A Quote by Laozi

Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things? — © Laozi
Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?
Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course? Can you step back from you own mind and thus understand all things? Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.
Freedom is the freedom you choose, when you're not getting in your own way. The best way to start every day is to wake up and wash your face and look yourself in the mirror, right in the eyes of your reflection, and say, "don't get in my way." Because it's only when we get in our own way that we have to step back or step aside or step over here and not walk at all.
Life throws you curveballs and there are things that happen - you don't understand why they happened at the time. But then you step back and understand you're a better fighter and competitor because of the things that happened.
Being still may sound a little crazy to some, but I really encourage people to simply listen to your own breath and unclog all those thoughts running through your mind. It's important to take a step back.
But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus - mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.
You take a step, then another. That's the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it's a remaking of your own mind.
What I really learned from Tim Burton is that it's important to have your own person in a role because you can't play a character unless there are elements of human behaviour that you yourself understand. I was really struck by how Tim Burton would like to sit and chat about you... or question things which then you had never thought about. It is a good thing to always step back a bit with things like that. But I try my damned hardest to learn something from everything I do.
I try very hard not to take work home, but it can be tricky. Sometimes it feels as if you are wearing your costume underneath your own clothes! I suppose things are always ticking away in the back of your mind.
All things issue from it; all things return to it. To find the origin, trace back the manifestations. When you recognize the children and find the mother, you will be free of sorrow. If you close your mind in judgements and traffic with desires, your heart will be troubled. If you keep your mind from judging and aren't led by the senses, your heart will find peace. Seeing into darkness is clarity. Knowing how to yield is strength. Use your own light and return to the source of light. This is called practicing eternity.
I realized that was what was happening in my work already. I think that's where, as artists, we begin to master our craft: when we're able to step back and understand things.
If you are an enemy to your own mind, other people have to become enemies too, sooner or later. Until you understand, until you can love the thoughts that appear in your mind, then you can love the rest of us. You work with the projector -the mind - not the projected world. I can't really love you until I question the mind that thinks it sees you outside itself . . .
Some people see life as many steps up and try to forget where they are coming from, you understand? A little step in life on a commercial or a material level is a good step, but a big step does not mean a strong step - you tend to lose your roots - and if you don't be careful, you can fall.
If we overcome the pull and "get up and get at it," we will have won a victory. We have kept our own resolve. We can then move to other things, for by small means great things are accomplished. Thus, even this one small step is also in another sense a giant leap.
Being is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.
No one step back, that is the idea.... Fight it out, whatever comes. Let the stars move from the sphere! Let the whole world stand against us!.... What of it? Thus fight! You gain nothing by becoming cowards.... Taking a step backward, you do not avoid any misfortune.
The next great step of mankind is to step into the nature of his own mind.
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