Trapped In Your Own Mind Quotes & Sayings

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that's what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.
The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That's where you are. You've got to keep both going. As Novalis said, 'The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet. — Joseph Campbell

We seem to be trapped by a civilization that has accelerated many physical aspects of evolution but has forgotten that other vital part of man
his mind and his psyche. — Sybil Leek

The problem is that people have tried to look away from space and from the meaning of the moon landing. I remember seeing a picture of an astronaut standing on the moon. It was up at Yale and someone has scrawled on it, 'So what?' That is the arrogance of the kind of academic narrowness one too often sees; it is trapped in its own predictable prejudices, its own stale categories. It is the mind dulled to the poetry of existence. It's fashionable now to demand some economic payoff from space, some reward to prove it was all worthwhile. Those who say this resemble the apelike creatures in 2001. They are fighting for food among themselves, while one separates himself from them and moves to the slab, motivated by awe. That is the point they are missing. He is the one who evolves into a human being; he is the one who understands the future. — Joseph Campbell

You did tell me what a very superior sort of mind your friend has. What a pity he was born trapped in a man's body. — Laurie R. King

People have little importance to me because they are unconscious to their real self. And that self that I see in them, they can't see in themselves. They're only manifesting a very small portion of what they could be. Honesty and kindness could unlock many things in their spirit but most people are too afraid and trapped within themselves, their mind, their fake beliefs. And so, I observe everything in them that they may spend an entire lifetime never seeing. I know their wants, their qualities, their dreams, their needs, their spiritual lessons, their karma, their past lives. They only know what their friends, trapped by the same ignorance, believe that they are. — Robin Sacredfire

She listens, determined to locate the trapped bird that had called out from within the madness of suffering. But there is only silence now, not even a halting fragment. Ali! Ali! A dervish, having renounced dealings with all words except that one, never utters another, in any circumstance ... The sentence enters her mind from a book she had been looking at earlier. Her gaze is drifting across the sky where the moon sits in a great cold ring as she recalls more and more words. Only one thing matters, only one word. If we speak, it is because we have not found that thing, nor shall find it. — Nadeem Aslam

I want to know what you're thinking, you want to know what I'm thinking. But we're alone. In our own minds. We're trapped in this sort of isolation. — Wayne Coyne

At the core of all utopian visions lies one of the main structural dysfunctions of the old consciousness: looking to the future for salvation. The only existence the future actually has is as a thought form in your mind, so when you look to the future for salvation, you are unconsciously looking to your own mind for salvation. You are trapped in form, and that is ego. — Eckhart Tolle

It must be an awful feeling to have love all around you and not feel loved, to be in need and unable to accept whats being offered, to see a world of possibilities but trapped inside your own mind. — Tracy L. Darity

In the vaults of our hearts and brains, danger waits. All the chambers are not lovely, light and high. There are holes in the floor of the mind, like those in a medieval dungeon floor - the stinking oubliettes, named for forgetting, bottle-shaped cells in solid rock with the trapdoor in the top. Nothing escapes from them quietly to ease us. A quake, some betrayal by our safeguards, and sparks of memory fire the noxious gases - things trapped for years fly free, ready to explode in pain and drive us to dangerous behavior ... — Thomas Harris

I rubbed my face with my hands, trying to clear away the image of Clancy Gray trapped down in the dark. That's where he belongs, came the savage voice in my mind. — Alexandra Bracken

I'm pretty sure Mom and Dad didn't see me coming, either: the kid with the black moods, the kid whose mind was always elsewhere, flinching from real life as from a bruise. Who wanted to lay a fiction-filter on top of everything and pretend it was something else just to keep the sheer disappointment of it all bearable: this limited, empirical experience of ours, trapped inside a decaying shell of meat, mainly able to perceive that nothing lasts, even in our most pleasurable moments. — Gemma Files

Moral courage can be lonely indeed. People don't mind being trapped, as long as no one else is free. But stage a break, and everybody else begins to panic. — William Deresiewicz

The worst prisons were not constructed of warped steel and stone. They were carved out of expectations and lies, judgment and corruption. — Kelseyleigh Reber

