Selected quotes on Inner Attitude
From The Reality of Being
"When I experience this more active thinking and sensing together, I discover a new wish, a feeling of urgency to be like this. It is only at the moment this intensity appears—of wishing to see, of wishing to know what is—that I awake to myself and to what I am as a whole. I awake not in order to change but to know the true, the real. What has changed is my attitude. It is more conscious. And I see that if this active wishing is not here, I will fall back into my dream."
—P. 32
"There is in me something very real, the self, but I am always closed to it, demanding that everything outside prove it to me. I am always on the surface, turned toward the outside in order to take something or to defend myself. Yet there is perhaps another attitude, another disposition, in which I have nothing to take, I have only to receive. I need to receive an impression that nothing outside can give me—an impression of being, of my self having a sense, a meaning. The movement of knowing is a movement of abandon. It is necessary to open one's hands."
—P. 39
"The attitude we take, our inner and outer posture, is at the same time our aim and our way.
At any moment we each have a particular posture, an attitude we cannot avoid. The postures assumed by the body are always the same and provoke corresponding postures or attitudes in the mind and the feeling that are also the same. I am enclosed in a subjective world of habitual attitudes. But I do not see this. I am not even aware of which parts are tense or relaxed. The body has its repertoire of postures that imprison me. I have to find a position, inner and outer, that will free me from my attitudes and allow me to emerge from sleep, to open to another dimension, another world."
—P.49
"Can I say today that I know what I am? Does the attitude of my mind allow me to truly confront this question? This is more important than I think. Am I convinced of my ignorance and of the uselessness of everything I believe I know? I may say so, but do not really feel it. I value my knowledge, and I always want to bring an answer or reach a conclusion. I am conditioned by this. Everything I know limits my perception and conditions my mind. All that I know is a mass of memories that impel me to accumulate, repeating the same kind of experiences."
—P. 55-56
"In turning toward the perception of another quality, I see that my usual thinking, feeling and sensation cannot help, and I give up my ordinary attitude and my illusion about myself. I can "do" nothing. Nevertheless, I can become conscious of how things take place in me, and I can find an attitude, an inner posture, that will allow opening to a higher energy. To be conscious would mean that all the parts of myself have this knowledge. Going toward this opening would require each part to become passive, available to receive this energy, in a conscious movement of remembering myself. The opening would depend on the attention being of equal intensity in all the centers, as though all the parts were attuned. It would be like forming a world in which each part voluntarily took its place."
—P. 83
"In the movement to free my attention, I see that attitude is important. In order to stay present, I need to see when my attitude changes and not give in to the force that takes me."
—P. 89
"In fact, we are prisoners of our attitudes of thinking, feeling and moving, as though caught in a magic circle from which we cannot escape. In order to get out, I would need to be able to take a new attitude—to think otherwise, to feel otherwise, to act otherwise, all at the same time. But, without my knowing it, these three are interconnected and, as soon as I try to change one, the others intervene and I cannot escape. My automatism keeps me on a very ordinary level of thinking and feeling."
—P. 121
Excerpts taken from the reality of being, as cited.