Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.

Everyone sees what you appear to be,” observed Machiavelli, “few really know what you are.

« The more thought you give to what people think of you, the less attention you give to what you want, what you like, what you think, how you would like to enjoy life, and more importantly what makes you, YOU. »

As you care less about what people think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves.

Whatever people think of you is really about the image they have of you, and that image isn’t you.

Don't be concerned with other people's impressions of you. They are dazzled and deluded by appearances. Stick with your purpose. This alone with strengthen your will and give your life coherence.

Even if I erase all your memory, still you will be here. Yes? Your family will disappear, your status will disappear, your business will disappear, everything that you own in the world will disappear. But still you are here. So beyond all the things that you identify yourself with, still there is something called as 'you'. That 'you' is not subject to what you accumulate from outside. But unfortunately that 'you' has been so much covered, so much crowded with other things that you never allowed yourself to look at that. You always thought that what you are identified with is much more important than who you really are. Now if your focus shifts, then the other dimension can start opening up for you.

Because if you base your self-worth on what everyone else thinks of you, you hand all your power over to other people and become dependent on a source outside of yourself for validation. Then you wind up chasing after something you have no control over, and should that something suddenly place its focus somewhere else, or change its mind and decide you’re no longer very interesting, you end up with a full-blown identity crisis.

It’s not what you are that counts, it’s what they think you are.

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

I'd think, That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don't seem like I ever have been me.

Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.

[...] the skin is only what we want others to see of us, underneath it not even we know who we are, [...]

Confusion, anger, depression, violence, and conflict arise when humans forget who they are. Yet how easy it is to remember the truth and thus return home: I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am. (Ch 4)