Self Enlightenment Quotes & Sayings

Never allow your ego to diminish your ability to listen. — Gary Hopkins

Serenity of mind produces an expanding awareness that fosters creative selflessness, which in turn enables us to experience unabashed harmony communing in rhythmical bliss with nature. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Enlightenment doesnt occur from sitting around visualizing images of light, but from integrating the darker aspects of the Self into the conscious personality. — Carl Jung

Our whole education system is calculated to produce *feelings* in us, impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out ... Thus stuffed with imparted feelings, we appear before the bar of majority and are 'pronounced of age." Our equipment consists of "elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims,eternal principles. — Max Stirner

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. ... 1 Nothing is required for this enlightenment ... except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. - IMMANUEL KANT, What Is Enlightenment? — Jon Meacham

Attaining bliss can take lifetimes, or one can simply choose to experience it in their deepest dreams. Sleep well my friend, as dreams are vehicles that can quickly take you to the awareness that you call Nirvana — Gary Hopkins

The moment you have faith, there is the experience. The moment you have trust, there is realization, there is enlightenment. Then this world no longer exists as the world. The world exists as the Self. It exists as God. And then, with our physical eyes, we can see the light of God everywhere and in everything. — Gurumayi Chidvilasananda

To be whole simply requires paying attention to oneself — Gary Hopkins

The very way that you think is a crucial component to your overall health and well being. Living towards the negative will only foster conflict and a sense of lack, while living towards the positive will create more opportunity for you to experience harmony and abundance. — Gary Hopkins

Master Teachers who genuinely embody an enlightened state of being never stop "doing the work". The ego is what assumes it knows enough, causing cessation of these daily practices, and therefore, Masters without attachment to ego are forever students of the Universe. The Masters attain an illuminated state of "Being" as the outcome, yet it is the consistent "doing" that promotes and maintains their enlightenment. — Alaric Hutchinson

To hate the hate was just more hate; to reject the rejection was just more rejection; to judge the judging, just more judging. — T. Scott McLeod

The cultural forces that help politically sustain both the militaristic and the corporate function of the Deep State, however, are growing more irrational and antiscience. A military tradition that glories in force and appeals to self-sacrifice is the polar opposite of the Enlightenment heritate of rationality, the search for peace, and a belief in the common destiny of mankind. The warrior-leader, like the witch doctor, ultimately appeals to irrational emotionalism; and the cultural psychology that produces the bravest and most loyal warriors is a mind-set that is usually hostile to the sort of free inquiry of which scientific progress depends. This dynamic is observable in Afghanistan: no outside power has been able to conquer and pacify that society for millennia because of the tenacity of its warrior spirit; yet the country has one of the highest illiteracy rates on earth and is barely out of the Bronze Age in social development. p 260 — Mike Lofgren

The joke of it all is that you are looking from your true nature right now without knowing it. If you would stop being fascinated with the contents of your mind, you would experience what I am saying. Feel your way into what I am saying rather than thinking about it. Only a self-concept looks and longs for God. Drop your self-concept and there is only God meeting God. Enlightenment is the restoration of cosmic humor. — Adyashanti

The greatest universe is the one within you. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Finding the calmness or serenity in oneself effectively diffuses the judgments of others — Gary Hopkins

Studying the Buddha way is studying oneself. Studying oneself is forgetting oneself. Forgetting oneself is being enlightened by all things. Being enlightened by all things is to shed the body-mind of oneself, and those of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment continues endlessly. — Dogen

A person must cultivate their personal tutelary spirit in order to achieve their ultimate visage. — Kilroy J. Oldster

You're only as good as you're next thought of yourself. — Curtis Tyrone Jones

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which Smith published in 1776, is the most important book ever written about capitalism and its moral ramifications. Though The Wealth of Nations is in good part about commerce, it was not written for businessmen or merchants. A book focused on the analysis of market processes motivated by self-interest, it was written by one of the most admired philosophers of the Enlightenment, a former professor of logic, rhetoric, jurisprudence, and moral philosophy, in order to influence politicians and rouse them to pursue the common good. — Jerry Z. Muller

Cut off entanglements.
Get rid of anger and hatred.
Do not be afraid of hard work.
Tolerate ignominy and endure dishonor.
Forgive people and defer to others.
Take possessions lightly; take life seriously.
View others and self as the same.
Do whatever you can to be helpful.

