mind. We realize that the mind itself is empty of reality.
It‟s radical to see that 
our whole sense of self and the world is created in the mind. 
When we see that the structure of tho

ught holds no intrinsic reality,
we come to see that 
the world as we perceive it, through the mind, can‟t have any reality. This is earthshaking; 
the self that we perceive ourselves to be has no reality.

One Zen master said,
The whole universe is my true personality.
This is a very wonderful saying...
If you want to see what you truly are,
open the window, and everything you see is in fact the expression 
of you inner reality. Can you embrace all of it?