Quotes About Self

When you are free of your self in your heart, your labouring within your self is therapeutic to your self. It is a constant blend into your self of what your own Being is. The movement of love, enjoying being at work in the self. The movement of love, enjoying making a change in your self. The enjoyment of application.

Everyone has a self-destructive nature in them. It's whether you feed it or not. You don't have to be a pop star to feel connected to destruction or self-destruction. But self-destruction is self-obsession, and self-obsession is not really possible if you're engaged in raising children. And if you have a spiritual life, you're constantly being asked to see yourself as one small fragment in the bigger picture.

Habits start out as off-hand remarks, magazine advertisements, friendly hints, experiments - like flimsy cobwebs with little substance. They grow with practice, layer by layer - thought on thought - fused with imagination and emotion until they become like steel cables - unbreakable. Habits are attitudes which grow from cobwebs into cables that control your everyday life. Self-discipline alone can make or break a habit. Self discipline alone can effect a permanent change in your self image and in you. Self-discipline achieves goals. Self discipline is not 'doing without,' it is 'doing within.'

Attempts to help humans eliminate all self-ratings and views self-esteem as a self-defeating concept that encourages them to make conditional evaluations of self. Instead, it teaches people unconditional self-acceptance.

Buddha has said to his disciples: Whenever you meditate, after each meditation, surrender all that you have earned out of meditation, surrender it to the universe. If you are blissful, pour it back into the universe - don't carry it as a treasure. If you are feeling very happy, share it immediately - don't become attached to it, otherwise your meditation itself will become a new process of the self. And the ultimate meditation is not a process of self. The ultimate meditation is a process of getting more and more into un-self, into non-self - it is a disappearance of the self.

I always have a feeling of awe and wonder at what God can do - using me as an instrument. I believe that anyone who is fully surrendered to God's will can be used gloriously - and will really know some things - and will probably be called self-righteous. You're called self-righteous if you are self-centered enough to think you know everything - but you may also be called self-righteous by the immature if you are God-centered enough to really know some things.

Narcissism is actually a clever guise adopted to mask its exact opposite, which is a deep well of self-loathing, a well of low self-esteem, rather than high self-esteem. This helps explain why narcissists are so sensitive to criticism, why narcissists tend to break into outrage if they're criticized, because their self-esteem is actually much more brittle than it seems, and once they're challenged, that mask falls apart.

Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protection, safety and security, just as a child depends on its parent. For self-preservation man has conceived the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally. In his ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, man needs these two things to console himself. Hence he clings to them deeply and fanatically.

Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think. It cannot be replaced by one's power to deceive. The self-confidence of a scientist and the self-confidence of a con man are not interchangeable states, and do not come from the same psychological universe. The success of a man who deals with reality augments his self-confidence. The success of a con man augments his panic.

This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.

The basis of self-ownership is the fact that each person has direct control over the scarce resource of his body and therefore has a better claim to it than any third party (and any third party seeking to dispute my self-ownership must presuppose the principle of self-ownership in the first place since he is acting as a self-owner).

Individuals motivated by self-interest, self-indulgence, and a false sense of self-sufficiency pursue selfish ambition for the purpose of self-glorification.

A self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person who self is based exclusively on integration will be well connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.

Selfish is an exploitation of others for self; selfless is an exploitation of self for others. Both are extrinsic. ..... Selfness. When selfness prevails, the qualities of others are sometimes used for self and the qualities of self are often extended to others. The basic and key difference is that exploitation is never the object of the outcome.

Those who have overcome self-will and become instruments to do God's work can accomplish tasks which are seemingly impossible, but they experience no feeling of self achievement. I now know myself to be a part of the infinite cosmos, not separate from other souls or God. My illusory self is dead; the real self controls the garment of clay and uses it for God's work.

Self-acceptance begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents and siblings and other important people. Your own level of self-acceptance is determined largely by how well you feel you are accepted by the important people in your life. Your attitude toward yourself is determined largely by the attitudes that you think other people have toward you. When you believe that other people think highly of you, your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes straight up. The best way to build a healthy personality involves understanding yourself and your feelings.

Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selflessness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?

Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It is ? is nothing, yet at the same time one with everything. It is in this sense that humility is absolute self-effacement.

Those who have chosen the path of least resistance in life, who cannot bear to bring themselves to make a stern value-judgment in criticism of their own most intimate feelings, achieve what they deserve: not self-understanding but radical self-superficialization, not a discovered but a self-ascribed identity that explains nothing, reveals nothing, means nothing, and ultimately accomplishes nothing culturally or intellectually.

Happiness lies outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one's goal, not self-absorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of an irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good.

Clear communication between selves - the surface self and the deep self - is the enemy of self-doubt. It slays confusion.

Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear?

The self (Soul) is the constant-witness consciousness. Through all months, seasons and years, through all divisions of time, the past, present and future the consciousness remains one and self luminous. It neither rises nor sets. The ultimate self is free from sin, free from old age, free from death and grief, free from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing and imagines nothing.

