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Self Discovery Quotes

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Self Discovery Quotes

“My trauma is no longer what I define myself by, and it has taken a lot of therapy, self-love, and depression naps for me to get to that point. I define myself by a set of different virtues: the fact that I am a decent writer, the fact that I am a resilient person who has found healing, the fact that I am goofy as hell, the fact that after decades of being understood by everyone as white, I’m finally beginning to explore what it means to be an Arab American, the fact that I was eating my grandmother’s hummus way before white people decided hummus was cool.”

“As noted before, we’re unfairly biased toward what we already know, what we believe to be certain. If I believe I’m a nice guy, I will avoid situations that could potentially contradict that belief. If I believe I’m an awesome cook, I’ll seek out opportunities to prove that to myself over and over again. The belief always takes precedence. Until we change how we view ourselves, what we believe we are and are not, we cannot overcome our avoidance and anxiety. We cannot change. In this way, “knowing yourself” or “finding yourself” can be dangerous. It can cement you into a strict role and saddle you with unnecessary expectations. It can close you off to inner potential and outer opportunities. I say don’t find yourself. I say never know who you are. Because that’s what keeps you striving and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgements and accepting of the differences in others.”

“Gnosticism means "Direct Spiritual Knowing", being in direct experience with the Creative Source. Gnosticism has been called "forbidden self-discovery" by the Church, for it is a form of illumination. In other words, Gnosticism does not need the structure of a church to function. It is therefore, a threat to the existence of many churches.”

“What would [James} do now? Would he think to Aiden was too much trouble for too little reward? Would the sex matter to him so much that he would discout everything else in favour of it? Aiden didn't want to think so, hoped that James would see that love was so much more than that. What was so great about sharing fluids that looked like snot anyway? What did love have to do with that? But he know by now that ninety-nine percent of the population would call that opinion world. The mathematics of the situation were not in his favour.”

“We hated ourselves for what we were made to do but we couldn't live with that hate, so we made it a hate of you, for being too weak to defend all that beauty." He was silent for a long while, and she put her arm around his shoulders. " And we enjoyed it , of course. Like the Kinslayer knew we would, like he'd primed us to because if you hate yourself enough and hate others enough, then doing terrible things to them becomes your only pastime, your only pleasure because in the moment where you wrack them with fire or slip their blade behind their eyeball, you have control, and that means something. It means something when the kinslayer is your master, and that's the only control you'll ever have.”

“Sometimes we open the next chapter in our life’s book and find ourselves on the other side of the world. But sometimes the next chapter allows us the gift of turning back a few pages and rediscovering something new in the words of our life. It requires only an adventurous spirit and an openness to revisit the places that inform who we are today.”

“Within what we have been calling inner work exists many practices, pathways, reminders, nudges, prayers, callings, dreams, whispers, revelations, mysteries, and depths of silence. You actually have everything you need to do this within you, everything.”

“I seek to examine all factoids that led to personal despair by undertaking an Odyssey-like journey of the mind. I shall attempt to draw from the knowledge gleaned from all sources, and strictly examine crucial events of personal history not to rediscover what I already know, but to examine reminiscent occurrences under a new light of heightened consciousness, and in doing so rewrite my history and pen an enlightened future. Perhaps with resolute effort, I can recast a benighted nightmare into a bounteous prospect for joyful and a meaningful existence. I must undertake an arduous cognitive journey to discover what elusive substance provides purposefulness to living.”

“To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not in someone else's. I have often wondered if the most powerful words I wrote that night came not from anger or rage, but from doubt: I don't know. I just don't know. Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”

“In simplest terms, you won’t be able to unlock your creative potential, achieve sustainable success, or even be fundamentally happy unless you align your internal and external worlds—unless you’re true to yourself. Therefore, to begin the journey of discovering your purpose, you must focus on what matters to you internally, not externally. And the first step in this process is to eliminate obstacles that prevent you from hearing the signal above the noise. These obstacles include things such as commercial concerns, financial motivations, comparing yourself to someone else, and other manifestations of ego.”

