Quotes

Francis of Assisi

“The one you are looking for is the one who is looking.”

Rumi

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

A lifetime without Love is of no account. 
Love is the Water of Life. 
Drink it down with heart and soul!

It was He not I 
it was Him knocking on the door 
it was He from within

For sixty years I have been forgetful,
every minute, but not for a second
has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed.

"The reason people awaken is because they have finally stopped agreeing to things that insult their soul."
- Unknown

Ramakrishna

Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna by Lex Hixon

Great Swan: Meetings

with Ramakrishna by Lex Hixon

“Instead of remaining obsessed with the mundane world, become obsessed with the ultimate experience – mystic union – not just for yourself but for all living beings. Rather than being proud of your natural gifts, be proud of your high spiritual calling. Thus, obsession, pride and other negative emotions will be radically transformed.”

(pg. 187)

“As long as you regard any event or activity of your life, including your physical body, as other than God, your mind will remain divided and the conscious union of shiva and shakti within the nerve channels of the subtle body will be impossible.

(pg. 187)

“You should remain aware of God throughout the activity of daily life – thinking, perceiving, eating, walking, moving, talking, sitting, sleeping. Do not find fault with anyone, not even an insect. Pray fervently that your mind will become completely clear of habitual fault finding. Simply flutter your wings and shake off these drops of water called the conventional world.”

(pg. 223)

“At dusk, put aside all sense of finite responsibility and plunge into prayerful contemplation, just as devout Muslims do 5 times every day. One is reminded of the Divine Presence by the mysterious approach of evening, when one enters an entirely different mode of awareness than during daylight. Dark, overcast days are also conducive for meditation, for inwardness.”

(pg. 223)

“As hunger and thirst arise spontaneously, so does longing for God. It is simply a matter of time. Yearning for God- realization cannot arise until one has to some extent satisfied the desires for social existence or has seen through them and has been freed from them. Do not renounce desire by pressuring or forcing the mind. If the blossoms of gourds or pumpkins are removed prematurely, the fruit will not ripen. But when the fruit ripens properly, the flowers will naturally fall away. Call out every evening with a longing heart and hold on to Truth. You will eventually see God. Living consciously within God, you will not be overwhelmed by the inevitable misery of the world.” 

(pg. 514)

"Never expect your mind to be free of thoughts just sit down and do it."
-Unknown

Eckhart Tolle

A New Earth

“….awakening is the realization of Presence” negative emotions will be radically transformed.”

(pg. 408)

“In fact, doing is never enough if you neglect Being.”

(pg. 154)

Ramana Maharshi

Be as you are: The teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi Edited by David Goodman

Be as you are: The teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi Edited

Be as you are: The teachings

of Sri Ramana Maharshi Edited

by David Goodman

“The state of self-realization, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been.”

(pg. 12)

David R. Hawkins, M.D., P.H.D.

Transcending the Levels of Consciousness

Transcending the Levels of Consciousness

Transcending the Levels

of Consciousness

“When devalued and humbled, the vanity basis of thinkingness collapses, and in its place one discovers the joy of inner silence, which actually constitutes ninety-nine percent of the mind. Only one percent is actually chattering.”

(pg. 340)

 “It is a relief to let the mind become silent and just ‘be’ with surroundings. Peace results, and appreciation and calm prevail.”

(pg. 340)

…”one who has reformed himself, is able to reform thousands”
- Paramahansa Yogananda

Adyashanti

The Way of Liberation

“As a guiding principle, to progressively realize what is not absolutely True is of infinitely more value than speculating about what is.”

(pg. ix)

“For it is your conscious and unconscious assumptions and beliefs that distort your perception and cause you to see separation and division where there is actually only unity and completeness.”

(pg. ix)

“Absolute completeness surrounds you wherever you go.”

(pg. x)

Lex Hixon

Coming Home: The experience of enlightenment in sacred traditions

Coming Home: The experience of enlightenment

Coming Home:

The experience of enlightenment

in sacred traditions

“Ecstatically to experience all forms as one continuum of Consciousness, which Ramakrishna identified as Goddess Kali in Her all-embracing aspect, is the Tantric attitude by which the ways of wisdom and devotion are fused.”

(pg. 26)

“Ramakrishna felt an intense longing to re-embody the sacred figures of all traditions, to actualize their spiritual energy through his own person. He took up various Tantric, Vaishnava, Vedantic, Islamic, and Christian contemplative practices simply out of his innate thirst to experience Divine Presence through all sacred traditions.”

(pg. 32)

“He [Ramakrishna] now understood the Divine Mother to be the sublime dream power of absolute. What he had been calling maya, or the mere illusion of forms, was actually the Goddess who projects, nurtures, and dissolves all beings.”

(pg. 34)

“The goal of meditation is not to get rid of thoughts and emotions but to learn how to move through them without getting stuck.”
- Dr. Philippe Goldin

Swami Muktananda

Meditate: Happiness Lies Within You

Meditate: Happiness Lies Within You

“Bhagawan Nityananda said: “The heart is the hub of all sacred places. Go there and roam.”

(pg. xviii)

“In meditation, we become the witness of all our states.”

(pg. 7)

“Be aware that even the worst thought is God. This understanding is vital to meditation. Your goal is not to battle with the mind, but to witness the mind. Know that you are the witness, the Self, and let the mind go wherever it likes.” 