Each of us is trapped in a place, a time and a circumstance and our attempt to use our mind to transcend those boundaries are more often than not ineffective. — Daniel M. Gilbert

The event itself played over in her mind, and the role she'd taken in the police investigation, the things she'd told them - worse, the thing she hadn't - made the panic so bad sometimes that she could hardly breathe. No matter where she went at Greenacres - inside the house or out in the garden - she felt trapped by what she'd seen and done. The memories where everywhere, they were inescapable; made worse because the event that caused them was utterly inexplicable. — Kate Morton

To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions. — Eckhart Tolle

Everything hurts. He can barely lie still. He feels caught. He wants to run, but where? He feels certain he will always remain like this - trapped within his own body, his own mind. The emotional pain is so strong, it becomes physical. He feels it knotting and twisting inside him, ready to crush him, suffocate him. He is losing his grip, he is losing his mind. He thought he had it all back under control, but suddenly nothing makes sense any more. Does anyone else know what it's like to be stuck somewhere between dead and alive? I't s a half-world of incoherent pain where emotions you put on ice start slowly thawing again. A place where everything hurts, where your mind is no longer strong enough to force your feelings back into hibernation. — Tabitha Suzuma

But it is important to realize we are all trapped in mental constructs, and so we separate ourselves from reality; the whole world loses its aliveness-or, rather, we lose our ability to sense that aliveness, the sacredness of nature. When we approach nature through the conceptualizing mind, we see a forest as a commodity, a concept. We no longer see it for what it truly is, but for what we want to use it as. It is reduced. This is how it becomes possible for humans to destroy the planet without realizing what they are doing. — Eckhart Tolle

I am living in many dimensions at once; the appearance of being trapped in time and space is an illusion: Today I will experience myself beyond limitations. I will set time aside to be present with myself in silence. As I breathe I will see my being spreading outward in all directions. As I settle into my own inner silence, any image that comes to mind will be asked to join my being. I will include anyone and anything that comes to mind, saying, "You and I are one at the level of being. Come, join me beyond the drama of space and time." In the same way I will experience love as a light that begins in my heart and spreads out as far as my awareness can reach; as images arise in my mind, I will send love and light in their direction. — Deepak Chopra

I am not trapped," Deanna said sharply, surprised and worried by the turn of the conversation. Kelly was so self-possessed that it was sometimes difficult to know what was going on in her mind. "I love you all. I live here and help with money because I choose to, because it makes me happy. I'd be miserable if I just up and left you in the lurch. — Noelle Adams

He wants to run, but where? However far he goes, he will not escape, cannot escape his own loathsome self. He will always be trapped within his own body, his own mind. The emotional pain that comes with this realization is so strong, it feels physical. He senses it knotting and twisting inside his body, ready to destroy him from within. He is losing his grip, he is losing his mind. Does anyone else know what it is to be dead yet still alive? This is it. This is it . A half-world of torment, where memories frozen into oblivion slowly begin to thaw. A place where everything hurts, where your conscious mind has neither the strength to let you function in the real world, nor the power to return you to hibernation. — Tabitha Suzuma

Toxic relationships are dangerous to your health; they will literally kill you. Stress shortens your lifespan. Even a broken heart can kill you. There is an undeniable mind-body connection. Your arguments and hateful talk can land you in the emergency room or in the morgue. You were not meant to live in a fever of anxiety; screaming yourself hoarse in a frenzy of dreadful, panicked fight-or-flight that leaves you exhausted and numb with grief. You were not meant to live like animals tearing one another to shreds. Don't turn your hair gray. Don't carve a roadmap of pain into the sweet wrinkles on your face. Don't lay in the quiet with your heart pounding like a trapped, frightened creature. For your own precious and beautiful life, and for those around you - seek help or get out before it is too late. This is your wake-up call! — Bryant McGill

For depression to take your wife to such an extreme, she had to be trapped inside her own thoughts to a point where she couldn't perceive the ripple effect of her decision." I look up. It's the first time anyone has attempted to understand Maddy's frame of mind. "Brady: she wasn't leaving you; she was leaving her." My — Abby Fabiaschi

