Who would you be without your story?
Interpretation
Our identities are shaped by the narratives we tell ourselves.
This quote emphasizes the profound impact of personal narratives on our identities and existence. It suggests that our stories—comprising our experiences, beliefs, and perceptions—play a critical role in defining who we are. Without these stories, our sense of self and understanding of the world would be fundamentally different, highlighting the importance of self-reflection and understanding in shaping our lives.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage self-acceptance.
When you stay present with your children, that’s where abundance is. And when you stay out of their business, that’s where everything you deserve in life is. When you’re in presence, there’s no story, and you are abundance. And you come to trust that space so often that you just eventually hang out as that, because there is nothing that can move you out of it, not even a perceived child or a perceived anything.
It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it's helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, "You're caught in the dream."
We don't attach to people or to things; we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to be true in the moment.
An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.
Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be cause by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I’m the one who can stop hurting me. It’s within my power.
I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.
We live now in an era where normal values have been displaced. The good is called bad, the bad - good.
That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.
In some way impossible to ascertain, after so many years of absense, Jose Arcadio was still an autumnal child, terribly sad and solitary.
The one place gods inarguably exist is in the human mind.
We are all jars of clay, fragile and poor, yet we carry within us an immense treasure.
The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.
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