Month: July 2013

“What matters is where we’re stressed-out, tense, anxious, violent, and negative toward ourselves and others.

And at the root of all of that is an idea that disagrees with Reality, and that’s all it can be. Because if your ideas merge with Reality, it’s completely and utterly peaceful and functional.

The world is inherently imperfect. It has a certain sloppiness about it. And it’s natural, so it flows. It might not look like what we think it should look like — and that’s a good thing, because it never does.”

– James Wood, Ending Suffering

“Egotism is taking one’s thoughts so seriously that it becomes like a bubble that isolates you from others.”

James Wood Teachings

“We have a habit of judging things as wrong or bad, and this stresses us out…Nonjudgmental awareness helps to act compassionately.”

James Wood Teachings

“If you straighten yourself out, if you are no longer putting out hostility or deception, then you are putting out something that is helpful, therefore that is the only thing you can do to help society… Your anger is the cause of war.”

– Vernon Howard, The Esoteric Path to a New Life

“Compassion dictates that we relieve suffering. Who among us isn’t moved by daily news stories and images of misery across the globe?

But most of us probably feel that there’s not much we can do about it.

If I see an image of a starving child, an oppressive regime, or a grieving mother—what am I to do?

There is something you can do. You can work to eliminate your own suffering.

In fact, it’s the only way.”

– James Wood, Why Awakening?

THE TRULY GOOD WOMAN

“A woman who felt guilty over past misdeeds said to herself,
‘I must repent. I will start by doing good to others.’

So she joined charitable organizations and said nice things
to people. But to her surprise she felt a vague resentment
toward her activities. She felt forced to be good. This
doubled her guilt, for now she felt guilty over her resent-
ment toward doing good.

Though confused, she intelligently reflected, ‘There is
something dreadfully wrong. This is not goodness at all;
it is self-enslaving stage-acting. True goodness must be
something entirely different.’

So she began a search for true goodness, which she finally
found. She explained to herself, ‘True goodness blooms in
the absence of an unconscious self-picture of being good.’

Abolish conditioned thoughts about personal goodness and
badness and authentic goodness flourishes.”

                                        –Vernon Howard, Inspire Yourself, p. 45