Having a particular destination tends to motivate you; hence it is easier to commit yourself to the process. But if your aim is to pursue the truth without deciding beforehand what that truth should be, then commitment is more difficult. This commitment to inquire manifests as a determination and a persistence in the openness, which support you in inquiring into and discerning the truth as fully and precisely as possible. So this commitment to the truth means that you’re not going to quit. You’re not going to jump ship when things get tough. – Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey, ch. 19
To the extent that we live from the perspective of trying to find fulfillment, or from trying to get better, we live in an empty world. However, if we just rest, forget all the searching and give up the seeking, the world becomes beautiful and full. When you are seeking, you separate your consciousness, your soul, from your being, from your source, so that your whole perception then is perception devoid of being. Regardless of what you acquire or achieve, you are poverty-stricken because you are operating from an impoverished perspective. In this situation, you can only perpetuate your impoverished point of view. That seeking, by its nature, is a movement away from the fullness of reality and the source of pleasure, peace, or whatever is so feverishly being sought. Reality can’t be reached by seeking; you do not see it because you are seeking for something else. Whatever you are seeking, it could seem more and more refined, or closer to the truth, or closer to fulfillment, but none of this will make a difference. It is the activity of seeking that matters; no matter what you seek, this activity is the same. You might be seeking your father’s approval, or a lover, or success in your work, or enlightenment. It is all seeking, so it is all the same. – Diamond Heart Book Four, ch. 2
Most of us approach spiritual work with the belief that if we work on ourselves hard enough, we will finally hit upon the right state, and then we will be able to leave ourselves alone. We believe that something will happen to us—we will be hit by a bolt of lightning and be transformed—and then we won’t have to improve ourselves anymore. Trying to find the right state or the right trick to get into the enlightened state does not work because from the enlightened state we see that everything, including ourselves, is already perfect and needs no changes. Enlightenment is our innate nature; we don’t need to be hit by anything and we can leave ourselves alone right now. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, ch.14
Do not ever let yourself feel you’ve arrived. The moment you feel you’ve arrived, penetrate deeper, until there comes a time when you do not care whether you’ve arrived or not. Then you have arrived, but you do not think you have arrived. You just do not care. You haven’t the slightest interest in whether you have arrived somewhere or not. That means the mind is finally quiet. As long as you care whether you have arrived or not, you haven’t. You might have had some experience, but the experience is not complete unless there is complete innocence, the way a baby is innocent—without the vaguest idea about reality or enlightenment. What’s that? I do not know—nothing, as far as I know. Innocence is before the whole thing developed: pre-mind. – Diamond Heart Book Four: Indestructible Innocence, ch. 8
To the extent that we live from the perspective of trying to find fulfillment, or from trying to get better, we live in an empty world. However, if we just rest, forget all the searching and give up the seeking, the world becomes beautiful and full. When you are seeking, you separate your consciousness, your soul, from your being, from your source, so that your whole perception then is perception devoid of being. Regardless of what you acquire or achieve, you are poverty-stricken because you are operating from an impoverished perspective. In this situation, you can only perpetuate your impoverished point of view. That seeking, by its nature, is a movement away from the fullness of reality and the source of pleasure, peace, or whatever is so feverishly being sought. Reality can’t be reached by seeking; you do not see it because you are seeking for something else. Whatever you are seeking, it could seem more and more refined, or closer to the truth, or closer to fulfillment, but none of this will make a difference. It is the activity of seeking that matters; no matter what you seek, this activity is the same. You might be seeking your father’s approval, or a lover, or success in your work, or enlightenment. It is all seeking, so it is all the same. – Diamond Heart Book Four: Indestructible Innocence, ch.2
The less a human being is seeking the more he is fulfilled. A miserable human being is one who is seeking intensely. I am talking about emotional suffering, not about someone who has a roof fall on his head or something like that. But even if a roof falls on your head, if you do not engage in the activity of searching, you have a better chance of recovery and well-being. Even if you have no money, you will be happy if you let yourself be. Even if you have millions, if you are seeking, you will be miserable. Of course, if you have no money and no food, there will be hunger and it will hurt. Even then, you might have another kind of contentment and fulfillment that is beyond that hurt. – Diamond Heart Book Four: Indestructible Innocence, ch.2
There are many forces that push us towards the attitude of seeking. We have a multitude of desires, a tremendous amount of hatred for ourselves and others, and an endless ignorance about who we are and what reality is. Part of my understanding is that we have to inquire into all of that so that the forces and energies that motivate the search will decrease and eventually disappear. But from the beginning, we need to see that searching is suffering, and that seeking, by its very nature, is abandoning ourselves, that the action of looking separates us from our natural unfoldment and pushes away Being. Searching is acting from a wrong premise, while understanding is a natural, ordinary process that requires no effort. – Diamond Heart Book Four: Indestructible Innocence, Ch. 2