“I want to travel. I want to laugh. I want to live and love and be happy. I want to spend time with my favourite human beings. I want to dance and dance and dance. I want to encounter strangers as if they are friends I do not know yet. I want to see people like they really are. I want deep talk. I want depth. I want to swim through the dark waters in fearlessness. I want to let go of the anger, fear, and hatred that's still remaining in my heart. I want to have a pure soul, to speak only words of truth, and to live that truth in everything I think and feel and do. I want to show the people I love that I love them and oh, how I love them they ought to know. I want to show my own inner self. I want the world to see who I am. I want to show the colours, all the colours of my soul and my heart that got rid of all the blackness of the past. I want to be heartfelt emotion, and vulnerability, and strength. I want to be fearlessness. I want to be a rainbow. I want to be a golden queen. I want to be the maze you never ever want to leave. A fairy. A goddess. A woman. I want to be real.”

“Have you ever had that feeling that you're completely in this very moment, now, living, breathing, there with your whole being? I'm sitting on the hump of the Arabian camel. I feel the warm wind flowing around me like a never-ending stream. It's 48 degrees. I feel the heat on my skin, behold the endless, weightless, sandy open, and sense that I have fully arrived at this very moment. I'm here. I'm now. I'm alive. It is an incredible feeling, an incredibly full feeling of freedom and self-love, and love for the world, and I realize that everything is possible. I see the retrospective of my whole sensitivity, the odyssey of my life, my depression, my suffering, and loving until I have finally been able to arrive in this perfect marvellous moment, and I feel free. Simply free. Boundless and free. The first time I had that feeling that I'm totally present at this very moment had been at the age of fifteen when I read The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder. A boy of fifteen years who travels the world with his father tells us the story of this feeling. He's lying in the loft bed. Above him, his father is snoring. It is night, and he cannot fall asleep because, in this very moment, he realizes that he's completely there, completely in this very moment, now, living, breathing, and marvelling at the miracle of his being. It's an overwhelming feeling. But at the age of fifteen, I hadn't been free. I knew that I existed, but I felt as if trapped in a cage with nowhere to hide. I was trapped in the cage of my own feelings. The cage of my depression. It had been an odyssey of many years into adulthood through trials and tribulations and self-inflicted and outward disappointments until I finally had been able to say that I can embrace the moment and feel alive. That I can be free. That I can be taken up at this very moment. That I love this life, I'm allowed to live. The moment I ultimately realized that I have made it through all of the trials and tribulations and obstacles of my life's journey to finally see my own true self was while riding on an Arabian camel in the Sahara desert. With the warm wind flowing around me. With myself within me. And that's also why I will never forget this journey and this country. And that's also why my love for this country is as vast and infinite as the Sahara desert. And that's why I will return there. Again and again and again. It is the place where I realized that I am free. That I made it. That everything, simply everything, is possible. So many people live their lives without ever experiencing something significant. Every day of their lives is the same. And then, at the end of their life's journey, they wonder why they cannot answer the question of whether they have lived at all. Because they never felt present as a whole. But without being wholly present and without the feeling of being existent in the present, within one's own true self, and now, one cannot know oneself, and one cannot recognize the precious gift of life. Because that's precisely what it is: a gift.”

“So, what is it that Rubin does? How has he helped artists make their best music for nearly forty years across such disparate genres and styles? The secret seems to be rooted in self-discovery. As Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks put it, the legendary pro- ducer “has the ability and the patience to let music be discovered, not manufactured.” In other words, to use our terminology, Rubin understands that magic needs to come from within.”

“Sometimes, when we least expect it, energy moves like a tornado, in directions we don’t expect and that can feel negative. Our plan and harmony are disrupted, and then the question becomes, what do we do? The natural reaction when something happens that’s unplanned is to panic or “fight the energy.” But that’s exactly the type of action you don’t want to take, because it’s in exact opposition to the harmony we’re aiming to achieve. So what can we do instead? There’s only one answer: accept it. Pause, take a deep breath, and trust that everything that happens is in your best interests.”

“Self-evaluation proved to be distasteful business. The refraction of light created from an undulating wave of critical self-observation passing through a tarnished lens produces its own morose, self-negating fixations that can result in a dangerous downward spiral. Unless timely arrested, murderous bouts of self-hatred can destroy a person. A person must use self-detestation exclusively as a means to pry oneself away from the haunting specter created courtesy of the clamor, filth, and grunginess of their prior anarchism. Kick starting a stranded person’s emotional motors through reflective contemplation and thoughtful rumination acts to prod loose remote memories seared in the unspoken silence of a person’s unconscious memory bank. Self-discovery is also an uplifting affair. Contemplation helps one confront their streaked presence and realign their inner voice with the sanguine spirits of their ancestors that preceded one in the walk through time.”