“Work is good, but it should not become an addiction. Many people have turned their work into a drug so that they can forget themselves in it—just like a drunkard forgetting himself in alcohol. One should be as capable of nondoing as of doing—then one is free. One should be capable of sitting, not doing anything, as perfectly and beautifully and blissfully as when one is working hard and doing many things; then one is flexible.
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 235)
Inner Work Quotes
“Despair comes because energy goes on leaking, and people have forgotten how to contain it. In a thousand and one thoughts, worries, desires, imagination, dreams, memories, energy is leaking. And energy is leaking in unnecessary things that can be easily avoided. When there is no need to talk, people go on talking. When there is no need to do anything, they cannot sit silently; they have to ‘do.’ People are obsessed with doing, as if doing is a sort of intoxicant; it keeps them drunk. they remain occupied so that they don’t have time to think about the real problems of life. They keep themselves busy so that they don’t bump into themselves. They are afraid—afraid of the abyss that is yawning within. This is how energy goes on leaking, and this is why you never have too much of it. One has to learn how to drop the unnecessary. And ninety percent of ordinary life is unnecessary; it can easily be dropped.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 211)
“The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil—rich, fertile soil. She wasn’t a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn’t run away from herself. She’d have to stay there and tend to that wasteland. She could plant a forest inside herself.”
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Page 286)
“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
Henry David Thoreau, via The Midnight Library (Page 126)
“Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems. We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world within. More often than not we don’t want to know ourselves, don’t want to depend on ourselves, don’t want to know ourselves, don’t want to depend on ourselves, don’t want to live with ourselves. By middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.”
John W. Gardner, Self-Renewal (Page 13)
“Misery has no outer cause; the cause is inner. You go on throwing the responsibility outside yourself, but that is just an excuse. Yes, misery is triggered from the outside, but the outside does not create it. When somebody insults you, the insult comes from the outside, but the anger is inside you. The anger is not caused by the insult, it is not the effect of the insult, If there were no anger energy in you, the insult would have remained impotent. It would have simply passed, and you would not have been disturbed by it.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 175)
“This is an old trick which has existed from time immemorial—chewing a piece of leaf or experimenting with the latest chemical to bring about a temporary alteration in the structure of the brain cells, a greater sensitivity and heightened perception which give a semblance of reality. This demand for more and more experiences shows the inward poverty of man. We think that through experiences we can escape from ourselves but these experiences are conditioned by what we are. If the mind is petty, jealous, anxious, it may take the very latest form of drug but it will still see only its own little creation, its own little projections from its own conditioned background.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 111)
“It is only when you live with something intimately that you begin to understand it. But the moment you get used to it—get used to your own anxiety or envy or whatever it is—you are no longer living with it. If you live by a river, after a few days you do not hear the sound of the water anymore, or if you have a picture in the room which you see every day you lose it after a week. It is the same with the mountains, the valleys, the trees—the same with your family, your husband, your wife. But to live with something like jealousy, envy or anxiety you must never get used to it, never accept it. You must care for it as you would care for a newly planted tree, protect it against the sun, against the storm. You must care for it, not condemn it or justify it.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 70)
“One must become poor inwardly for then there is no seeking, no asking, no desire, no—nothing! It is only this inward poverty that can see the truth of a life in which there is no conflict at all. Such a life is a benediction not to be found in any church or any temple.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 60)