Adyashanti Quotes

All the ideas we have about the awakening actually are distortions about what it really is. So we really need to let go of not only all of our ideas of ourself, but all of our ideas about spiritual realization, enlightenment, spiritual awakening. All of those need to be let go of as well, so that we can find out what's the truth, what's the reality of what we are.

Sy Safransky: Didn’t taking the name “Adyashanti” reinforce a certain sense that you are an enlightened holy man?
Adyashanti: Oh, absolutely it did. It’s sort of a ridiculous-sounding Eastern name. (...) I always tell people to call me “Adya,” and leave the “shanti” part off.

Suffering is caused by identification with egoic consciousness. When we identify with egoic consciousness, we go unconscious or become unaware of our true nature as conscious spirit.

The main purpose of the illusion of me is to keep you at all costs from realizing your own nothingness.

The mind is something that happens within you. Thinking is something that happens within what you are. Thinking does not define what you are. Thinking doesn't define anything.

Ego itself is a fiction created in the mind by circular patterns of thinking based on separation. So, 'the ego is the fiction in the mind' - what does that mean? [It means] that ego is basically our sense of self, and the thoughts, ideas and beliefs that circle around that sense of self that go into deriving a bigger, more conceptualized version of ourself. In other words: who we think and imagine ourselves to be.

To have enough curiosity to start to question your deepest identity is absolutely vital and essential to spiritual awakening, and to the realization of peace and freedom.

Awakened values are not really based in morality. They're not based in should or shouldn'ts. Awakened values are values that are inherent within conscious spirit.

Every human being... the way they move in live, how they act, is completely dictated by what they value.

It is the basics that are most important. Never leave this foundation. From this, an incredible depth is to be found - an ongoing revelation of the truth of existence.

Perhaps the most important element of any spiritual teaching is what we bring to it, because this dictates what the teaching will reveal within ourselves.

When we come to the realization that we are not this identity that the mind has created, but we're actually spirit, at that moment spirit has become conscious of itself. It's become conscious of itself as spirit, as ineffable being, as a sort of conscious presence.

Egoic consciousness is something that the vast majority of people live in almost all the time. Humanity is by and large caught in this realm of egoic consciousness, and therefore manifests it in the way that we, human beings, live our lives - both individually and collectively.

Luc Saunders: What do you think happens to individual consciousness after the death of a body?
Adyashanti: The question presumes that there is such a thing as individual consciousness. Awakening shows you that there isn’t. The mind creates the illusion of individual consciousness to convince us that this awareness is ours, that it belongs to us. I imagine that, after the death of the body, it’s very difficult to maintain the illusion of individual consciousness. But who knows? We’ll see. I’ll give you a phone call if I can. [Laughs.]

Over time I found that one of the most important things in any spiritual teaching for anybody is to have a really basic and simple understanding of that teaching. And the reason for that is because as one gets involved in a spiritual teaching, it's really easy to lose sight of the basics, or the foundations.