A Quote by Robert W. Firestone

The purpose of the false self is to defend against pain - not deal with reality

Robert W. Firestone

Quote Topics

Against Deal Defend False Pain Purpose Reality Self T Pain

Quote Author

Robert W. Firestone
Author
Born: September 8, 1930

It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self--ceases. I don't know how to say it. But I believe that the reality--the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness--that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Individuals motivated by self-interest, self-indulgence, and a false sense of self-sufficiency pursue selfish ambition for the purpose of self-glorification.

C. J. Mahaney

I think we live in a time where we can all distract ourselves from facing the pain or the reality of all of our lives - tons of ways to hide, to kill pain, to deal with pain.

Benji Madden

Refuse to think in terms of this or that. All pain needs investigation. The mind is nothing else but the self. Assumption obscures reality without destroying it. All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false..Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time.The mind creates time and space and takes its own creations for reality.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

A big part of pain is the subjective reaction of trying to revolt against pain. If it's there, it's better to deal with it. Most of it is "I cannot stand it," and that component is enhancing pain so much.

Matthieu Ricard

People are beginning to realize that self-knowledge is not an end in itself. It's for the purpose of better relationships, so that we can give to our community. You can give from overflow. It's very hard to give from emptiness. . . . People who avoid self-knowledge cause a great deal of pain to themselves as well as to their families and friends.

Jennifer James

It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Defend the church. Defend the family. Defend the non-profit community. Defend them against a government that wants to weaken them.

Rick Santorum

It's better to have the faith to embrace reality with all its pain than to cling to the false comfort of a painless fantasy.

John Ortberg

Those who know in their hearts that they are not really necessary -- and are entirely replaceable-- must inevitably be tempted to misrepresent the nature of their work and build up a false notion of its importance. A further alienation from truth takes place, a further loss of contact with reality. And one thing we can be sure of is that self-deception, whether on the level of the wind and the rain or on that of spiritual reality, must always come up against the real sooner or later, and that its destruction is very painful.

Charles le Gai Eaton

Good pain is pain in the service of a purpose. Bad pain is pain endured because we are resisting a needed growth step.

Henry Cloud

The real you is on the side of God against the false self

John Eldredge

Grief is accepting the reality of what is. That is grief's job and purpose-to allow us to come to terms with the way things really are, so that we can move on. Grief is a gift of God. Without it, we would all be condemned to a life of continually denying reality, arguing or protesting against reality, and never growing from the realities we experience.

Henry Cloud

There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.