Enlightenment Principles Quotes

The ego resists change. False pride is an impediment to change. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The evil components of our shadow are the part of us that we deplore, the part of us that we prefer not to admit. One must set themselves free from all inhibitions in order to initiate close encounters with their innermost monster. By standing toe-to-toe with the part of ourselves that we most detest, a person is in a position to slay their fiendish sense of self and, by doing so, undergo a soulful transformation. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The road to enlightenment requires a life dedicated to self-study, accepting the minor tragedies of life as an ineluctable part of the human condition. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

We cannot achieve personal enlightenment – a clarification of our souls – until we cease deluding ourselves. We must accept that life includes witnessing and personally experiencing pain. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Do your best. Then, surrender to the Divine Will. And of course, chill. Things work as they will. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Only the shallowest person believes that they can attain true happiness by maximizing their wealth at any cost. In absence of morality, ethics, and a sustainable philosophy to guide us in an ethical search for happiness, we will always perceive life's random countervailing forces of adversity and unpleasantness as inflicting a great personal injustice upon us. Through application of a deeply embedded personal philosophy, we can push back against the negative implications of a life of suffering. We can use a philosophical stance to gain the perspective needed to say 'yes' to all of life, both its rosy path of ineffable joys and a blackened trail of tears. We must learn to accept life as it truly is and not waste precious time in wistfulness. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The sun is sitting on whom I was in order that I can become the type of person that I wish to be. The beauty of twilight is that it enhances everything. Personal change requires the courage to let go of personal security and venture into a new worlds. I look forward exploring personal thoughts and behaviors, and probing community customs and rituals. I hope to meet new people, expand knowledge of the world, eclipse my egoistical way of living, and devolve a lifestyle that in is synch with the natural rhythmic flow of that governs all lifeforms that inhabit this crusty rock and the watery world of rivers, seas, and oceans. I resolve to accept witnessing the splendor of nature as sufficient to satisfy all my wants and desires while also seeking to increase self-control, and attempt to sprinkle kindness upon the doorsteps leading to other people's hearts. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Enlightenment is radiating peace and harmony from every cell, every gene and every DNA of our body. ~ Amit Ray

The ego with its protective defense mechanisms is the biggest impediment to attaining spiritual growth. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Every road leads to sorrow. All aspects that make life beautiful – friendship, love, art, and truth – will end. All aspects that make life hideous – pain, poverty, illness, betrayal, hate, crime, war – will also end. The fact that human life is a mere blip on a cosmic scale is no reason for personal angst as we came from nothingness and will return to the great void that birthed us. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Serenity of mind produces an expanding awareness that fosters creative selflessness, which in turn enables us to experience unabashed harmony communing in rhythmical bliss with nature. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When a person understands the problem that vexes them, and comprehends the choices that created them, they begin a journey of the mind seeking personal liberation from suffering. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

At some magical instant you realize a deep Harmony with the universe. Enlightenment is that harmony. ~ Amit Ray

The highest degree of human attainment comes when a person is blissfully at peace with his or her own nature and the natural world. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A person must always be ready to kindle the candle in their heart and fill the void in their soul by unveiling into a courageous, peaceful, and loving person. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Human consciousness is a law of nature. Humankind's inherent intelligence is an indivisible component inalterably linked to the whole beatitude of the natural world. We experience truth, beauty, goodness, harmony, and bliss when we live in the light of the soul. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

If you can see the little things and the small details around you as big things, you're enlightened! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Enlightenment begins when you change your mindset - from a blaming mindset to blessing mindset, from a negative mindset to positive mindset, from fixed mindset to growth mind set, from linear mindset to exponential mindset. ~ Amit Ray

Maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, emotions, and sensations occurring in the present moment is essential to comprehend and appreciate the beauty of existence. Living in the moment in a non-judgmental manner allows a person to accept what is without wasting emotional energy and valuable time wishing or hoping for something besides objective reality. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A person cannot exert absolute control over a capricious environment. A wise person concentrates on serenely adjusting to variable permutations in the environs. A personal journey is less anxious if a person resolves to serve as a conscious witness to the natural world and the unfolding lives of family and friends. It is emotionally stabilizing when we no longer delude ourselves with grand fantasies about living and dying, experience life for what it is and stop wishing for a different existence, an altered universe. Nothing good comes from resisting reality. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A person only experiences the fathomlessly beautiful and mysterious particulars that constitute reality by giving up the distorting spectacles of our egotistical appetites and repulsive pretensions, shedding artificial attachments, living without grand illusions, and free of deceptive delusions. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Ruthless destruction of an ego is a rather simple matter. Preserving the host deprived of an ego is a more delicate affair. How does a person engage in momentous battle with the self while simultaneously struggling to maintain their cerebral, emotive, and spiritual equilibrium in the thin air of consciousness? How assiduously does an agitated mind need to work in order to achieve the elusive degree of emotional and mental quietness that I seek? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The quicker a person forgives other people for mistakes the sooner a person moves forward to live their own life free of disabling anger, resentment, bitterness, and regret. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A person employs human reason and intellect to guide our earthly expedition. We can stumble through life satisfying the unconscious dictates of the mind or take control of our life by increasing our level of conscious awareness. Philosophy always commences with an act of consciousness. We must follow our moral passions. We create our reality by what we perceive as truth. We imagine a life that we wish to experience. Live the life that you envision. Do not allow other people or external determinates to control your conception of the self, because otherwise you are living someone else's life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The transience of humanity frames the tragedy of all people. There are no happy conclusions to life, we all die, and until we die, we will experience both happiness and pain. Acceptance of the tragedy of humankind without remorse is a shattering experience; it enables us to relinquish mawkish misconceptions, destructive obsessions, and crippling attachments. Only by accepting the tragedy of life as an integral part of the incandescent beauty of life, will I understand what it means to rejoice in the indelible bloom of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Understanding what it means to die, to sever oneself of the foolish hope for immortality, is what allows human beings the capability to appreciate simple pleasures and endure whatever hardships living a full life requires. Eternity is beautiful whereas time is unredeemable and problematic. Our faith, our hopes, and our love exist only in points of time. We discover eternity by avoiding the snares of prejudice and mental delusion, using the memory of whole civilizations to understand the past, and employing human consciousness to transcend fluctuations in time. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law ~ Barack Obama

Enlightenment is beyond self-improvement and spiritual seeking. It is the final resolution of a case of mistaken identity. It is the direct recognition of your eternal nature and the seeing through of who you have falsely believed yourself to be. ~ Gary Crowley

Formation may be the best name for what happens in a circle of trust, because the word refers, historically, to soul work done in community. But a quick disclaimer is in order, since formation sometimes means a process quite contrary to the one described in this book----a process in which the pressure of orthodox doctrine, sacred text, and institutional authority is applied to the misshapen soul in order to conform it to the shape dictated by some theology. This approach is rooted in the idea that we are born with souls deformed by sin, and our situation is hopeless until the authorities "form" us properly. But all of that is turned upside down by the principles of a circle of trust: I applaud the theologian who said that "the idea of humans being born alienated from the Creator would seem an abominable concept." Here formation flows from the belief that we are born with souls in perfect form. As time goes on, we subject to powers of deformation, from within as well as without, that twist us into shapes alien to the shape of the soul. But the soul never loses its original form and never stops calling us back to our birhtright integrity. ~ Parker J. Palmer

Trial by jury. Live wherever you can make a living. How could a government based on such principles fail? ~ Stephen Ambrose

I like the term "decedent." It's as though the man weren't dead, but merely involved in some sort of protracted legal dispute. For evident reasons, mortuary science is awash with euphemisms. "Don't say stiff, corpse, cadaver," scolds The Principles and Practice of Embalming. "Say decedent, remains or Mr. Blank. Don't say 'keep.' Say 'maintain preservation.' ... "Wrinkles are "acquired facial markings." Decomposed brain that filters down through a damaged skull and bubbles out the nose is "frothy purge. ~ Mary Roach

Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action. ~ Thomas Merton

The Liberal Party abandoned the principles of reform and social liberalism and has become, instead, just another piece of political machinery in the service of corporatism. ~ Eric Kierans

Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a "sacred right of self-government." These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Principles which could be subverted by feeling in one direction were liable to the same catastrophe in another. The ~ Thomas Hardy

One of the things I've learned as I've studied the principles in God's Word is this, that God wants us to prosper. But, the way He determines the level of our prosperity is based on how much we can let go of and still smile. So, if you can't release that money and still smile, then you can't be trusted with any more than you have right now ... If you can prove to God that you don't love money God doesn't care how much you have. ~ Mark Gorman

About my interests: I don't know if I have any, unless the morbid desire to own a sixteen-millimeter camera and make experimental movies can be so classified. Otherwise, I love to eat and drink – it's my melancholy conviction that I've scarcely ever had enough to eat (this is because it's impossible to eat enough if you're worried about the next meal) – and I love to argue with people who do not disagree with me too profoundly, and I love to laugh. I do not like bohemia, or bohemians, I do not like people whose principal aim is pleasure, and I do not like people who are earnest about anything. I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. ~ James Baldwin

I started a modeling agency and I had it for about five and a half years and it was the same time I was actually working with the WWE and doing SmackDown. It was really the same principles; because me growing up I didn't have the support, I wasn't told, yes you can do that; you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it. ~ Amy Weber

We will stand on principle or we will not stand at all. ~ Margaret Thatcher

We stand on no high moral plateau in our time. We are, in fact, plumbing depths of depravity unknown to our ancestors
and whatever may have been the evil in which they engaged, at least they were willing to acknowledge the principle by which their evil was condemned. We have even turned our back on the principle. ~ Alan Keyes

People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. ~ Stephen R. Covey

There are some who say the world is evil, and that they wish to depart from this life. For my part, I like the world ! Unless the desire to die is due to a lover's quarrel, I advise the desperate man to have patience for a year. The consolations will come. But if a human being has any other reason to wish to die than this, then let him die, I'm not stopping him. I merely call attention to the fact that one cannot escape this world entirely. The elements of which our body is made belong to the cycle of nature; and as for our soul, it's possible that it might return to limbo, until it gets an opportunity to reincarnate itself. But it would vex me if everybody wanted to have done with life.
To make death easier for people, the Church holds out to them the bait of a better world. We, for our part, confine ourselves
to asking man to fashion his life worthily. For this, it is sufficient for him to conform to the laws of nature. Let's seek inspiration in these principles, and in the long run we'll triumph over religion. ~ Adolf Hitler

The mind leans on [innate] principles every moment, but it does not come so easily to distinguish them and to represent them distinctly and separately, because that demands great attention to its acts, and the majority of people, little accustomed to think, has little of it. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou. ~ Akhenaton

You can lead an idiot to enlightenment but you can't make him think. ~ Anthony Foster

Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side. ~ Hermann Hesse

If the compass that I hold in my hand is driven by the agendas that I craft in my head, that compass is something more like a windmill erected in a place where the wind never stops blowing. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

People imagine enlightenment will make them incredibly powerful, And it does. It makes you the most powerful being in all the universe- but usually no one else notices. ~ Brad Warner

Then there will come a time where, very quickly, a woman will lose what some call her beauty. ~ Frederick Lenz

We should see our calling as our life's major assignment ~ Sunday Adelaja

Inelligence is a tenant in the house of wisdom. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Neither the circle without the line, nor the line without the point, can be artificially produced. It is, therefore, by virtue of the point and the Monad that all things commence to emerge in principle. That which is affected at the periphery, however large it may be, cannot in any way lack the support of the central point. ~ John Dee

It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death. ~ Plato

I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds. ~ Mark Twain

How could I have been anyone other than me? ~ Dave Matthews

When your mind's light is on,
the world is yours.
When your heart's light is on,
the sky is yours.
When your soul's light is on,
the universe is yours. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I think real enlightenment is total sanity, a kind of acceptance of what actually is. It does involve a kind of different way of looking at things. As I've done this Zen practice for years and years, I've acquired what I realize is an almost upside down view of life compared to what most people think, which is just what I used to think it was too. It's not really an insane view, at least I hope it's not. ~ Brad Warner

