“Moment after moment, completely devote yourself to listening to your inner voice.”
— Shunryu Suzuki
“The outside world will grow and wane. The inner self is always present.”
— ABDI ASSADI
“We did not come to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves like the trees, the trees that are broken, and start again, drawing up from the great roots.”
— Robert Bly
“Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.”
— T.S. Eliot
“Make good friends with this stranger you call yourself.”
— ABDI ASSADI
“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“We live in group stupidity and confuse this insanity with true experience. It is essential that you become transparent to yourself and wake up from this madness. Zazen means taking leave of the group and walking on your own two feet.”
— Kodo Sawaki
“We miss the real by lack of attention and create the unreal by excess of imagination.”
— Nisargadatta Maharaj
“When the fear of taking a new path is smaller than the pain of the existing one, magic happens. ”
— Abdi Assadi
“There is no sense talking about ‘being true to myself’ until you are sure what voice you are being true to. It takes hard work to differentiate the voices in the unconscious.”
— Marion Woodman
“To pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is giving, not getting.”
— Hubert Selby Jr.
“Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. And so to whatever degree any one of us can bring back a small piece of the picture and contribute it to the building of the new paradigm, then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit, and that after all is what it’s really all about.”
— Terence McKenna
“Our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another.”
— Bessel van der Kolk
“Only when all props and crutches are broken, and no cover from the rear offers even the slightest hope of security, does it become possible for us to experience an archetype that up till then had lain hidden… this is the archetype of meaning.”
— Carl Jung
“Real compassion kicks butt and takes names, and it is not pleasant on certain days. If you are not ready for this fire, then find a new-age, sweetness-and-light, soft-speaking, perpetually smiling teacher, and learn to relabel your ego with spiritual sounding terms. But stay away from those that practice real compassion, because they will fry your ass, my friend.”
— Ken Wilber
“We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.”
— Charlie Chaplin
“Healing is akin to wedding and nourishing a garden, not solving a math problem.”
— Abdi Assadi
“Questioner: How are we to treat others?

Ramana Maharshi: There are no others.”
— Ramana Maharshi
“Service is a powerful path to self-remembrance, but it can become a bumpy road to self-forgetfulness the second we operate unconsciously.”
— Abdi Assadi
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
— James Baldwin
“Mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.”
— Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.”
— Alice Miller
“As we progress on the spiritual path, we are confronted with the need to tolerate the anxiety of not being anxious or in drama. The mind will continue its storytelling, but we need to learn not to stay mobilized by relentlessly following its narrative.”
— Abdi Assadi
“Keep the focus on your own life.”
— Abdi Assadi
“The most important question anyone can ask is: what myth am I living?”
— Carl Jung
“There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.”
— James Baldwin
“In order to be in the moment we need to learn to tolerate our anxiety. ”
— Abdi Assadi
“Do not look upon this world with fear and loathing. Bravely face whatever the gods offer.”
— Morihei Ueshiba
“Beliefs are neat. Cherish them, but don’t share them like they’re the truth.”
— Bill Hicks
“Live your own life and not the one projected on you.”
— Marion Woodman
“No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.”
— George Carlin
“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”
— - Fred Rogers