1. The key to becoming spiritual isn’t that we do anything, it’s the opposite — we have to undo everything.
2. We are not merely a tiny, insignificant part of this universe, not just some mistake, or random chance, we are the universe.
3. When you’re blessed, you pass it on to someone else because you know you are only blessed because someone helped show you the way. This is the circle of life.
4. It’s impossible to think your way out of thinking.
5. There is good and bad in everything, but where we put our focus is everything.
6. We fall for the illusion that things have beginnings and ends. But in every movie, something happened before the movie started and after the movie ended, we just don’t see it.
7. When we realize that there’s no single moment we’re born, there’s no single moment we die, we become free from the binary delusion of duality.
8. We are not separate people with separate thoughts. We are one life.
9. Like a tree, we humans aren’t meant to reach the sun. The point is simply to grow.
10. I am god, but so are you, and so is everyone else.
11. Permanence is an illusion. Attachment is a delusion.
12. Being materially wealthy but spiritually poor is worth nothing.
13. You become wealthy when you desire nothing. You become poor when your greed is insatiable.
14. We cling so hard to our possessions that we become possessed. We become a possession.
15. We are always fearful of losing what we have, ungrateful for what we do have, and afraid of change. That is the essence of attachment when you get right down to it — misidentifying temporary phenomena as permanent.
16. Happy people don’t think, “If only I had this or that, my life would be complete.” They feel complete already.
17. When a tree becomes the word “tree,” we reduce it down to four little letters and we forget to admire it.
18. When you realize that everywhere you look is you looking back at yourself, that all there is is one, we realize we are alone.
19. All answers appear when the questions disappear, but we have to quiet our mind to hear them.
When I was living in monasteries across Asia, I was struck not just by what the monks believed and practiced, but by how they lived. I realized that we learn so much more from people’s actions than we do their words. I learned more lessons from their generosity, hospitality, kindness and patience than I ever did from a lecture.
The people we know and the media we consume influences us far beyond anything else. When we grow up in a dysfunctional family, we may not even know anything is out of the ordinary until we grow up and see how other families live. When we live in a sick society, we may have no idea until we travel and live among other cultures.
In my book, Aloneness to Oneness, I share what I have learned from cultures around the world, from the mystics of the Far East to the shamans of the south, and from the wisdom of our ancestors. I share how we can rise above our conditioned mind and see the world from a new perspective, not based on today’s false notions of separateness, but on the oneness that connects us all.
We can step out of our habits and mental patterns. We can see beyond the superficial illusions and discover a higher state of consciousness. And we can step into a world of freedom, love and peace. We just have to be willing to take that first step from aloneness to oneness.
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