It’s a book that will require you to be open and at the same time will help you to open up even more to new ideas and ways of thinking about life and many other topics.
It’s not for everyone. I have to admit that If I would’ve read this a few years ago I might’ve thought that it was a bunch of fluff. Lately, I’ve been more open thanks to reading similar books and listening to leaders I respect talk about awareness, meditation, consciousness, and similar topics.
If you’ve been on the path of mindfulness for a while, this might be the book that helps you get to the next level. Yet, it’s definitely not the book I’d recommend to get started down this path.
Flow: 5/5
Actionability: 5/5
Mindset: 5/5
Some of My Highlights:
“Let the words slip into your soul and listen, as Tony suggests, with your heart.”
“Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure.”
“Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don’t really want to be cured. What they want is relief, a cure is painful.”
“That’s the reason the wise guru will not attempt to wake people up.”
“The fact is that you don’t like to say, ‘My judgment was lousy.’ That’s not very flattering to you, is it? So you prefer to say, ‘How could you have let me down?’
“What’s the earthly use of putting a man on the moon when we cannot live on the earth?”
“…because when you’re on the verge of going insane, raving mad, you’re about to become either a psychotic or a mystic. That’s what the mystic is, the opposite of the lunatic.”
“Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.” – Bertrand Russell
“When you fight something, you’re tied to it forever”
“The only way to get out of this is to see through it. Don’t renounce it, see through it.”
“What we need to do is to help you understand, understand, understand.”
“But here has to be an attitude of openness, of willingness to discover something new.”
“I cannot describe the truth. No one can. All I can do is give you a description of your falsehoods, so that you can drop them.”
“A willingness to unlearn, to listen.”
“Are you listening, as most people do, in order to confirm what you already think?”
“You are never so good as when you have no consciousness that you’re good. Or as the great Sufi would say, ‘A saint is one until he or she knows it.’ Unselfconscious! Unselfconscious!”
“That’s the worst kind of charity, when you’re doing something so you won’t get a bad feeling. You don’t have the guts to say you want to be left alone. You want people to think you’re a good priest!”
“Why weep for sins that you committed when you were asleep? Are you going to cry because o what you did in your hypnotized state?”
“The most difficult thing in the world is to listen, to see.”
“He was stupid, not evil. He didn’t stop to think.”
“You want freedom? Here it is: Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love them.”