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Quote by Cecil Baldwin

“The self that is self we imagined we were our whole lives. But we were never that self, not really. We were only a series of selves, living one role and then leaving it for another. And all the time convincing ourselves that there was no change. That we were always the same person, living the same life. One arc to a finish, not the stutter-stop improvisation that is our actual lives.”

Quote by Cecil Baldwin

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Cecil Baldwin

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“Our minds have this strange ability to make associations using ourselves as a reference point. They create our identities based on our relation to people and things. They aim for control because ownership falsely promises us an elevated sense of self. But this is exactly the opposite of love. When we fall in love, we disidentify and get lost for a little while in a song, a beautiful painting, and most of all, we get lost in our lover. And through their love, we find our true infinite selves.”

“So what if he saw? Now he knows. What never crossed my mind was that someone else who lived under our roof, who played cards with my mother, ate breakfast and supper at our table, recited the Hebrew blessing on Fridays for the sheer fun of it, slept in one of our beds, used our towels, shared our friends, watched TV with us on rainy days when we sat in the living room with a blanket around us because it got cold and we felt so snug being all together as we listened to the rain patter against the windows—that someone else in my immediate world might like what I liked, want what I wanted, be who I was”

“Who doesn’t allow one to attain the ultimate liberation? The pudgal (non-Self complex made up of mind-speech-body). Similarly, what doesn’t let a gourd that is covered with mud to float atop? It is the mud. Bad ‘parmanu’ (subatomic particles of body complex) weigh very heavily. They drag the Soul (the Self) lower.”

“A person tastes the sweet pride of doer-ship by saying ‘I did this so well’. The taste of this subtle pride seems to be very sweet. There is suffering with the false imputation (of doer-ship). God is in the state of eternal bliss, and that is indeed the nature of the Self!”