In my mind I was Laura Croft, trapped in Mayberry. — Liliana Hart

After this, I couldn't hear their voices any longer; for in my ears I heard a sound like a bird's wings flapping in panic. Perhaps it was my heart, I don't know. But if you've ever seen a bird trapped inside the great hall of a temple, looking for some way out, well, that was how my mind was reacting. It had never occurred to me that my mother wouldn't simply go on being sick. I won't say I'd never wondered what might happen if she should die; I did wonder about it, in the same way I wondered what might happen if our house were swallowed up in an earthquake. There could hardly be life after such an event. — Arthur Golden

Liberation

My mind is clouded,
I cannot hunt anymore.
I lay my gun over the tracks of the rabbit.

It was as though I became that creature
who could not decide
whether to flee or be still
and so was trapped in the pursuer's eyes-

And for the first time I knew
those eyes have to be blank
because it is impossible
to kill and question at the same time.

Then the shutter snapped,
the rabbit went free. He flew
through the empty forest

that part of me
that was the victim.
Only victims have a destiny.

And the hunter, who believed
whatever struggles
begs to be torn apart:

that part is paralyzed. — Louise Gluck

With each glare words escape me, yet no ears care to listen. It is cold here with her stare, judging every affair. My mind fiddles beneath the changeless confines of this betrayal as we hide behind deceitful wails. We have become trapped in lies long forgotten - squandering our time in lunacy with the thought of what was and is no more. — H.S. Crow

If I were trapped in one city and had to eat one nation's cuisine for the rest of my life, I would not mind eating Japanese. I adore Japanese food. I love it. — Anthony Bourdain

Some are filled with a compelling urge, a temptation that recycles in the mind, perhaps to become a habit, then an addiction. We are prone to some transgression and sin and also a rationalization that we have no guilt because we were born that way. We become trapped, and hence comes the pain and torment that only the Savior can heal. You have the power to stop and to be redeemed. — Boyd K. Packer

The ordinary reality, as I perceive it, is but a huge and intricate virtual screen which operates on multiple levels. Its origins and developments extend far beyond the understanding and scope of the established functioning of the mind. Trapped in the pen of the binary system and the identification with their physical bodies, human beings eat up a fodder made up of sin, guilt and fear, as they watch the soap opera of life being repeated over and over. Yet such a mirage is so insane and unreal that attentive eyes cannot help discovering gaps all over the place. Although the operators at the projector do their best to botch it up, the absurd illusion of this misperception may reveal itself at any moment. It is like a boasting block of ice showing off its solidity as long as the temperature is below zero and yet inevitably starting to thaw and melt away in warmer weather. — Franco Santoro

Her mind is a bird that's trapped inside her skull, flapping and thrashing, never breaking free. — Lauren DeStefano

This emptiness - infinite darkness, infinite stillness, trapped alone with only his own mind - was what had always waited for him all his life, in spite of the blessings and benedictions of the Church, in spite of his sins and occasional semi-sincere repentance. — George R R Martin

The terror ran endlessly on in his mind, making him feel like a rat trapped on an exercise wheel. And when he tried to look ahead to some better, brighter time, he could see only darkness. — Stephen King

One day, I will be a child again. Carved toys will caper and dance from my mind, out across rock I will raise as mountains. Through grasses I will proclaim forests. For too long I have been trapped in this world of measures, proportions and scale. For too long I have known and understood the limits of what is possible, so cruel in rejecting all that can be imagined. In this way, friend, we are each of us not one but two lives, for ever locked in mortal combat, and from all things at hand, we make weapons.' - Hust Henarald — Steven Erikson

My mind kept screaming, Not possible! Not possible! How did I get trapped in this bizarre situation? Oh, yeah. I volunteered. — Colleen Houck

When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image. — Joseph Campbell

Use your heart. Understand. Learn to see things
in the now, not as they were or will be, or as they might or
should be, but as they are, right now, in this moment. The
heart sees the now; the mind only sees the next. If you can't
learn to see the now, you'll never see what's truly there, and
then where will you be?"
"Trapped"
"Precisely. But if you take care of the now, the future will
work out as it should. — E.J. Patten