Interconnectedness Quotes
“As human beings we all breathe the atoms that made up our ancestors and flow into the same earth when we die.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 296)
“Siddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything… He could no longer distinguish the different voices—the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each other… They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life… when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his sound to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity, then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om—perfection.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, via Sunbeams (Page 128)
“The question of what it means to be human is now inextricable from the question of who we are to each other.”
Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise (Page 2)
“When we think we’re separate, we lose power. Whenever I say ‘my,’ I have lost my power. Power is not my power; it is not enlarging oneself as a separate individual. It is only gainable as part of a larger whole. Then you communicate with the rest of yourself—which may be a tree. You, reciprocally, are moved by the universe. Whenever you shut down connectedness, you get depressed. Psychic awareness breaks in as a gift. It’s fearful to know we’re connected to everything in the universe, because then we’re responsible.”
Glenda Taylor, We Are The Web, via Sunbeams (Page 113)
“You are not in the world. The world is in you.”
Deepak Chopra, The Shadow Effect (Page 40)
“We are the living links in a life force that moves and plays through and around us, binding the deepest soils with the farthest stars.”
Alan Chadwick, via Sunbeams (Page 93)
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
Carl Sagan, via Sunbeams (Page 63)
“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Albert Einstein, via Sunbeams (Page 60)
“I believe that every man and woman represents humanity. We are different as to intelligence, health, talents. Yet we are all one. We are all saints and sinners, adults and children, and no one is anyone’s superior or judge. We have all been awakened with the Buddha, crucified with Christ, and we have all killed and robbed with Genghis Khan, Stalin, and Hitler. I believe that man can visualize the experience of the whole universal man only by realizing his individuality and never by trying to reduce himself to an abstract, common denominator. Man’s task in life is the paradoxical one of realizing his individuality and at the same time transcending it to arrive at the experience of universality. Only the fully developed self can drop the ego.”
Erich Fromm, via Sunbeams (Page 51)
“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
Herman Melville, via Sunbeams (Page 51)
“Each phenomenon on earth is an allegory, and each allegory is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can pass into the interior of the world where you and I and day and night are all one. In the course of his life, every human being comes upon that open gate, here or there along the way; everyone is sometimes assailed by the thought that everything visible is an allegory and that behind the allegory live spirit and eternal life. Few, to be sure, pass through the gate and give up the beautiful illusion for the surmised reality of what lies within.”
Hermann Hesse, Strange News From Another Star, via Sunbeams (Page 42)
“I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.”
D. H. Lawrence, Sunbeams (Page 36)
“If we all feel that we are alone, how alone are we? If we all feel worthless then who is the currency of our worth being measured against? Perhaps this program is a personal and social tool that illuminates the truth that religious people have long known and physicists have proven: all the energy that has ever existed has always existed and will always exist. Form and separation are temporary. We are all one.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 94)
“They say all the energy that has ever been is still here now and will always be here. That means there is a totality and I am part of it. When I have an opinion on suffering, it is only that, an opinion. I do not and cannot understand the full context of events that occur in an infinite and eternal universe. It’s as if within my finite lifetime I glimpse a second of a three-hour movie and try to understand the entire plot. All I must do is engage with this idea: I will become open to the idea that my conceptions, beliefs and experiences are limited. I will become open to new beliefs and new possibilities. I will become open to the idea that I can live a better, more loving and useful life, even if I don’t fully understand how I will do it or what it will be like.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 47)
“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)
Alicia Keys Quote on Perfection and Being Okay With Our Imperfect Reality
“I tend to want every person to embody the best of humanity—for all of us to be givers and builders and dreamers. That’s not reality. At different seasons in life, we each fall into various categories. Even still, every one of us also has a strong behavioral tendency, and that is okay. I’m coming to terms with the fact that so-called perfection—this idea that everything should be beautiful and in order at all times—is just not going to happen.”
Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 254)
Beyond the Quote (Day 386)
And as she says in her song, Authors of Forever, “Wherever you are, it’s alright / Whoever you are, it’s alright.” It’s okay to be who you are, where you are on your journey. None of us are perfect and we all lead imperfect lives. Expect perfection from someone—anyone—and you’ll always end up disappointed. Expect imperfection and you’ll at least be able to meet people where they are. Disappointment leads to emotional distancing and separation. Understanding leads to emotional advancing and connection.
Read More »Alicia Keys Quote on Perfection and Being Okay With Our Imperfect Reality“True love has no object. Many speak of their unconditional love for another. Unconditional love is the experience of being; there is no ‘I’ and ‘other,’ and anyone or anything it touches is experienced in love. You cannot unconditionally love someone. You can only be unconditional love. It is not a dualistic emotion. It is a sense of oneness with all that is. The experience of love arises when we surrender our separateness into the universal. It is a feeling of unity. You don’t love another, you are another. There is no fear because there is no separation.”
Stephen Levine, Who Dies?, via Sunbeams (Page 15)