Practice developing virtue is the greatest priority; when achievement is great and practice profound, it moves heaven and earth.
Ridiculous are the foolish ones who only profit themselves; with no achievement and little action, they dream of becoming immortals. — Liu Yiming

To be enlightened is to know oneself and not run away. — Veronique Vienne

Self-discover is not as someone would have us think, a heavy, awesome, moral process where everyone sits around and frowns. As you progress towards enlightenment, you become funny. — Frederick Lenz

Everybody is seeking to reach higher self but hardly anyone reaches. — Santosh Kalwar

Self enlightenment is the greatest endowment. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The anti-pleasure movement in self-discovery is very strong. I have big news for them, if they ever get to enlightenment, which is unlikely the way they're approaching it, they're going to find that enlightenment is very pleasurable. — Frederick Lenz

The degree to which your Consciousness expands, is the degree to which you understand yourself and the universe. — Gina Charles

Worship is invoking the divinity within. Meditation is awareness of divinity within. Enlightenment is realization of divinity within. Nirvana is being the divinity — Rashmit Kalra

If enlightenment comes first, before thinking, before practice, your thinking and your practice will not be self-centered. By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or no color, which is ready to take form or color. This enlightenment is the immutable truth. It is on this orginal truth that our activity, our thinking, and our practice should be based. — Shunryu Suzuki

The moment you open yourself completely to the love that awaits your conscious embrace, you are no longer there to receive it. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Perhaps we are all shells; but some of us have found the pearls inside, and this makes all the difference! — C. JoyBell C.

Being more self-aware means welcoming more light into a dull life. When we throw light upon our self-perceptions, we immediately realise that the light has always been there, yet we had created an illusion of darkness. — Raphael Zernoff

Chit's tendencies can become pure [transparent] in front of God, but people don't have this knowhow. The easiest solution to purify chit's tendencies is to associate with a person who has the least amount of desires and the ultimate solution to make them pure is the inner visual contemplation (niddidhyasan) of the Vitarag (the enlightened ones who are free of all attachments). — Dada Bhagwan

You are a victim only when you have decided to play the part. — Gary Hopkins

There is a rose in every heart. Enlightenment is recognizing that rose. — Amit Ray

Whatever experiences we may come across in our spiritual journey we are not any of those experiences but rather the one who is witnessing them, the pure awareness cognizing them without thought. — Enza Vita

The purpose of life is to reach a point where you can say 'yes' to all of it. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Under Small's influence Jefferson came to share Immanuel Kant's 1784 definition of the spirit of the era: "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity," Kant wrote.21 "Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. — Jon Meacham

The essence of enlightenment ... is a big understanding, which gives you a deep and wide perspective to see the world as a whole, and a capacity to accept with compassion all that is. 11/26 — Ilchi Lee

You will always have time for what you make time for — Gary Hopkins

Enlightenment is the culmination of self-knowledge, pure unadulterated knowledge. Not knowledge you can get from reading a book, it comes from perfecting your awareness, your mind. — Frederick Lenz

Now the need for seeking something outside will completely disappear. Once you are blissful by your own nature, your life becomes an expression of your blissfulness, not a pursuit of happiness. — Sadhguru

We can only forgive the world to the extent that we forgive ourselves for being in it. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Those who are actively seeking enlightenment will not find it because the act of looking for it is the distraction from it. — Enza Vita

We create the world around us based on our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and emotions. Evil, dark forces, dark energy etc. are forms of the "negative" and are all a projections of the self. There is no separation. Once one realizes this, these energies start to fade and eventually disappear. What's left is wholeness, contentment, self-realization, gratitude and a perpetual state of well-being. There is a popular saying amongst the healing community "where the mind goes, energy flows". Use this mantra to your benefit. Lose the "non-sense" of all despair and anguish and catapult your self to a higher place that is incapable of entertaining the "negative" or "destructive". Achieving this (even in increments) will only transform you to into a better positive place — Gary Hopkins

That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right. — James Anthony Froude

It is not you as the ego who moves through life, but that life flows before you, and you are the immutable awareness containing it all. — Enza Vita

Unrealistic expectations often lead to disappointment, while simple unbiased attention and detachment to outcome often lead to pleasant surprises. — Gary Hopkins

My mother's a Buddhist. In Buddhism, if you want to achieve enlightenment, you have to do it through meditation and self-improvement through the mind. That's something she's passed on to me: to be able to calm myself down and use my mind as my main asset. — Tiger Woods

The less you know, the more you will be known
The less you want, the more you will have
The less you are, the more you will be — Vivian Amis

Living in oneness is in itself the highest form of
self-realization, beyond any enlightenment or higher
Consciousness. — Gian Kumar

No self-effort in the direction of enlightenment is ever wasted. Even if you don't become fully enlightened in a given lifetime, you will be much happier and more aware. — Frederick Lenz

There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment. — James Buchan

You can either wonder or worry. It is better to choice the former. — Lailah Gifty Akita

