Self Inquiry Quotes

“Spiritual enlightenment includes the realization that there is no ‘there’ to go to, and no one to go.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Let meditation be your mirror. See how you treat it and begin to nurture this practice as if a rose in your personal garden, watch it flourish over time.”
― Ciela Wynter, The Inner Journey: Discover Your True Self

“Meditative self-inquiry is the art of asking a spiritually powerful question. And a question that is spiritually powerful always points us back to ourselves. Because the most important thing that leads to spiritual awakening is to discover who and what we are—to wake up from this dream state, this trance state of identification with ego. And for this awakening to occur, there needs to be some transformative energy that can flash into consciousness. It needs to be an energy that is actually powerful enough to awaken consciousness out of its trance of separateness into the truth of our being. Inquiry is an active engagement with our own experience that can cultivate this flash of spiritual insight.”
― Adyashanti, True Meditation: Discover the Freedom of Pure Awareness

“As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of everyone there is observed supreme love for one's self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one's nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep when there is no mind, one should know one's self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form "Who am I?", is the principal means.”
― Ramana Maharshi

“Yet how can we distinguish ‘The Self’ from ‘The Other,’ when we are The Other, to other people’s Self?”
― Ana Maria Santuario, FAITH, In Stories That Change

“Contemplation - A Haiku

Amber autumn gaze,
A pond of deep reflection,
Awareness ripples.”
― Amogh Swamy, On My Way To Infinity: A Seeker's Poetic Pilgrimage

“Society mainly uses the concept of self to chain man’s thoughts and behaviour to a pole called ‘I’.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Existential angst of an unexamined life is akin to the travails of a weary traveler who keeps traveling without a lasting destination or overall purpose of why one is traveling while being caught in a cyclical spell of seeking one more destination that might look like the be all and end all.”
― Raj Reddy, The Essence of Enlightenment: Comprehensive Guide to Self-inquiry and Enlightenment

“Imagine an expedition where no maps or clues are provided to you initially but you are on your own discovering and/or creating them to chart and make sense of the whole journey. That's the life in a sentence.”
― Raj Reddy, The Essence of Enlightenment: Comprehensive Guide to Self-inquiry and Enlightenment

“Enlightenment is like waking up from a dream. Good news is if it's a bad dream, it's over. Bad news is that it's over, even if it's a good one. Overall it should be good news considering the state of affairs that one encounters in a condition of darkness.”
― Raj Reddy, The Essence of Enlightenment: Comprehensive Guide to Self-inquiry and Enlightenment

“What the universe has in store for you is destiny which happens to be your own account of past deeds. One has the option to modulate the expression of destiny with freewill within the boundaries of broader evolutionary framework. If the evolutionary path is deterministic, there is no need for the universe to take the trouble in projecting such an elaborate manifestation.”
― Raj Reddy, The Essence of Enlightenment: Comprehensive Guide to Self-inquiry and Enlightenment

“Though in essence there's nothing new under the Sun when it comes to journey of the five senses, each new generation brings its own quirks to challenge the cultural norms with newfound enthusiasm in an otherwise repetitive age old routines.”
― Raj Reddy, The Essence of Enlightenment: Comprehensive Guide to Self-inquiry and Enlightenment

“The ultimate ground of awareness that makes it possible to have the dualistic experiences such as the pleasant and unpleasant along with the whole spectrum of gradations in between is beyond being entangled while providing a framework on which such a play happens.”
― Raj Reddy, The Essence of Enlightenment: Comprehensive Guide to Self-inquiry and Enlightenment

“If we can’t see it, we cannot change it.”
― Ciela Wynter, The Inner Journey: Discover Your True Self

“With awareness, we become self-aware.”
― Ciela Wynter, The Inner Journey: Discover Your True Self

“If we do our inner work, we can organize our inner world through self-inquiry, meditation, journaling, etc. which guides us in navigating the external world with consciousness. With awareness, we become self-aware.”
― Ciela Wynter, The Inner Journey: Discover Your True Self

“We are an inner world yet to be discovered.”
― Ciela Wynter, The Inner Journey: Discover Your True Self

“Within what we have been calling inner work exists many practices, pathways, reminders, nudges, prayers, callings, dreams, whispers, revelations, mysteries, and depths of silence. You actually have everything you need to do this within you, everything.”
― Ciela Wynter, The Inner Journey: Discover Your True Self

“Silence has been widely recognized by poets, philosophers, sages, and mystics as the source of all that is, the starting point of the infinite and unknown that collapses into awareness until each of us can so readily say, 'I am.”
― Vic Shayne, The Self is a Belief: The idea that causes suffering

“All we can really do is nothing but be aware. In fact, we are nothing but awareness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Thinking’ is in almost all cases a euphemism for ‘self-storytelling’.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, P for Pessimism: A Collection of Funny yet Profound Aphorisms

“You have not yet reaped the sweetest fruits of meditation, if you still do not meditate only to meditate.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“At first, meditation reveals to you, and then reminds you … every second, that among the body, the mind, and the awareness you are the third.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“You do not think. You are thought … and therefore a thought.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The world fudges with your mind, that elusive thing that we know exists, but learn very little about.”
― Ana Maria Santuario, FAITH, In Stories That Change

“I don’t for one second claim to be right. There is no right. That’s what I’d like to make fundamentally clear. No stories are true. No stories hold an answer. No stories are to be believed without some degree of critical digestion.”
― Ana Maria Santuario, FAITH, In Stories That Change

“Every experience lived presents a mirror in which to see yourself, every single one.”
― Ana Maria Santuario, FAITH, In Stories That Change

“Something in the external environment happens and our ‘system-of-self’ responds, in whatever way it’s been programmed to.”
― Ana Maria Santuario, FAITH, In Stories That Change

“What is love? How do you love? Who are you?
Let the light shine into your Soul and teach you the ancient teachings of the Master within.”
― Ulonda Faye, Sutras of the Heart: Spiritual Poetry to Nourish the Soul

“THE SCREEN - A HAIKU

Screen holds, tales of time,
Past and future's dance unfolds,
Who observes this screen?”
― Amogh Swamy, On My Way To Infinity: A Seeker's Poetic Pilgrimage