You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you.
People will want you to behave a certain way, to make a certain choice because it reinforces the way they see the world… But you have to do what's right for you.
If you can see, look. If you can look, observe.
I look back now and realize that the gift of a true friend is that she sees you not the way you see yourself or the way others see you. A true friend sees you for who you are and who you can become.
When we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner. To be able to look at this seems to me all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear, and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher. Nobody need tell you how to look. You just look. Can you then, seeing this whole picture, seeing it not verbally but actually, can you easily, spontaneously, transform yourself? That is the real issue. Is it possible to bring about a complete revolution in the psyche?
It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
A lot of times we look at the whole world and think, 'it's so daunting, how can we change the whole world?' and you don't need to do that, what you need to do is change your world a little bit, and see if you can, through example, inspire others to do the same thing.
Seeing a woman's child is like seeing a woman naked, in the way it changes how her face looks to you, how her face becomes less the whole story.
If you can see a thing whole,” he said, it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives…. But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”
That’s all right for Urras. Let it stay off there and be the moon—I don’t want it! But I’m not going to stand up on a gravestone and look down on life and say, ‘O lovely!’ I want to see it whole right in the middle of it, here, now. I don’t give a hoot for eternity.”
Literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.