When you take a moment to peel back the layers of time and space in your current state of perception, you soon begin to realize the true nature of the self and it's reality. Increasing your self-awareness naturally fosters compassion and integrity in all actions and attitudes towards oneself and others — Gary Hopkins

When a man does not dwell in self, then things will of themselves reveal their forms to him. His movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo. — Zhuangzi

You are the unchanging manifesting as the changefulness — Mooji

Emotional awareness is the tether between our Awakened and Dream States. It is the bridge that connects our island in the physical realm to the unexplored Universes that are waiting for us. — Gary Hopkins

Life should be full of- Compassion, Peace, Companionship, Honor, Love, Honesty, Joy, Rapture, Euphoria, Friendship, Family, Spiritual Enrichment, Enlightenment, Trust, Truth, Loyalty, Passion, Cultural Enrichment, Unity, Serenity, Zen, Wonder, Respect, Beauty of All Kinds, Balance of all Creation, Philosophy, Adventure, Art, Happiness, Bliss, Serendipity, Kismet, Fantasy, Positivity, Yin, Yang, Color, Variety, Excitement, Sharing, Fun, Sound, Paradise, Magick, Tenderness, Strength, Devotion, Courage, Conviction, Responsibility, Wisdom, Justice, Satisfaction, Fulfillment, Purpose, Mystery, Healing, Learning, Virtue, History, Creativity, Imagination, Receptiveness and Faith. For through these things you are One with your Creator. — Solange Nicole

There is nothing more blinding than having seen the light, and nothing more tiresome than sharing it. — Anthony Marais

Acceptance is the vessel of realization. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Thoughts, by their nature, come and go endlessly in you. But you are not the thought; you are the one seeing the thought, so any thought of who you are cannot be the truth of who you are. — Enza Vita

Knowledge of thyself is the greatest enlightenment. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Never allow dogmatic interpretations of Karma to keep you from defending what is right or just. You must accept the reality that on occasion, you may very well be the proper instrument of this cosmic force. — Gary Hopkins

It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts. — Stendhal

People that criticize the harshest usually are the ones who would trade places the fastest — Gary Hopkins

When you refuse to entertain the possibility of a solution because you "know" it will not work, then you have successfully strengthened the problem at hand — Gary Hopkins

Enlightenment is the key to empowerment. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Angry obsessive thoughts about another weaken your state of mind and well being. If you must have revenge, then take it by choosing to be happy and let them go forever. — Gary Hopkins

Relationships without a Divine Aim always "break up," for they are based on nothing. Divine Purpose could be described as forgiveness -- the undoing and releasing of the ego. Belief in the ego prevents awareness of True Union and Intimacy. The underlying fear of Intimacy and Union is the ego's fear of loss of itself, the 'personal self' and the 'personal world. — David Hoffmeister

The rough must always accompany the smooth. Without one or the other one learns nothing about oneself. — Solange Nicole

One of the greatest mistakes that people make who pursue self-discovery is they neglect to develop their careers. There is a popular notion that those who seek enlightenment should abandon the things of this world. — Frederick Lenz

Painting is a means of self-enlightenment. — John Olsen

The less human you feel, the more human you become. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

We seek love in relationships, peace in security, and joy in material things ... but these feelings are divine and not dependent on any outer circumstances. — Vivian Amis

The idea of self-emancipation through knowledge, which was the basic idea of the Enlightenment, is in itself a powerful enemy of fanaticism; for it makes us try hard to detach ourselves or even to dissociate ourselves from our own ideas (in order to look at them critically) instead of identifying ourselves with them. And the recognition of the sometimes overwhelming historical power of ideas should teach us how important it is to free ourselves from the overpowering influence of false or wrong ideas. In the interests of the quest for truth and of our liberation from errors we have to train ourselves to view our own favourite ideas just as critically as those we oppose. — Karl Popper

In Hindu parlance he had 'realised the Self'; that is to say, he had realised by direct experience that nothing existed apart from an indivisible and universal consciousness which was experienced in its unmanifest form as beingness or awareness and in its manifest form as the appearance of the universe. — David Godman

Questioner: One question comes to my mind: if everybody looked inward, what would happen? Sadhguru: You would have a sensible world. (Laughs) Is that a danger? — Sadhguru

What is enlightenment? In the Korean tradition of Tao, it is known a Mu-Ah (Mu means "No" or "Nothing" and Ah means "Me"). It is no-me-ness, or egoless-ness. It means realizing the true, unchanging nature of the person you happen to be. — Ilchi Lee

Enlightenment is beyond self-improvement and spiritual seeking. It is the final resolution of a case of mistaken identity. It is the direct recognition of your eternal nature and the seeing through of who you have falsely believed yourself to be. — Gary Crowley

