Quotes by Activists - Page 55

When you suppress your darkness you also suppress your light.
Bryant McGill
Love is not consolation. It is light.
Simone Weil
We are animals descended from five billion years of wanting, striving, and seeking. And life just doesn’t cooperate. So we suffer. And so the solution to that problem is to upgrade our minds, in a distinctly ‘unnatural’ way, so that the mind clings less and lets go more.
Jay Michaelson
Sometimes, sitting there on the cushion failing to watch your breath, it can feel like you’re the only weirdo weird enough to be wasting your time in this way. But you’re not! There are generations of weirdos, monasteries full of them, and we have the benefit of their accumulated wisdom.
Jay Michaelson
It is possible to refine awareness itself so much that the emptiness of things, and the role mental construction plays, becomes a directly apprehended reality.
Jay Michaelson
At the last stages of the journey, there’s no journey at all.
Jay Michaelson
All relaxation does is allow the truth to be felt. The mind is cleared, like a dirty window wiped clean, and the magnitude of what we might ordinarily take for granted inspires tears.
Jay Michaelson
There’s no path to liberation that doesn’t pass through the shadow.
Jay Michaelson
What a miracle, that all we have to do to be beautifully loving creatures is just relax and allow.
Jay Michaelson
Part of why I love these angry, straight, white punks is that they are stripping the dharma of its bullshit, and applying it to contexts and styles that, even if they aren’t mine, are at least different from the norm.
Jay Michaelson
Look deeply at yourself, and see in yourself the divine architect's incomprehensible art!
Bryant McGill
When we are quiet and still we contract and settle.
Bryant McGill
Quit trying so hard and sit quietly with yourself and you will see that there are no demands within you.
Bryant McGill
Success is a spiritual process, not a worldly one; that is to say it is an internal process, and not external.
Bryant McGill
Success comes from finding your center and self.
Bryant McGill
Success, just like poverty, is a state of mind.
Bryant McGill
You can become instantly successful with a simple thought, but long-lasting and pronounced success comes to those who renew their commitment to a mindset of abundance every minute of every hour of every day.
Bryant McGill
It is the garden of peace you seek, but it is not a tangible place that exists in the world — it is within. Go there, within.
Bryant McGill
When you commune with your ever-present inner calm, you are released from the madness and pain of all outer turmoil.
Bryant McGill
Let it all go and enjoy the profound gifts found in your quiet places.
Bryant McGill
All things are accomplished by the meditative act of releasing illusions and simply becoming.
Bryant McGill
Life is so humbling, when we slow down and witness the gifts.
Bryant McGill
Start deep within yourself and slowly build outward toward your goal.
Bryant McGill
This life is like a roller-coaster; once you are strapped-in and the ride has started, you aren't getting off.
Bryant McGill
Only the frantic of fear can harm you. Your calm and centered self knows exactly what to do.
Bryant McGill
If you can sit with your pain, listen to your pain and respect your pain — in time you will move through your pain.
Bryant McGill
Your total intelligence knows how to accomplish astounding feats. You just need a clear objective. Get clear. You will surprise yourself!
Bryant McGill
When we constantly meditate on another's faults, it is because we are neglecting our own unhealed wounds.
Bryant McGill
Only inner-mastery can bring outer-mastery.
Bryant McGill
Only in the present is your mind free to do what it does best — solve problems.
Bryant McGill
The easiest way to leave the past behind is to remember that love does not live in the past, only memories — love lives in the present.
Bryant McGill
Zen movement is a meditative practice.
Bryant McGill
Mindfulness is that space where you are in touch with life-experience and you are brightly aware.
Bryant McGill
Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges. So relax.
Bryant McGill
Live in the present, or die in your past; it's your choice.
Bryant McGill
Almost all sadness comes from thinking about the past, and all worry from thinking about the future — present-mindedness is your only safe haven.
Bryant McGill
Carefully analyze the old stories that you choose to perpetually tell, for these are really life-long meditations.
Bryant McGill
If you have never found yourself, the best place to look is in your loneliness, and rock-bottom is even better.
Bryant McGill
Through TV people turn their family living rooms into meditative dens of death and violence worship.
Bryant McGill
Words are the fallen ruins of silent majesty.
Bryant McGill
You will only find the profoundly inexpressible in profound silence.
Bryant McGill
The keys to health and weight-loss: stress reduction, sleep, deep breathing, clean water, complete nutrition, sunshine, walking, stretching, meditation, love, community, laughter, dreams, perseverance, purpose, humility, action.
Bryant McGill
Only in stillness does the imperceivable become discernible
Bryant McGill
Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.
Assata Shakur
Knowledge is that possession that no misfortune can destroy, no authority can revoke, and no enemy can control. This makes knowledge the greatest of all freedoms.
Bryant McGill
Suffering is one of life's great teachers.
Bryant McGill
One of the most important things one can do in life is to brutally question every single thing you are taught.
Bryant McGill
I don't know what to do, and if I did know what to do I wouldn't tell you, because if I had to tell you today then I'd have to tell you tomorrow, and when I'm gone you'd have to get somebody else to tell you.
Myles Horton
I'm as proud of my inconsistencies as I am my consistencies.
Myles Horton
There are possibilities that exist beyond our present "knowing," and to see those possibilities, we must abandon that which makes us feel safe.
Bryant McGill
Lifelong learning is like a never ending personal revolution.
Bryant McGill
Every symbol, word, concept, discipline and field is only a temporary rest stop on the highway of discovery.
Bryant McGill
Life moves forward, not backward, and it would be wise to listen to what change has to say.
Bryant McGill
I had no systematic way of learning but proceeded like a quilt maker, a patch of knowledge here a patch there but lovingly knitted. I would hungrily devour the intellectual scraps and leftovers of the learned.
Ishmael Reed
If you learn to look at the worldly madness through spiritual eyes, you will begin to see divine balance and sanity.
Bryant McGill
The teacher can only provide the lessons, but the student ultimately decides what to learn.
Bryant McGill
Life's pressure is equal to your resistance.
Bryant McGill
Humility adds lessons to our pain and suffering, turning the seemingly senseless into meaning.
Bryant McGill
We are all just humble students of the world.
Bryant McGill
Through spiritual maturity you will see new ways to avoid unnecessary suffering; wiser ways to endure unavoidable hardships with grace, and opportunities to turn your pain into lessons of service and healing for others.
Bryant McGill