Barry Long Quotes

Your object is to see yourself exactly as you are. Self-knowledge is the discovery of the new: it looks beyond the world that has all the answers and no solutions.

When you observe yourself you must not condemn or approve what you see. If you tell a lie there is no need to judge your-self. The judge cannot be the judged, and even to accept is to judge.

This process of self-discovery is scientific and the invariable rule of science has to be applied - experiment and observe. The experiment is to ask the question; the observation is to look at yourself and see what happens. Being a science the law cannot vary. Any apparent variation is in you: you will have stepped off the way of facts into conclusions. The sun is either shining or it is not. You do not have to conclude; you just look.

The only way we can ever get through to the truth is by finding out what we are not. We do that by looking, by observation.

When self-knowledge reveals the answer it will be a living fact in your own experience. At any time you wish to experience the answer it will be there, just as you can say 'It is night' or 'It is day'. You will know, while the rest of the world is arguing and speculating.

To listen, to learn, your mind has to be still. Have you ever observed that you can have only one thought in your mind at a time?

It is the conscious man or woman who finds the secret of happiness and contentment; and that, surely, is the ultimate success.

Truth cannot be taught but it is quickly recognized by the person ready to discover it.

Truth does not need argument, agreement, theories or beliefs. There is only one test for it and that is to ask yourself 'Is the statement true or false in my experience?'

To believe what another says about you is unconscious, robot thinking. Nothing is true in self-discovery unless it is true in your own experience. This is the only protection against the robot levels of the mind.

You must not believe me. You must realize it in yourself know it, for it is beyond words and thinking. And it has to be experienced without recourse to drugs or insanity.

Absorb what is said as you read but endeavor not to hold on to it or think about it. Read in the moment and each step will take you closer to complete self-knowledge.

It is a little known fact that truth cannot be memorized. Truth has to be discovered now, from moment to moment. It is always fresh, always new, always there for the still, innocent mind that has experienced life without needing to hold on to what has gone before.

You don't gather knowledge when you are getting to know yourself; you lose it. Many of your firmest ideas go out the window. You may feel naked, vulnerable, threatened, argumentative, angry.

You are either ready to discover yourself or you are not. Ready means you have been knowingly or unknowingly practicing self-observation.