Top 54 Quotes & Sayings by Roger Housden

The ego, as our familiar sense of self, seems predicated on fear. The fear that we might not make it, that we might not get where we want to go. But deep down there is also a grain of fear that we have nothing to give or nothing to offer. I think that's the ego's justifiable anxiety about its substantiality and existence.

Everything constantly changes.

To keep faith with life is to experience that everything- everything that comes to us whatever it is- has its place in the puzzle of our existence.

I don't think one can run out and try and chase love.

When we fall utterly, something gathers us up. But our falling must be without reservation, without expectation, without hope, though not hopeless. You cant plan that kind of falling. When you abandon yourself utterly to life, the river will flow, and the log jam will free. Impossible is another word for grace. Who wouldve thought it, life takes another turn, and you are gathered up into a whole different way of seeing and being.

It is from that region of silence, that wordless knowing comes.

When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in.

There is a stillness in all of us that is really the essence of who we are. A stillness and a silence that doesn't move, that doesn't go anywhere and our task is to experience that while being in time.

I had a classic case of what people call "seeker's disease." That was part of my journey, but now, meaning is like a secret that's revealing itself moment by moment, day by day.

I live in California, where there's a lot of driving entailed. I'm usually going somewhere to be on time to meet someone so I'm necessarily engaged in time. And yet, how can I in that moment of driving my car, be aware of that which is not going anywhere?

Time and the timeless dimension co-exist here, now in this very moment that we're living, this very moment that we're speaking.

Wisdom and knowledge are two different things.

This question of love begins and ends with the willingness to be welcoming to one's own experience as a loving action towards oneself. It may be dark, it may be light, it may be joyous, it may be sorrowful, but it's your experience, and therefore, your life. As we have that kind of loving response towards our own life, then life itself in terms of the outside world, begins to feel different.

Practice remembrance of the present moment, again and again.

If you allow yourself to fully feel the life you're in - not conceptually, but viscerally in the present moment - then that is inherently meaningful.

When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be.

When you die, God and the Angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself.

The natural wish and impetus to feel oneself to be an individual, to be special, includes standing out more than anyone else.

When we are open to ourselves and our own experience, and therefore, open to the world, then the world can respond.

Knowledge is immensely powerful and immensely useful.

Each of us is already special in the sense that nobody has the unique pattern of potentialities that anyone else has.

I woke up early one morning a couple of years ago and felt the tenderness of my being alone, the bitter sweetness of it. It has many colors, being alone. I walked out into my living room and I can say honestly that everything was pouring with life - the red sofa, the chairs with their patterns of roses, even the coffee table with its scattering of books. Everything was alive with the presence of being. Seeing the world though those eyes, I realized that I could never really be alone.

I certainly spent many years in my early life chasing all over the globe for meaning and purpose. I'd feel like I'd found it, then it would fade away again.

It's the bringing together of knowledge and wisdom that is a great part - perhaps the greatest part - of our life's journey.

I belong on this earth in the way that an oak tree does.

The American culture especially, and Western culture in general, urges us to not only become the best that we can be, but also win against the competition.

What's not often in the present moment is the thinking mind.

We can acquire as much knowledge as we would like with a few taps on our keyboard. That's extremely valuable, but wisdom comes again from some different dimension.

Struggle has a natural place in our life, but the fight or flight syndrome is often false struggle. There are times for that but we can have that reaction in areas of our life where it's not successful. Areas that concern existential issues or qualities of life - like meaning or purpose or love. These things actually come to us more as we let go of struggling to achieve them.

Love, like everything else, exists in a spectrum. Love of another, love of the world, love of God, all these loves are really one love in different degrees of light and density.

We have all had serendipitous moments - the most unlikely meetings out of nowhere - that can happen when we have this quality of deep acceptance towards ourselves.

If we're trying to get the perfect house, the perfect relationship or the perfect job, it's likely there's some kind of fear driving us beyond the natural wish to improve. It's really the refusal to acknowledge that life - including ourselves - is simply not perfect.

The love of someone else is more accessible or more possible if one lives with a sense of loving embrace towards oneself because that extends out into the world.

The body is the doorway to the timeless, because the body is always where we are and always in the present moment.

We have to be on time every day for one thing or another, so how can we be on time and yet not in time at the same time?

Day by day, tiny specks of us float away.

Time, for example, is intimately connected with the goddess Kali, which partly accounts for her destructive nature. Energy - in Einstein's equation, E=MC2 - is personified in India as Shakti in her various guises.

We live in an age of knowledge, with the great god Google, that we can refer to at any time on any subject.

The more we enter our own gifts, the more we feel that sense of proportion. In that sense, I think our life lies in the fulfillment of those potentialities, whatever they may be.

The everyday, familiar sense of self who lives in time, and that dimension which we've called presence, that is always here, that is still and quiet.

The heart, like the grape, is prone to delivering its harvest in the same moment it appears to be crushed.

The capacity to become aware of the givens of our existence - such as change - and to actually welcome those as just part of our human experience releases the struggle.

People around us change and circumstances change. We can often find ourselves struggling against those things.

When we turn our gaze to the inside, it becomes difficult to locate this familiar sense of self. To overcome that fear we need to feel special in some way.

When we're fully engaged in the present moment, no matter what we're doing, the question of meaning never seems to arise. It's because we feel fulfilled and that is inherently meaningful.

The great French Impressionist painter Renoir, right at the end of his very long life, said to a friend, "I am just now learning to paint." Renoir carried his gift with a humility which realized how much he still had to learn. Anyone who goes deeply into a field in life and realizes this, gains a sense of proportion that can only make you humble.

Some of us have the good fortune of some type of natural gift, whether it's playing tennis or painting or writing.

I bring my attention to my hands on the steering wheel and notice how the chatter in my mind begins to fall away as my breathing slows. I'm awake and alive, simply driving the car going where I need to go, on time and in time. A still point of the turning world. With that awareness, I bring my attention into my body, and the body is the doorway to the timeless, because the body is always where we are and always in the present moment.

I've come to see that the way my life shows up is actually my purpose.

In today's world it is deceptively easy to lose sight of our direction and the things that matter and give us joy. How quickly the days can slip by, the years all gone, and we, at the end of our lives, mourning the life we dreamed of but never lived. Poetry urges us to stand once and for all, and now, in the heart of our own life.

If you want to know your purpose, look at the unfolding of your life, because that is your gift to the world. It may not look spectacular, but nobody else has the precise life that you do. It's a gift no one else can offer.

Be willing to be where you actually are. In my experience, that is the most inherently meaningful experience you can have.

Most of us make an effort to do and be the best we can be, which leads to a distinction we need to make between the notion of struggle and the notion of effort.

A knowing of what needs to be done or what needs to be said or what needs to happen at any given time. That is wisdom and wisdom does not come from the accumulation of knowledge.