Chang-Rae Lee Quotes

The physical journey in my films is indicative of the internal journey that my characters take.

I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.

Reading is as much a part of life as any part, and it's life itself. And it allows us to live other lives that we might not have lived if we hadn't picked up those books.

For many people, the first indication of a spiritual awakening is that they suddenly become aware of their thoughts. They become a witness to their thoughts, so to speak. They are not completely identified with their mind anymore and so they begin to sense that there is a depth to them that they had never known before.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.

Living from the perspective at which you came from and returning to source really is an act of remembering, rather than an act of learning.

When we meditate, what we actually do is enter into a vacant, calm, still, silent mind. We go deep within and approach our true existence, which is our soul. When we live in the soul, we feel that we are actually meditating spontaneously

A real Master is not a teacher: a real Master is an awakener. His function is totally different from a teacher; his function is far more difficult. And only very few people can stay with a Master because to wake up after millions of lives is not an ordinary feat; it is a miracle. And to allow somebody to wake you up needs great trust, great surrender.

He who looks without, dreams; he who looks within, awakes.

You have discovered the spiritual universe. Many others have discovered this same world, but each must make the discovery for himself. You are going to have a lot of joy sailing around this world of yours. Don't fight the opinions of others, or waste your time arguing over these things. Follow the inward gleam of your consciousness and you will arrive.

I think if people raise their consciousness and find a purpose, everybody will be helped.

You should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words. Take the backward step and turn the light inward. Your body-mind of itself will drop off and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.

Even great travelers of the inner world have got stuck in beautiful experiences, and have become identified with those experiences, thinking, "I have found myself." They have stopped before reaching the final stage where all experiences disappear. Enlightenment is not an experience.

The soul inside me is the last foreign language I'm learning.

People need stories...we use stories to teach, to learn, to make sense of the world around us. As long as we need stories, we will need books.

I'm always asking people to do something in their mind [first]. So if they're gonna do one exercise, it would be to ask themselves what they want to change about themselves in the next 12 weeks. Once they solve that, the body will follow.

One must lose one's life to find it.

When, by meditation, we withdraw restless thoughts from the lake of the mind, we behold our soul, a perfect reflection of Spirit.

All these years you've been searching and looking and trying to change things, trying to add thing onto yourself, trying to acquire things when you have been the source of everything to begin with. Everything you've been looking for has been within yourself you have been that. You then begin to surrender everything to yourself. You surrender all of your thoughts, all of your feelings, you surrender all of your desires, all of your wants to the Self. You pull it in all inwardly.

Through silence, through meditation, and through non-judgment, you will access the first law, the Law of Pure Potentiality.

I sometimes wonder if it is just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they are supposed to be by going nowhere.

When you first awaken or before drifting off to sleep, quiet your mind, lift up your heart, muse, mull over, make discoveries. Consider, conceive, create, connect, concede that it all starts within.

But when you first embark on the Path, your awareness won't be focused. You're likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn't doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else.

Heaven is within us, and we experience it to the degree that we become conscious of it.