Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace
The self is not something you can set out looking for; it reveals itself gradually through the choices you make.
We must cease to concern ourselves with our unique suffering – whether we are happy or sad, fortunate or unfortunate, good or bad – and give up our neurotic and debilitating journeys of self-discovery. Art of true value requires, like a... See more
www.henrikkarlsson.xyz • Two Kinds of Introspection
“The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself… to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is,”
Maria Popova • How the Great Zen Master and Peace Activist Thich Nhat Hanh Found Himself and Lost His Self in a Library Epiphany
“This is the entire essence of life: Who are you? What are you?” the young Leo Tolstoy distilled the eternal quest in his diary as he wrestled with moral development and the search for selfhood — a search that begins as soon as we become conscious, reaches a crescendo in the formative years of adolescence and young adulthood, and continues until... See more
Maria Popova • 15-Year-Old Susan Sontag on the Explosive Elasticity of the Self
If our multiplying selves are not a compromise of our integrity, but an evolutionary necessity, could we reconcile our expanding egostack with the need for coherence? Seeing other versions of ourselves may not always feel good, but there's a quiet redemption in embracing our contradictions – not as failures of authenticity, but as evidence of our... See more
Lore Oxford • The egostack
“I believe that I am loved beyond measure by a magnificent, complex, amused God who has given me power over practically nothing.”
“Writing gave me the thing that meditation promised, but I could never have it happen in meditation until very recently where time stops or changes, and I’m here but not here.”
“What if I’m not on duty all the time? What
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