Jason Gregory > Quotes

“An individual’s attempt to control life according to her own beliefs, and as a result to force this perspective upon others, is the beginning of tyranny.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“When we attempt to control life, we are assuming that we do not belong to the universe, so we begin to drown in the current of change.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“As a result, we have developed numerous methods of practice to explore this movement of energy through our bodies, such as the Chinese arts of qigong and t’ai chi, the Indian practice of hatha yoga, and the modern movement culture spreading across the globe. The problem with practical movement methods such as these is they can delay our quest for a liberated mind (enlightenment) if the practice becomes a habitual crutch.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“This is because his primary focus was not on the liberation of the individual but on an enlightened society. I am not saying here that an enlightened society is impossible. But it needs to be clear that the foundation of a society comes from what is within the minds of the individuals who live in it. Hence Lao-tzu’s insight is that the enlightenment of the individual takes us a step closer to the total liberation of humankind.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“If I believe in the intrinsic efficacity of a discipline, I attribute its failure to all kinds of things but not to the discipline itself; so that it does not devalorise itself. If, on the contrary, I have understood the intrinsic inefficacity of the discipline, while not by any means forbidding myself to practice it if I feel the need to do so, a profound lassitude will develop little by little in me which will detach me from this discipline in a real transcendence.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“So what we think disturbs our life is actually fate and our unconscious conspiring against our rigid personality for the purpose of our evolution as individuals. As the softness of water slowly wears away at the hardness of rock, so too does fate wear away at the rigidity of our conditioned identity.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“We lose consciousness of our true self (Atman/Purusha) when we begin to believe we are the waves (personality) rather than the ocean (Brahman).”
― Jason Gregory, Fasting the Mind: Spiritual Exercises for Psychic Detox

“We need to think of our life in terms of a dance. What’s more important: getting to the end of the dance, or the process of the dance itself?”
― Jason Gregory, Fasting the Mind: Spiritual Exercises for Psychic Detox

“The origin of synchronicity comes from the union of the Way and the Eternal Self. The Eternal Self and the Way go together as one, and this is experienced as synchronicity. Synchronicity is the language of Tao that manifests in an individual’s life as a result of his or her harmony between the Eternal Self and the Way. In Vedanta, as I’ve mentioned, this is known as the connection between Atman (Eternal Self/ undifferentiated consciousness) and Brahman (irreducible essence/ ultimate reality). There is also the movement of energy in the manifest world (prakrti) and the stillness of pure awareness (Purusha) of the yogic philosophy of Patanjali.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Satori, as we know, is not the crowning of an ultimate success but of an ultimate defeat. The consciousness of always having been free appears in us when we have exhausted all the attempts, all the training, that we believe may be capable of liberating us. If the disciplines could not be paths resulting in satori, that does not mean that they may not be paths to be followed; they are paths leading to blind-alleys, all leading to a unique and ultimate blind-alley; but they are to be followed just because satori cannot be obtained unless we have come up against the end of this last blind alley. They are to be followed with the theoretical understanding that they lead nowhere, so that experience may transform this theoretical understanding into total understanding, into this clear vision which is the arrival in the blind-alley and which lays us open to satori.1”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“The Hindu philosophy of Vedanta is in part based on the deep understanding that what we in the modern era know as the atom is actually a spiritual aspect of the one consciousness of Brahman (irreducible essence/ultimate reality/godhead), which functions like a breath coming from the spiritual plane into the manifestation of the physical plane.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“They understood that the problem resides in the overuse of cold cognition leading our mind to think in terms of duality, which in turn begins the process of believing you are this person opposed by the rest of the universe.”
― Jason Gregory, Fasting the Mind: Spiritual Exercises for Psychic Detox

“All the sounds around us and all the thoughts that we’re constantly replaying in our minds can be thought of as a kind of food. We’re familiar with edible food, the kind of food we physically chew and swallow. But that’s not the only kind of food we humans consume; it’s just one kind. What we read, our conversations, the shows we watch, the online games we play, and our worries, thoughts, and anxieties are all food. No wonder we often don’t have space in our consciousness for beauty and silence: we are constantly filling up on so many other kinds of food.”
― Jason Gregory, Fasting the Mind: Spiritual Exercises for Psychic Detox

“What keeps many of us locked away from this divine beauty and creative spontaneity is that we have bought into the illusion that this cold cognition is “us” and that the hot cognition is something separate and isolated from who we are, almost as if the bodily hot cognition is a hindrance that disturbs our mental life.”
― Jason Gregory, Fasting the Mind: Spiritual Exercises for Psychic Detox

“When we have worked sincerely within ourselves and made conscious and accepted everything about ourselves, then we have truly become human and are able to sympathize with the pain of others through our humble hearts.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“One who fully comprehends wu-wei understands that developing healthy relationships with other people is the spiritual adhesive that harmonizes the Tao among humanity.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“So the real problem exists when we begin to identify with our thoughts, feelings, and emotions as if they are permanent and something that we can hold on to.”
― Jason Gregory, Fasting the Mind: Spiritual Exercises for Psychic Detox

“In the modern era we are audaciously attempting to build a world based on our pleasures and fantasies. But we are slowly learning that nothing can be learned from a world whose chief motive is to avoid pain. You only have to look into your own life to understand that pain has humbled you and has given you the greatest growth.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“The unconscious is never considered to be a reality of our existence, so it is cast off as a useless preoccupation of the spiritually confused. But that “useless” unconscious conspires with fate in bringing to life the miracle of synchronicity and a relationship with Tao.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“We judge everything according to our beliefs, and as a result we cannot clearly perceive the still point of the Tao. But in the power of sincere humility, a sage meets everybody on common ground and can address any problem, whether physical, mental, or spiritual. A sage can only be a sage if she has this capacity for receptivity and does not shy away from the spiritually ignorant.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Does not universal love contradict itself? Is not your elimination of self a positive manifestation of self?”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Jung postulates that the unconscious and fate conspire against the conscious self to further the growth of the individual. This is one of the main principles for understanding the shadow element of the psyche, as the world we experience will continue to reveal suppressed and unconscious aspects of our minds. Both fate and the unconscious uproot our plans to control life.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“The poor old body becomes the innocent victim to our ego and our attempts to transcend the ego, which in truth is itself an egotistical attempt. Leave the poor body alone; you were given it against your will and it is a gift because only in this body can you experience the divine supreme reality.”
― Jason Gregory, Fasting the Mind: Spiritual Exercises for Psychic Detox

“Imagination in a lot of cases consists of nothing more than dreams of controlling our destiny. This ultimately hurts us, as these dreams are invariably very distant from reality.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“This receptive, feminine, yin trust in the universe nourishes humanity, because people begin to take shelter under the sage’s wisdom. In emptying the faculties of conditioning, a sage becomes a beacon of light for the Tao to move through to inspire others with its wisdom, bringing the world back into harmony.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“This doesn’t mean giving up following our interests; on the contrary, what it does mean is that we are not attached to our interests or their outcomes. Instead, we do things because we sincerely love”
― Jason Gregory, Fasting the Mind: Spiritual Exercises for Psychic Detox

“When you trust the workings of the universe, its evolutionary unfolding begins to be mirrored in your own experience. It is as if reality is guiding you and revealing a story about yourself and your place within the cosmic spectrum. Though religions speak of divine intervention, many ignore the fact that this intervention is the by-product of synchronicity.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“Water acts in the same way as mind. When water is disturbed, it is not transparent or reflective, as the waves and ripples obscure its essence. But when water is completely still, it is in its pure, true state of transparency and reflectivity. The nature of mind is stillness, which is beyond effort. Yet the waves and ripples of conditioning obscure this truth. Emptying your mind of these conditioned habits and latent tendencies, you come face to face, so to speak, with the Tao. The Tao of the Absolute is within our natural stillness, and this natural state is where spontaneity is effortlessly born. Stillness is where the virtue of wu-wei is lived. If we come into contact with the still point of the Tao, then we begin to nourish the rest of existence through the art of living wu-wei.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

“If you are intentionally avoiding relationships, you are still bound to fear, no matter who you believe you are.”
― Jason Gregory, Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony