Idries Shah Quotes

The country is called to the practice of new customs. The walls and surfaces must be cleaned. But minds too must be cleansed, for that is where the error was born.

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Life is full and overflowing with the new. But it is necessary to empty out the old to make room for the new to enter.

One of my favorite feelings is the sense I get from pouring over parts of my past before lighting them up and leaving it all behind me to start over again.

Leaving things behind and starting again is a way of coping with difficulties. I learnt very early in my life that I was able to leave a place and still remain myself.

You wake up in the morning and you look at your old spoon, and you say to yourself, 'Mick, it's time to get yourself a new spoon.' And you do.

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.

There is an opportunity for us to renew ourselves. There's an opportunity for us to leave the past behind and present something different for the future.

Endings are scary and foreign. They split you up emotionally and put you in a place where you don't know what's going to happen next. But with every end of the world, there is a new world that follows.

Just remember that if you've lost something, you will be open to something else.

You need to dismount when your horse is dead. What was relevant 20 years ago is no longer relevant today. Therefore, you need to reinvent yourself.

When I shaved my hair, my friends asked me to keep it, maybe make my own wig out of it, but I wanted the old hair to go; it was not mine. I wanted to let go.

You'll drift apart, it's true, but you'll be out in the open, part of everything alive again.

Life moves forward. The old leaves wither, die and fall away, and the new growth extends forward into the light.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. -

*I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago... *So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. *We get one story, you and I, and one story alone....It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.

A painful time in our life is what I call a healing crisis. We are letting go of something old and opening to something new.

One cannot begin a new dream without abandoning the last [one].

It's about taking everything you thought was true and throwing it out the window. It's about embracing life's unpredictability, letting go of boundaries, and starting over

To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.

We have to discard the past / and, as one builds / floor by floor, window by window, / and the building rises, / so do we keep shedding - first, broken tiles, / then proud doors... and each new day / gleams / like an empty / plate.

You have to give up some of the old so that you can make room for the new.

Do not fear. Look beyond what's dying to what's being born.

Change is in the air, as old patterns fall away and new energies are emerging. Consciously release what needs to be released, and welcome with a full embrace the newness you've prayed for and so richly deserve.