Erwin McManus Quotes

How I set myself apart is by creating the sort of real and honest music, which is who I'm also trying to be.

I think what people respond to is someone being who they actually are.

It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

The road to enlightenment is paved with authenticity, not imitation.

(M)aybe we too busy being flowers or fairies or strawberries instead of something honest and worthy of respect . . . you know . . . like being people.

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are...There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.

I guess the very first thing is to own your true self, and that includes achieving the point of not lying to others; the first step should be not lying to yourself.

You’ve been assigned an identity since birth. Then you spend the rest of your life walking around in it to see if it really fits. You try on all these different selves and abandon just as many. But really it’s about dismantling all that false armor, getting down to what’s real. -Going Bovine

You really haven't changed, you've just become more of yourself. That is really what were all trying to do: become more of ourselves.

There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else's life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.

Be who you are, not who the world wants you to be.

For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.

To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.

To be authentic is literally to be your own author... to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them.

Don't be imitators. The mind is an imitator, because it is easier to play the game of imitation than to become authentically true. Many ideas have been given to you: become like a Buddha, become like Jesus. become like Krishna - as if you have to become everybody else EXCEPT yourself. As if God is only against you. He's for Krishna, for Christ, for Mahavir, for Buddha - only against you. Then why does He create you? Then He seems simply foolish. Why does He go on creating you? If He's interested in Buddha, Hc can create Buddhas. Why you?

Never follow anybody else's idea - that is very dangerous because you will become imitative. Always follow your own nature, self-nature; only then will you attain to freedom. It is better to die following one's nature than to live following somebody's else's nature, because that will be a pseudo life. To die following one's nature is beautiful, because that death too will be authentic.

It was so important for me to lose everything, because I found out what the most important thing is, which is to be true to yourself.

I don't think it's about entertainment. I think it's about being ourselves.

Unraveling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work.

Find out who you are and be that person. That's what your soul was put on this Earth to be. Find that truth, live that truth and everything else will come.

One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.

Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.

To know what that true self is without social pressure is to know your true nature.

Soul is about authenticity. Soul is about finding the things in your life that are real and pure.

What we must try to be, of course, is ourselves and wholeheartedly. We must find out what we really are and what we really want.