I am tired of the misrepresentation, calumny and detraction, heaped upon me by wicked men; and desire and claim, only those principles guaranteed to all men by the Constitution and laws of the United States and of Illinois. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices. ~ Oscar Wilde

It is easy to say, but there is no way I could personally address every single problem in my nation, they are too many. Oh yea, you cannot fix all problems, but you can fix some problems, more importantly you could bring enlightenment to all others around you ~ Sunday Adelaja

What you have to do is work on yourself. Make yourself attractive through the things you do, the principles you hold dear, and the goals you've set for yourself. Then you can try to get a woman. You can't expect her to love you just because you love her back. That only happens when the woman is weak. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The principle of collective leadership is elementary for a proletarian party and for a party of the Lenin type. Nevertheless, we must emphasize this old truth, because for about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin. And this, of course, could not but reflect negatively on the position of the party and its work. ~ Anastas Mikoyan

I might have principles, but that doesn't mean I want to shop there ~ David Clark

You are the eternal sunshine of the cosmic mind. ~ Wald Wassermann

Times have changed since George Herbert ... but the principle and spirit in which he ministered as a priest remains an inspiration and model for all priests. ~ Arthur Middleton

Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. ~ Noam Chomsky

The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to accept the power of the Church to set limiting points on thought. ~ Salman Rushdie

The seventh lesson is about alchemy. By any measure, alchemy is magical. You can't turn lead into gold by heating it, beating it, molding it into different shapes, or combining it with any known substance. Those are simply physical changes. Likewise, you will never cause an inner transformation by taking your old self and hammering it with criticism, heating it up with exciting experiences, reshaping how you look physically, or connecting with new people. How, then, does the magic work? It works according to the principles that make up the universe's operating system. When you consciously align with them, you give yourself an opening for transformation. ~ Deepak Chopra

I am a college-educated American. In all my years of formal schooling, I never read Plato or Aristotle, Homer or Virgil. I knew nothing of Greek and Roman history and barely grasped the meaning of the Middle Ages. Dante was a stranger to me, and so was Shakespeare. The fifteen hundred years of Christianity from the end of the New Testament to the Reformation were a blank page, and I knew only the barest facts about Luther's revolution. I was ignorant of Descartes and Newton. My understanding of Western history began with the Enlightenment. Everything that came before it was lost behind a misty curtain of forgetting. Nobody did this on purpose. Nobody tried to deprive me of my civilizational patrimony. But nobody felt any obligation to present it to me and my generation in an orderly, coherent fashion. Ideas have consequences - and so does their lack. ~ Rod Dreher

Now what is the will of God? That's the big question. You can't say the will of God is to disrespect your fellow man. You can't say the will of God is to disrespect His creations, and you can't say the will of God is to disrespect the planet that you live on. You can say you're anything [any religion], but if your disrespect comes in any of those three categories, you're not anything, you're whack. I think the principles of religion start from there. Then you get into man's interpretation and bookology. ~ Chuck D

In 'Self Comes to Mind' I pay a lot of attention to simple creatures without brains or minds, because those 'cartooned abstractions of who we are' operate on precisely the same principles that we do. ~ Antonio Damasio

In stating the principles which regulate exchangeable value and price, we should carefully distinguish between those variations which belong to the commodity itself, and those which are occasioned by a variation in the medium in which value is estimated, or price expressed. ~ David Ricardo

It is the ultimate religion, through which all humans neuropsychologically morph into Buddhas, or Enlightened Beings. ~ Abhijit Naskar

We have complaints that institutional dominance of the stock market has put 'the small investor at a disadvantage because he can't compete with the trust companies' huge resources, etc. The facts are quite the opposite. It may be that the institutions are better equipped than the individual to speculate in the market.But I am convinced that an individual investor with sound principles, and soundly advised, can do distinctly better over the long pull than large institutions. ~ Benjamin Graham