Do we find ourself or does our self get demolished? — Donna Goddard

I have travelled many places but still I find that perhaps the greatest journey is through one's own mind. — Anonymous

Raise you awareness and cultivate your uniqueness. — Amit Ray

The breath I take, the thoughts I think, the emotions I develop, the blood I circulate, the neurons that are wired, everything is completely controlled and has a deep meaning behind it. My soul is enlightened. — Magith Noohukhan

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment. — Immanuel Kant

Enlightenment is the ability to comprehend ourselves, it is the power to peer into our hearts and minds and reach that state of spiritual bliss, which may or may not lead us to salvation. — Balroop Singh

The miracle of enlightenment is that you take the self and let it dissolve in the white light of eternity. — Frederick Lenz

We are figments of the same imagination ... We are one — Gary Hopkins

Broadly speaking, I learned to recognize sin as the refusal to live up to the enlightenment we possess: to know the right order of values and deliberately to choose the lower ones: to know that, however much these values may differ with different people at different stages of spiritual growth, for one's self there must be no compromise with that which one knows to be the lower value. — Margaret Bondfield

Sometimes you just gotta wear the tinfoil hat. — Gary Hopkins

But do you need to have a relationship with yourself at all? Why can't you just be yourself? When you have a relationship with yourself, you have split yourself into two: "I" and "myself," subject and object. That mind-created duality is the root cause of all unnecessary complexity, of all problems and conflict in your life. In the state of enlightenment, you are yourself - "you" and "yourself" merge into one. You do not judge yourself, you do not feel sorry for yourself, you are not proud of yourself, you do not love yourself, you do not hate yourself, and so on. The split caused by self-reflective consciousness is healed, its curse removed. There is no "self" that you need to protect, defend, or feed anymore. — Eckhart Tolle

For most things in life, you need time: to learn a new skill, build a house, become an expert, make a cup of tea ... Time is useless, however, for the most essential thing in life, the one thing that really matters: self-realization, which means knowing who you are beyond the surface self - beyond your name, your physical form, your history, your story.
You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.
Spiritual seekers look for self-realization or enlightenment in the future. To be a seeker implies that you need the future. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you: you will need time until you realize that you don't need time to be who you are. — Eckhart Tolle

In order to know the Truth, you have to be out of your mind. — Vivian Amis

Do not allow consumerism to dictate your spiritual practice. You need nothing more than your focused attention to gain enlightenment. — Gary Hopkins

Sometimes we fall into the negative so deeply that we do not realize our first instinctive reaction to everything is to think negatively or to "look" for the bad in every situation. The phrase "too good to be true" directly comes from this aspect of ourselves. To be cautious can be good in certain situations, but to dismiss every interaction or idea to the possibility of "bad things happening" puts us in a place where the beautiful or the divine never gets a chance to fully blossom. Mind your thoughts carefully, as you are the only one who can allow happiness to thrive in your life — Gary Hopkins

Our lives are a divine expression no matter how messy and weird they may be. How much more meaningful can it get? The source is experiencing itself in form in a conscious, awake way. — Enza Vita

Inner Awareness is often gained in incremental steps at first. The distraction of the perceived physical world dictates this. However, once one realizes this process, a new skill in "awareness recognition" emerges ... and like riding a bike for the first time, one peddles faster, gaining confidence in their new skill, a skill that will take them much farther than any distraction previously experienced — Gary Hopkins

Your observations and conclusions are mirrored illusions of your inner state of being, teaching you truth through falsehoods, strength through weakness and clarity through confusion. You are seeing your Self now, disguised as the world through a lens of denial, but you will soon come to realize that what you choose to deny in yourself manifests into your world. The flaws you see in your world are your most powerful teachers. — Ka Chinery

The starting point of enlightenment, a goal that every person should strive for, is inner leadership. Leadership is far more than something businesspeople do at work. Leadership is all about personal responsibility, self-discovery, and creating value in the world by the people we become. Too many people spend their time blaming others for all that isn't working in their lives. We blame our spouses for our unhappy home lives; we blame our bosses for our distress at work; we blame strangers on the freeway for making us angry; we blame our parents for keeping us small. Blame, blame, blame, blame. But blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself. Blaming others for the current quality of your life is a sad way to live. In doing so, all you're doing is playing the victim. — Robin S. Sharma

What led me to my science and what fascinated me from a young age was the, by no means self-evident, fact that our laws of thought agree with the regularities found in the succession of impressions we receive from the external world, that it is thus possible for the human being to gain enlightenment regarding these regularities by means of pure thought — Max Planck

This thing I am feeling, I'm almost certain, is the closest I'll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation. — Raquel Cepeda