2 Ideals and Truth
Ideals are what we will do tomorrow, because we didn’t will to do it today.
An idealist is simply a materialist at the level of the mind.
You only worship what you are not.
An ideal is an escape from your reality.
If you have an ideal you will not understand yourself.
To an idealist life is always in a state of conflict.
Idealism prevents the necessary radical disillusionment.
If you have ideals you must suffer for them.
The distance between reality and mentality is the measure of the suffering you will encounter.
Why should the world live up to your abstractions?
Ideals are a sign of someone living with self-contradiction.
Innocence is an ideal, awareness is a practical reality.
The idea that we can return to a state of innocence is an ideal of a mind looking for a way out.
Awareness isn’t situated anywhere else but here and now and is present when all escapes are let go of.
Innocence is a long, long way away for most people, but awareness is the moment you are aware.
Whatever you do, that you become.
We create tomorrow – all our tomorrows – today.
For tomorrow to be right, you must get today right first.
To be true to the moment is to be true for all time.
What is true is revealed when you stop moving away from yourself and the moment you’re living.
Truth cannot be acquired, when acquisition ends, then
To live well you must be orientated towards the present moment.
If you do what is right now, do you need to worry about the future, or regret the past?
To do something because of tomorrow’s gain is greed, is it not?
What is old, what has passed away, how can that be true?
The truth about yourself today is different from what it was yesterday and must be seen afresh.
Though we are often far from the truth, the truth is never far from us.
The truth must seem a transcendental thing to those who know it not; but to those who do know it, they find it is completely immanent.
All you need to know is here in your life right now, where else could it be?
To understand the true and the false as it presents itself in each situation is to awaken to life.
Only when you 1ove each moment in silence will you truly understand it.
It is the tyranny of the self that keeps you enthralled to the false.
Entertainment is the occupation of self.
Entertainment hides what is true by engaging the self in distraction.
Entertainment comes in many forms, from the gross to the very subtle, but it always has this to mark it out – it is self-distracting.
The self is occupied with many things, but evades two things like the plague: silence and understanding.
You will never be delivered from the tyranny of self until you are committed to the truth.
When what is true is actually more important than the self, then the truth about self will begin to emerge.
When you start to understand the truth about yourself you will turn away from yourself.
Conversion is not a new direction, but the ending of direction.
To go from one struggle to another, how can you call that conversion?
It is the self that is going somewhere, it is the self that controls.
Conversion happens when condemnation ends.
Condemnation is the continuation of conflict.
When the fighting stops you will see the battlefield, perhaps for the first time, and you will turn away from it.
Nobody can tell you the truth about yourself.
The truth is you are unique, and the truth about you is unique.
Only you can discover the truth about yourself because only you have access to it.
The ignorant blame the world for their conflict, and so the struggle continues;
later they may realise the mind itself is the cause of conflict, and then the struggle for control begins;
but the wise understand both the world and the mind, and the struggle comes to an end.
Communication is more important than ideology.
To be attached to your ideas is to be attached to yourself.
Communication is a bringing-together; ideology is a separating-apart.