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    “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)

      “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)

            “Separateness is a myth. The content of both your physical and mental bodies has been gathered from the outside. They belong to you but they are not you. If you want to go the way your body is going currently, you should know that it is going straight to the grave. Similarly, whatever you know as the mind is a complex mess of all the stuff that it has been accumulating. The objectives of the mind are entirely self-created. They may seem to be fine right now, but they usually take you completely away from the process of life. So, if you go the way your mind goes, you should know you are heading toward an alternative psychological creation; it may be fascinating, stimulating, or even comforting for a length of time, but it bears no relation at all to existential reality.”

            Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 210)

              “When you step back from the enormity of your own immediate experience—whatever it is—you are able to see the experience of others and either connect with them or lessen the intensity of your own pain. We are all strands in a long rope that stretches back countless generations and ties together every person in every country on every continent. We are all thinking and feeling the same things, we are all made of and motivated by the same things. We are all stardust.”

              Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 160)

              Quote about Ubuntu and How We Are All Connected

                Ubuntu

                Beyond the Quote (103/365)

                Once, an anthropologist proposed a game to kids in an African tribe.  He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told them that whoever got there first would win the entire basket.  When he gave them the signal to run, they all took each other’s hands and ran together.  Once they arrived at the tree, they sat in a circle and enjoyed the fruits together.  When he asked them why they chose to run as a group when they could have raced against each other for the whole basket, one child spoke up and said, “UBUNTU—how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”

                Read More »Quote about Ubuntu and How We Are All Connected

                  “Looking deeply into the flower, we see that the flower is made of non-flower elements.  We describe the flower as being full of everything.  There is nothing that is not present in the flower.  We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.  A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements.  The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself.  The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

                    “When you look at the surface of the ocean, you can see waves coming up and going down.  You can describe these waves in terms of high or low, big or small, more vigorous or less vigorous, more beautiful or less beautiful.  You can describe a wave in terms of beginning and end, birth and death.  That can be compared to the historical dimension.  In the historical dimension, we are concerned with birth and death, more powerful, less powerful, more beautiful, less beautiful, beginning and end and so on.  Looking deeply, we can also see that the waves are at the same time water.  A wave may like to seek its own true nature.  The wave might suffer from fear, from complexes.  A wave may say, ‘I am not as big as the other waves,’ ‘I am oppressed,’ ‘I am not as beautiful as the other waves,’ ‘I have been born and I have to die.’  The wave may suffer from these things, these ideas.  But if the wave bends down and touches her true nature she will realize that she is water.  Then her fear and complexes will disappear.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

                      “If you look at a friend with the eyes of a meditator, you will see in him or her all generations of their ancestors.  You will be very respectful to them and to your own body because you will see their body and your body as the sacred home of all our ancestors.  You will also see that our bodies are the source of all future generations.  We will not damage our bodies, because that wouldn’t be kind to our descendants.  We do not use drugs and we do not eat or drink things that have toxins or that will harm our bodies.  This is because our insight of manifestation helps us to live in a healthy way, with clarity and responsibility.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

                        “Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me.  She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet… wonderful!  Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me.  I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents.  Of all my ancestors.  These feet that I saw as ‘my’ feet were actually ‘our’ feet.  Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

                          “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.” ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations