self

The subsistence mentality of a person is a prison in which his personal joy is detained. If you want to live in joy, you don't live for yourself alone. Live for others too!

The sage is sick of being sick (Tao Te Ching)

she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone.

When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy of being happy and at peace with ourselves.

According to the Buddha, the failure to recognize the illusion of the self is the source of all ignorance and unhappiness. It is only by renouncing the self, that is, by dropping his ego defences and committing metaphorical suicide, that a person can open up to different modes of being and relating and thereby transform himself into a pure essence of humanity. In so doing, he becomes free to recast himself as a much more joyful and productive person, and attains the only species of transcendence and immortality that is open to man.

Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. They realize happiness is not simply having their material needs met. Thus, society has set up a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment. Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressure, people spend their short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives them the feeling that they have achieved something in their lives, but in reality they have sacrificed a lot in life. They can no longer see, hear, act, feel, or think from their hearts. Everything they do is dictated by whether it can get them social gains. In the end, they've spent their lives following other people's demands and never lived a life of their own. How different is this from the life of a slave or a prisoner?

You are an ocean in a drop of dew,all the universes in a thin sack of blood.What are these pleasures then,these joys, these worldsthat you keep reaching for,hoping they will make you more alive?

Don't play the victim role, empower yourself instead. Place yourself and others around you in a position to win.

Self-struggle is spiritual.

We sit to make life meaningful. The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing. We must simply start with accepting ourselves. Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are. This can be very painful. Self-acceptance is the hardest thing to do. If we can__ accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night. We may still be awake, but we don__ know where we are. We cannot see. The mind has no light. Practice is this candle in our very darkest room.

There are many going afar to marvel at the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the long courses of great rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the movements of the stars, yet they leave themselves unnoticed!

Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.

...ambition or contentment? This simple question led me back to a more balanced view of life and put me in touch with the Me I used to know...

How far can you go in life if you don't love yourself?

Jung was absolutely right about one thing. We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you.

An apology given just to appease one's conscience is self-serving and better left unspoken!

But now the other half of "us" was gone and, lying there in my shadowy room, I'd be struck with this realization that I had no clue how to be just me again.

Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it... Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It__ been protected by the efficient armour, it__ never participated in life, it__ never been exposed to living and to managing the person__ affairs, it__ never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it__ never properly lived. That__ how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced...And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It__ their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can__ understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That__ the carrier of all the living qualities. It__ the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn__ come out of that creature isn__ worth having, or it__ worth having only as a tool__or that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful...And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line__nprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears.And yet that__ the moment it wants. That__ where it comes alive__ven if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that__ where it calls up its own resources__ot artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy.That__ the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they__e suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That__ why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember.But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells__e becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you__e gone a few weeks and haven__ felt that awful struggle of your childish self__truggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence__ou__l know you__e gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you__e gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself.