Excerpt: These deep love quotes aren’t for you to copy and paste and send to your lover—they’re for you to copy and paste onto the walls of your heart.
“Pain is a signal, it’s some aspect of us that’s beyond our somewhat narrow conception of ‘self,’ communicating. A pain in the leg means ‘don’t put pressure on this leg’; a pain in the mind means ‘change the way you live.'”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 28)
Imagine the chaos that would ensue if we didn’t follow the signals of the world. If we ignored traffic signals; disregarded conversational signals; paid no mind to vehicular signals. The world would be a much scarier, dangerous, and erratic place. It would skyrocket fear, confusion, and anxiety—and rightfully so! The signals of our world are in place to serve as an antidote to chaos. To provide a sense of order, certainty, and security. And what most people don’t realize is that our inner worlds have a signal system in place all the same and for the very same reasons.
Read More »Russell Brand Quote on Pain and How It’s A Signal To Be Addressed; Not A Problem To Be Ignored“Oddly, counterintuitively, in our culture of individualism and self-centered valour, it is by surrendering that we can begin to succeed. It is by ‘admitting that we have no power’ that we can begin the process of accessing all the power we will ever need.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 27)
“I live in negotiation with a shadow side that has to be respected. There is a wound. I believe that this is more than a characteristic of addiction. I think it is a part of being human, to carry a wound, a flaw and again, paradoxically, it is only by accepting it that we can progress.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 26)
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness… the moment one definitely commits oneself then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred… boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sunbeams (Page 29)
The problem with staying in an uncommitted place is that it splits your mental resources. One avenue focuses on opportunity while the other focuses on risks. One avenue on possibility while the other focuses on failure. One focuses on reasons for “yes” while the other focuses on reasons for “no.” This is no way to succeed—in anything. It’s a “luke-warm” approach to achieving goals when what’s needed is heat—passion, boldness, enthusiasm! What’s needed is a full commitment of mental resources.
Read More »Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quote on Making Committed Decisions and How “Luke Warm” Isn’t Good Enough“There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much.”
Mother Teresa, Sunbeams (Page 29)
“We do not learn only from great minds; we learn from everyone, if only we observe and inquire. I received my greatest lesson in aesthetics from an old man in an Athenian taverna. Night after night he sat alone at the same table, drinking his wine with precisely the same movements. I finally asked him why he did this and he said, ‘Young man, I first look at my glass to please my eyes, then I take it in my hand to please my hand, then I bring it to my nose to please my nostrils, and I am just about to bring it to my lips when I hear a small voice in my ears, ‘How about me?’ So I tap my glass on the table before I drink from it. I thus please all five senses.'”
C. A. Doxiadis, Sunbeams (Page 29)
“You have no idea how hard I have looked for a gift to bring you. Nothing seemed right. What’s the point of bringing gold to a gold mine, or water to the ocean. Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient. It’s no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these. So I’ve brought you a mirror. Look at yourself and remember me.”
Rumi
Read these words and remember your mirror. You are not without the gold that you so desperately seek; it is already within you. You are not without a source to quench the thirst of your desire; for you are the source itself. The gifts that you so longingly crave do not come from others; they come from inside you.
Read More »Rumi Quote on Gifts and How Nothing Seems Right“Beyond today your projections of life are conceptual. You don’t have to not drink for twenty years today. You don’t have to give up white bread for all eternity, right now. And if you do make it through today, and wake up tomorrow, what does it really matter that you didn’t act out yesterday? I mean, you’re not accumulating tokens for punitive pleasure. This ‘one day at a time’ cliché when taken plainly is no less profound than any ‘be in the moment’ Eastern wisdom I’ve since encountered. Today is all I have.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 25)
“My authority comes not from a steep and certain mountain top of po-faced righteousness. This manual for Self-Realization comes not from the mountain but from the mud. Being human is a ‘me too’ business. We are all in the mud together. My qualification is that I am more addicted, more narcissistic, more driven by lust and the need for power and recognition.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 6)
“We adapt to the misery of an unloving home, of unfulfilling work. Of empty friendships and lacquered alienation. The 12 Step program, which has saved my life, will change the life of anyone who embraces it. I have seen it work many times with people with addiction issues of every hue: drugs, sex, relationships, food, work, smoking, alcohol, technology, pornography, hoarding, gambling, everything. Because the instinct that drives the compulsion is universal. It is an attempt to solve the problem of disconnection, alienation and tepid despair, because the problem is ultimately ‘being human’ in an environment that is curiously ill-equipped to deal with the challenges that entails. We are all on the addiction scale.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 4)
“Our difficulty is that human consciousness has not adjusted itself to a relational and integrated view of nature. We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible.”
Alan Watts, Sunbeams (Page 28)
“Compassion simply stated is leaving other people alone. You don’t lay trips. You exist as a statement of your own level of evolution. You are available to another human being, to provide what they need, to the extent that they ask. But you begin to see that it is a fallacy to think that you can impose a trip on another person.”
Ram Dass, Sunbeams (Page 28)
“Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.”
Epictetus, via The Daily Stoic (Page 44)