(pg. 22)

“However, the best object of meditation is the inner self.  When the Self is the goal of meditation, why should we choose another object? If we want to experience the Self, we should meditate on the Self. If you want to know God, we should meditate on God.”

(pg. 16)

“God is the witness of your mind.”

(pg. 17)

“In meditation, we become the witness of all our states.”

(pg. 7)

I AM THAT Foreword by Gurumayi

I AM THAT

Foreword by Gurumayi

“The Lord does not say that by repeating the mantra, we will attain him, but rather that he is the syllables themselves.”

(pg. xviii)

“As the Japanese Zen masters say, “Don’t seek the truth; just drop your opinions.”
- Awareness by Anthony De Mello (pg. 73)

Russell Simmons

Success Through Stillness

Success Through Stillness

“When you meditate, you’ll learn how to let your thoughts exist on their own without getting too involved with them.”

(pg. 143)

Pema Chodron

Learning to Stay

In meditation our relationship to our thoughts is as light as “touching a bubble with a feather.”

Read Article

Abdi Assadi

Shadows on the Path

‘“For me, awakening is the knowledge that we are not limited to the personality or body-mind that we are socially trained to identify as our Selves. It is the knowledge that each of us is a consciousness that is eternal and that everything is OK – right now, and in spite of all the chaos and suffering around us. It is a sense of serenity and deep relaxation that transcends all of our unconscious programming around struggle and survival. It is a surrender to the dreaminess of the realm we live in – the knowledge that we are one with all that is and nothing at the same time.”

(pg. 17)

Anthony De Mello

Awareness

“As the Japanese Zen masters say, “Don’t seek the truth; just drop your opinions.”

(pg. 73)

Sogyal Rinpoche

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

The Tibetan Book of Living and

Dying

“Every single negative thing we have ever thought or done has ultimately arisen from our grasping at a false self, and our cherishing of that false self, making it the dearest and most important element in our lives. All those negative thoughts, emotions, desires, and actions that are the cause of our negative karma are engendered by self-grasping and self-cherishing. They are the dark, powerful magnet that attracts to us, life after life, every obstacle, every misfortune, every anguish, every disaster, and so they are the root cause of all the sufferings of samsara.”

(pg. 192)

Awakening 101 Logo

Abdi Assadi is unlike any other healer or spiritual teacher ever encountered. He is an expert in martial arts, and a dynamic healer practicing a diverse array of Chinese and Eastern Medicine, indigenous shamanic rituals, and meditation techniques. With a clinical practice in New York City for almost 4 decades, Abdi has accumulated a vast knowledge of real life experience working with several thousands of individuals, guiding them through the most difficult times, and teaching them how to understand themselves. One of the greatest things about him is he merges the human psyche with the spiritual psyche.

Steeped in deep wisdom and insight that is rare to find on this planet in these modern times, Abdi has an extraordinary ability in perceiving and comprehending human souls and their individual psyche. Guided by the divine, Abdi guides you to open up and see beyond your limited Self, into your own soul. His impeccable discernment enables him to unleash personal remarks that pierce through your veil, statements that you will never forget and in an instant alter your perception of yourself and your reality.

– Quotes from Shadows on the Path by Abdi Assadi:


All spiritual masters teach us that love is an activity before it is a condition – and that love is all-encompassing.
Page 18


It felt like I was coming off a race track and driving in a school zone. He knew, years before I did, that my speed was my way of suppressing my early childhood anxiety, and that only slowing down could heal it.

Why do you need to use all these words like God and spirituality? It is right here Abdi, all around you, all the time
Page 40


one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Page 51


Ultimately it keeps grace out of our lives because we are using our will power to manipulate every event and person around us.
Page 74


His lesson, which I had begun to learn for myself, is that outside circumstances do not define our internal experience if we can surrender into them. Painful or undesirable situations will always arise; true suffering comes from our ego’s desire to resist life as it is.
Page 77


Note from Pernilla:
I met Abdi in the fall of 2014 and when I arrived in his office the first thing he said was, “It’s time that you stop carrying other people’s anxiety.” In the year that followed, my entrenched codependency patterns reared their ugly heads and I was confronted with a part of myself that I had never even known was there.

A few years later, Abdi said, “When are you going to start writing your book?”I looked at him in surprise. I was not a writer. My expertise was centered around creating crazy good Excel spreadsheets. However, I started writing and collecting notes about life issues and life experiences … and here we are a few years later.

Sally Kempton is a preeminent meditation teacher of our time.

She is an expert scholar in Hinduism and all Hindu texts especially in Kashmir Shaivisim. Formerly Swami Durgananda, she left monastic life in the 1980’s to teach publicly. She has written several books and is one of the most known and loved spiritual teachers in our time.

Note from Pernilla:

I met Sally at one of her workshops at City Yoga in LA in 2003. She had the most gentle and loving disposition, and I just wanted to always be around her. I was fortunate to have been part of her two year-long “Transformative journey” courses in 2006 and 2007 and many retreats ever since. She is the true representation of unconditional love and transmits intense shakti from her Guru Swami Muktananda.

Sally is the primary building block and foundation in my spiritual journey. Without her, I would have never found and stuck with meditation – the most transformative experience of my life. Without her, I would have been lost without a clue where to go next. Her wealth of knowledge of yogic philosophy and incredible understanding of the human condition is what makes her a force to be reckoned with.  She understands your depth and makes you feel seen, heard, validated, and deeply loved.