Maya

“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It
has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing
through the facade of pretence. It's the
complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true.”
― Adyashanti

“I used to pinch those pages closed when I read the book to keep from having to see Joan [of Arc] fail. But now I love that picture. I love it so much. I love how Joan kept going right up to the end. It reminds me that sometimes defeat is the price of taking action. If you do something, you become a target. People want to take you down. That's a risk. But it's better to do too much, better to try to hard, better to have a crisis of faith and get thrown and climb back up on your horse and keep riding, than to see something wrong in the world and not do anything at all.”
― Madeleine George, The Difference Between You and Me

“Love makes you want to be a better man—right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl