Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying ‘And then I shall have wings and antennae, there will never be a butterfly.
The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains.
“Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.”
- Ramana Maharshi
“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”
- John O’Donohue
“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. … That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”
- Anthony de Mello
“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.”
- Unknown
“When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.”
- P.D. Ouspensky
“You are your master. Only you have the master keys to open the inner locks.”
- Amit Ray
“No one and nothing outside of you can give you salvation, or free you from the misery. You have to light your own lamp. You have to know the miniature universe that you yourself are.”
- Banani Ray
“Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying ‘And then I shall have wings and antennae, there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains.”
- Alejandro Jodorowsky
“Remember seeker, our earthly perceptions of reality are just an illusion.”
- Unknown
“Awakening is the ultimate of religion. Religion is, not really, in believing something outside of your being. It is not in believing or following some authoritative figure, the church, temple, organization or any ideological system of belief. Religion is trusting in what is eternal within you.”
- Unknown
“Awakening is not a journey of discovering a distant land or a coveted secret, but rather, it is a journey of surrendering to what has always been present but shrouded in illusion and disillusion.”
- Shavasti
“I leave my human nature to unfold according to its destiny. I remain as I AM.”
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“When you are truly awakened, you have completely stopped trying to become awakened. You simply are. You know that you did not locate awakening; awakening located you.”
- Unknown
“Anything that appears and disappears cannot actually be you because it is being observed by you. By removing the attention from these things and noticing what remains, you are left only with what is permanent — the truth of who you are.”
Source and courtesy: thespiritscience.net