I try to tell student writers to read as much as possible, not only literature but philosophy, theory, and to form obsessions. There's a big taboo in fiction creative writing workshops against using the self at all, and I think I try to encourage students to write the self, but to connect the self to something larger, which is to be this thinking, seeing, searching, eternally curious person, and that writing can come out of investigating and trying to understand confusion, and doubts, and obsessions.

We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, - this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American.

The whole body-mind thing comes into play, when you are feeling that self-doubt and your body is not going to help you if you're not paying attention. Your body's going to go with the self-doubt and make you feel worse, so by making the adjustments - pulling your shoulders back, standing up straight, walking in a more sort of expansive way - all sorts of little things will help pull you out of that self-doubt.

The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.

Self-awareness and healthy self-love go hand in hand. When we love what God has given us and share it with others naturally and without expectations for gratitude we are truly people who have spiritual self-confidence and compassion; and isn't that a great way to live?

Running is the classical road to self-consciousness, self-awareness, and self-reliance.

Self-care is not about self-indulgence , it is about self-preservati on.

Mystical identification transcends the aristocratic virtue of courageous self-sacrifice. It is self- surrender in a higher, more complete, and more complete and more radical form. It is the perfect form of self-affirmation.

I'm fascinated by what makes up a self, how one becomes a self, how much is it an answer to others and how much is it an essence of self.

I can't describe it in words, but I can see it in my head, its color, its light, its shapes, and I've managed to synthesize my love for myself by way of many different reasonings and processes, and I've been able to really synthesize my own satisfaction and things that do it for me. They've usually been self-taught, self-instructed, self-refined. So to be with anybody else has to somewhat lie in that comfort zone I've created with myself so well.

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.

True listening is never self-effacement. We bring the whole self to the process, rather than denying self. When we truly listen, we aren't just waiting for someone else to decide something so we can get on with things, or so we don't have to decide for ourselves. We aren't giving away our own powers to be seen and heard. When we listen, first we listen to the parts of ourselves that are curious, in avoidance, afraid, angry, or proud. Then we can take a breath and sink, allowing those parts some space alongside the spaciousness of not knowing.

We must strive for freedom if we strive for self-knowledge. The task of self-knowledge and of further self-development is of such importance and seriousness, it demands such intensity of effort, that to attempt it any old way and amongst other things is impossible. The person who undertakes this task must put it first in his life, which is not so long that he can afford to squander it on trifles.

Lack of self-confidence is, more often than not, simple laziness. We feel confused and uncertain because we do not know. But instead of making the effort to investigate, we procrastinate and worry. We tell ourselves we can't instead of learning how we can. If we used the mental energy we expend in worry and fear to get out and find out about what we do not know, we would see our self-confidence grow. Lack of self-confidence is not overcome by faith, but by action. It is a lack, not of certainty, but of effort. Too often we are certain that we can't before we give ourselves a fair chance.

In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.

I'm self-critical but also, I'm not a very modest person. I'm self-critical in the lead-up to showing anyone anything. You know how people say they write, like, 30 songs and then they'll pick the ones they're going to put on the record? I don't ever get to that point because I self-edit so harshly at the beginning. I would never let anyone hear something that I wasn't happy with. But then once I've made it, I'm also not going to turn around and go, "Oh, yeah, I don't know..." If I'm putting it out, anything creative that I do, I think that it's good, otherwise I wouldn't put it out.

Only make decisions that support your self-image, self-esteem, and self-worth.

It seems to me that everyone on this planet whom I know or have worked with is suffering from self-hatred and guilt to one degree or another. The more self-hatred and guilt we have, the less our lives work. The less self-hatred and guilt we have, the better our lives work, on all levels.

Why is erasing desire seen as so important? If the subjugation of the self is the point of the self what's the point in having a self? It's like someone handing you a leaflet which says throw this leaflet away.

Rather than attend to a world considered as if it's out there, I have to start to attend to me. That led to some things that I never wanted it to lead to, person as a sort of psychological miasma. I started to get wrapped up in self, and then, for the first time, self did become an autobiographical self.

It is a work of psychogeography, albeit in a less explicit sense than Iain Sinclair's or Will Self's. It had to be fiction though, because I needed that freedom of including whatever belonged, and cutting out whatever didn't. The main fiction in it was matching Julius' generous and self-concealing character to New York's generous and self-concealing character. I think this also adds to my answer about New York's personality in the book.

A Mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance actually VACCINATES her daughter against low self-esteem.

Our everyday self is a narrow construct...Our total self is far broader, ultimately infinite. Actors who seem to be playing themselves are actually playing roles they have become so skillful at that they seem pure and natural...Much bad Acting is the result of being too close to the Actor's everyday self, confining him in its rigid mold.

Let us face at the outset how many Christians are not victorious, but defeated. Defeated by circumstances, defeated by other peoples? natures and wrong-doings, defeated by the down-drag of the flesh, defeated by loss, by pain, by suffering, by worry. Instead of saying with confidence, ?This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith?, they have to say in honesty, ?This is the defeat that has been caused by the world, even our self-centeredness.? That is the opposite of faith. Unbelief is not the opposite of faith; self-centeredness is ? being centered in self rather than in God.