Adyashanti Quotes

73 Sourced Quotes

When we come to the realization that we are not this identity that the mind has created, but we're actually spirit, at that moment spirit has become conscious of itself. It's become conscious of itself as spirit, as ineffable being, as a sort of conscious presence.

Adyashanti
Awareness isn't something we own; awareness isn't something we possess. Awareness is actually what we are.

Adyashanti
When you begin to become conscious, more aware, when your eyes begin to open, the first thing you see is how deluded you are and how much you're holding onto that which makes you suffer. This is, in many ways, the most important step: Are you willing to be aware?

Adyashanti
If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize it's all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don't awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.

Adyashanti
One Zen master said, The whole universe is my true personality. This is a very wonderful saying... If you want to see what you truly are, open the window, and everything you see is in fact the expression of your inner reality. Can you embrace all of it?

Adyashanti
If you have any image of what the Truth is, slay it immediately because that's not it.

Adyashanti
What matters are not the truths other people tell us or the practices that we are able to mimic, but the spiritual discoveries we make through personal investigation.

Adyashanti
The process of finding the truth may not be a process by which we feel increasingly better and better. It may be a process by which we look at things honestly, sincerely, truthfully, and that may or may not be an easy thing to do.

Adyashanti
You are an incredible mystery that you will never figure out. To be this mystery consciously is the greatest joy.

Adyashanti
There is a very Simple Secret to being happy. Just let go of your 'demand' on this moment. Any time you have a demand on the moment to give you something or remove something, there is suffering. You're Arguing with 'What Is' - Your demands keep you chained to the 'dream-state' of the conditioned mind. The desire to 'control'... is, ultimately, our unwillingness to just be awake.

Adyashanti
When you get out of the driver's seat, you find that life can drive itself, that actually life has always been driving itself. When you get out of the driver's seat, it can drive itself so much easier-it can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the me is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.

Adyashanti
As soon as you believe that a label you've put on yourself is true, you've limited something that is literally limitless, you've limited who you are into nothing but a thought.

Adyashanti
The truth is that you already are what you are seeking. You are looking for God with his eyes. I suggest you ask, "What's ultimately behind this set of eyes?" Turn around to see what is looking.

Adyashanti
To be here, all you have to do is let go of who you think you are. That's all! And then you realize, "I'm here." Here is where thoughts aren't believed. Every time you come here, you are nothing. Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake. Emptiness that is full. Emptiness that is everything.

Adyashanti
Our illusions-the beliefs we hold on to-are the very doorways to our freedom. We simply have to enter through them without grasping or pushing away. We must not believe them, but we must not run away from them either. We need to see each moment of apparent bondage as an invitation to freedom. Then it becomes an act of love, an act of compassion, to stop running away.

Adyashanti
Thoughts are just moving through consciousness. They have no power. Nothing has reality until you reach it, grab it, and somehow impregnate it with the power of belief.

Adyashanti
Fear is very often a part of the spiritual path. When people sit down and meditate it's not at all uncommon for fear to arise at some point.

Adyashanti
Reality is always true to itself. When you're in harmony with it, you experience bliss. As soon as you are not in harmony with it, you experience pain. This is the law of the universe; it is the way things are. Nobody gets out of this law.

Adyashanti
Egoic consciousness is something that the vast majority of people live in almost all the time. Humanity is by and large caught in this realm of egoic consciousness, and therefore manifests it in the way that we, human beings, live our lives - both individually and collectively.

Adyashanti
When we really start to take a look at who we think we are... we start to see that while we may have various thoughts, beliefs, and identities, they do not individually or collectively tell us who we are. [And yet] it is astounding how completely we humans define ourselves by the content of our minds, feelings, and history.

Adyashanti
In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside. As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind's compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.

Adyashanti
No spiritual teaching is a direct path to enlightenment. In fact, there is no such thing as a path to enlightenment, simply because enlightenment is ever present in all places and at all times. What you can do is to remove any and all illusions, especially the ones you value most and find the most security in, that cloud your perception of Reality. Let go of clinging to your illusions and resisting what is, and Reality will suddenly come into view.

Adyashanti
The main purpose of the illusion of me is to keep you at all costs from realizing your own nothingness.

Adyashanti
Every human being... the way they move in live, how they act, is completely dictated by what they value.

Adyashanti
Over time I found that one of the most important things in any spiritual teaching for anybody is to have a really basic and simple understanding of that teaching. And the reason for that is because as one gets involved in a spiritual teaching, it's really easy to lose sight of the basics, or the foundations.

Adyashanti
In True Meditation, we're in the body as a means to transcend it. It is paradoxical that the greatest doorway to the transcendence of form is through form itself.

Adyashanti
The most intimate question we can ask, and the one that has the most spiritual power, is this: What or who am I?

Adyashanti
The biggest barrier to awakening is the belief that it is something rare.

Adyashanti
Our egos are always trying to find happiness where [it] can't be found. One can't find true, lasting happiness outside of themselves. Whatever happiness you find outside of yourself, can be taken away. And in time, it will be taken away, because the nature of everything that exists, everything you can observe, everything that is around you, is that it is impermanent.

Adyashanti
Ego itself is a fiction created in the mind by circular patterns of thinking based on separation. So, 'the ego is the fiction in the mind' - what does that mean? [It means] that ego is basically our sense of self, and the thoughts, ideas and beliefs that circle around that sense of self that go into deriving a bigger, more conceptualized version of ourself. In other words: who we think and imagine ourselves to be.

Adyashanti