Quotes from Sunbeams

R. Buckminster Fuller Quote on Truth and How It’s Completely Spontaneous

“Truth is completely spontaneous. Lies have to be taught.”
R. Buckminster Fuller, Sunbeams (Page 23)

Beyond the Quote (Day 387)

I suspect that most people overthink the act of being—and it’s easy to see why. Think about everything that we’re exposed to on a daily basis. All of the advertisements, the images, the messages, the conversations—and think about how each of them communicate a different way of being. You can be the person who does this; who buys that; who believes this; who supports that; who interacts here; who chooses to go there; who speaks up about this; who follows people like that; who dresses like this; who spends their time doing that… the possibilities for becoming are, quite literally, endless.

“This comes up all the time in mechanical work. A hang-up. You just sit and stare and think, and go search randomly for new information, and go away and come back again, and after a while the unseen factors start to emerge.”
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, via Sunbeams (Page 18)

“There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail. All exquisite niceties of weights and measure as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts, however indubitably detected, no effort or reason, however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach’s music is beautiful.”
Edith Hamilton, Sunbeams (Page 17)

“We have to be utterly broken before we can realize that it is impossible to better the truth. It is the truth that we deny which so tenderly and forgivingly picks up the fragments and puts them together again.”
Laurens Van der Post, Sunbeams (Page 17)

“Be like the bird, pausing in his flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way, yet sings,
Knowing he has wings.”
Victor Hugo, Sunbeams (Page 17)

C. Day Lewis Quote on Writing and How We Write To Understand; Not To Share What We Already Know

“I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it… We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”
C. Day Lewis, The Poetic Image, via Sunbeams (Page 15)

Beyond the Quote (385/365)

It starts out as a feeling. An inquisition. A hunch. A curiosity. A reoccurring thought. An observation. An idea. A single line of text.

It proceeds as an exploration into the unknown. A navigating of unclear roads. A charting of unexplored territory. An unraveling of knotted up mental yarn. A sorting through of an unorganized desk. As trains of thought.

“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)

“Words hang like wash on the line, blowing in the winds of the mind.”
Rameshwar Das, Sunbeams (Page 15)

“The idea of a meaningless universe is in itself a highly creative imaginative act. Animals… could not imagine such an idiocy, so the theory shows an incredible accomplishment of an obviously ordered mind and intellect that can imagine itself to be the result of non-order or chaos—you have a creature who is capable of mapping its own brain, imagining that the brain’s fantastic regulated order could emerge from a reality that has no meaning.”
Jane Roberts, The Individual And The Nature Of Mass Events, via Sunbeams (Page 15)

“Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must be continuously on our watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness.”
Aldous Huxley, Sunbeams (Page 14)

“A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.”
Robert Henri, Sunbeams (Page 14)

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”
Carl Jung, Sunbeams (Page 14)

“When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.”
St. Jerome, Sunbeams (Page 14)

Carl Jung Quote on How Confronting Darkness Can Show You To Your Light

“To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light.”
Carl Jung, Sunbeams (Page 3)

Beyond the Quote (Day 382)

Like most, I can still vividly recall moments when I was caused a great deal of irritation, frustration, anger, and pain. Times when people didn’t follow through with their word, or when they would treat others unfairly, or when they did things that were irrational, nonsensical, or just plain malicious. And sometimes, those moments would get the best of me and cause an influx of negative, overpowering, blinding emotions. But what I didn’t realize then, that I can see more clearly now, is that the only reason I was able to see those shadows was because of my own light.

“The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.”
Abraham Lincoln, Sunbeams (Page 12)

Beyond the Quote (Day 381)

This is great news because it means you don’t have to have your whole life figured out right now. I think sometimes people forget that. The fear of not knowing how everything is going to play out in a year, five years, ten years, their lifetime—causes many people unnecessary anxiety and stress. And while it’s certainly beneficial to have a one year, five year, ten year, lifetime plan/ goal/ direction—it shouldn’t steal you away from what’s available to you now.

“For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality. Until this has become clear, it seems that our life is all past and future, and that the present is nothing more than the infinitesimal hairline which divides them. From this comes the sensation of ‘having no time,’ of a world which hurries by so rapidly that it is gone before we can enjoy it. But through ‘awakening to the instant’ one sees that this is the reverse of the truth: it is rather the past and future which are the fleeting illusions, and the present which is eternally real.”
Alan Watts, The Way of Zen, via Sunbeams (Page 12)

Ram Dass Quote on Moving Forward and How Your Next Message Is Always Right Where You Are

“The next message you need is always right where you are.”
Ram Dass, Sunbeams (Page 7)

Beyond the Quote (Day 379)

Did you read that right? The next message you need—not the next message you want. Most of us are pretty good at ignoring the messages we don’t want to hear. So much so that many of us, I suspect, become blind and deaf to their presence entirely. The problem, of course, is that those messages tends to be the very messages that we most need to hear. And how do we hear something that we’ve become deaf to? How can we see again the messages that we’ve become blind to? It’s actually quite simple really.

“Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us: we regard every person whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows.”
Octavio Paz, Sunbeams (Page 9)

“You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”
Annie Dillard, Sunbeams (Page 9)

“Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.”
Matsuo Basho, Sunbeams (Page 9)