John M. Dorsey summary:
There is but one question of psychological importance: Is it I? Quite as there is but one basic answer of
psychological importance: It is I.
John M. Dorsey was a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and professor at the University of Michican and at Wayne State University
for 53 years. He defined science as an organized system of self-knowledge, regularly overlooked in the illusion of objectivity.
He defined religion as the conscious and/or unconscious sensing of one’s own divinity. Imagination he defined as all
mental activity. He said that his mind experiences only itself; that its every adventure is within it.
Man is the dwarf of himself.
Emerson
Dorsey says that the sure immediate cure for every complaint is to give myself another dose of God-consciousness. It is
my God-consciousness which turns all apparent badness to goodness, all apparent time to eternity, all seeming space to infinity,
all manifest war to peace, all evident impermanence to immortality, all pain to pleasure, in short, all seeming deviltry to
divinity. Of whatever happens, I observe "Something divine has happened."
Being a good medicine man means that you have to be god and the devil, both of them. Lame Deer
He continues by saying that corporeality is just unconscious spirituality. Whatever is is divinely perfect or divine, whether
I am perfectly aware or perfectly unaware of it. My discovery of my nature is my discovery of God, for God is all. You either
have illness or allness, because mind only experiences itself; its every adventure is within it. "Out there" is always a dislocation
of "in here." All forms of illness are self-ignoration; health is total self-awareness. "To ignore oneself is to ignore one’s
divine powers. Psychopathology is the product of my self-depreciation, as when I ignore the wonderfulness of any of my experiences.
Self-insight is not a matter of change, or improvement or progress. Rather it is recognizing that my present life is always
excitingly new, fresh, original, illimitable, faultless and subjective.
My being able to give my name to my every experience enables me to see it as my own power. Every word that I use speaks
of myself and my world. My one idea, that of self-conscious living, includes my everyone and my everything. My fellowman is
nothing but my own living of my fellowman, thus all of my conversation is only and entirely about me and for me. "
Dorsey observes that where self-consciousness is absent, a symptom is present. Every symptom marks the spot where self-amnesia
occurs. He traces the illusion of separation to the illusion of togetherness to the illusions of space, time, and motion,
each also in turn to the unrecognized creation of your own imagination.
Treatment is the recognition of the helpfulness of Whatever Is. Even the body is entirely a psychological construct. Our
imagination is over-worked because we are chronically addicted to indulging in not-self ideas. "All of my otherness is mine.
Any words or ideas that are used to refer to not-me lead to disease. Whatever I say not-I about reduces my manpower." The
idea of plurality and quantity is delusion; the idea of oneness and quality is reality.
"Selfishness is a short-sighted view of myself in which I find my world uncaring and sick. Health is to see that hurting
another is hurting me. All of my negations using unpleasant words such as bad, wrong, false, unkind, and unholy merely express
by making unconscious whatever of my personal power I feel unequal to imagining with love."
You can know nothing of God, of nature, of heaven or hell, or of yourself, except insofar as these things
are self-evident in you William Law
Dorsey illustrates how symptoms are the painful living of some part of our experience which we call not-self. "My painful
jealousy is my living of my rival as though he is not of my own creation. If my loved one is helping himself or herself with
infidelity, I need to recognize that it is his or her problem only. The suspicious patient is rejecting himself as both persecuted
and persecutor. The painfulness of grief and bereavement are helpful efforts on the mourner’s part to overcome the illusion
of separation. A delinquent believes that one part of himself can profit from the loss to another part of himself. Depression
is the mourning of any so-called loss of power for the purpose of making myself discover that I never did live that power
consciously as my own."
In other words, Dorsey is saying that all of my symptoms are therapeutic self-rejections I use to escape overwhelming myself
with responsibility. Any not-I idea is a fixed idea and controls the man. "Be kind to your everyone and everything. It is
I. Self-reference words are peaceful; other-reference words are fighting words. To punish my child is to punish myself, and
my child grows up to punish his child also." Falling in love is an unconscious act in which one does not realize one is creating
the entire experience.
To be consciously spiritual is the hardest, most exhilarating and comprehensive labor I have ever found.
Dorsey explains further that whatever is, is soul. "It was only by discovering my divinity that I discovered the divinity
of everyone in the world. Whatever is, is perfect or divine, whether I am perfectly aware of it or not. Whoever cannot see
goodness in badness cannot see goodness to begin with. I can only please or displease myself; only my fellowman can please
or displease himself. Every depreciating word is a sign of an ignored good."
To summarize, Dorsey has discovered a way to extend one’s self-awareness beyond amnesia by learning to lovingly appreciate
and thus to transform all of ones’ self-depreciating self-judgments in a way that the divine is revealed. He says that
there is but one sickness and one sin, each a misnomer for a holy and healthy effort to help oneself to see through the illusion
of separateness. "My helpful feeling of sin or sickness is my reminder that I am separating my personal identity from my whole
divinity. Guilt is any spot in myself for which I cannot feel responsible. I cannot exercise humane care over any of my life
which I do not recognize as my own."
Dorsey is certainly by any standard an infinity consciousness theorist. In fact he speaks of himself as a radical
individualist because he says that we can only experience our own consciousness and he believes that all of his experiences
are nothing but the creation of his own imagination. He contends that all of our problems are mistaken judgments about ourselves
and that any symptom has its useful and therapeutic function. He states that perception controls our story about science and
spirituality.
Dorsey contributed very significantly to the unfolding human understanding of the science of consciousness. His contribution
ties in very closely to Hawkins’ explanation of how each negative state of mind has its upside if we can see it.
What is Radical Consciousness? Is God Radically Conscious? I would have to say yes and no. God is still caught in the mediocre
consciousness that he created in order to experience a world. God is still waiting for radical consciousness to free him.
Radical Consciousness frees both God and humanity. Without radical consciousness, neither God nor man is free and awake. In
radical consciousness God can experience full human partnership, and Man can experience full divine partnership. Without this
full partnership, neither God nor man has reached full potential, awareness and fellowship. What a day of rejoicing that will
be. Can God or man rejoice alone while asleep to one another?
John Dorsey Treasures:
Out there is a dislocation of in here.
My mind experiences only itself, its every adventure is within it.
In sickness let me not so much say, am I getting better of my pain, as am I getting better for it.
Shakespeare
What we wish, we believe. Demosthenes
Become what you are. Pindar
Nothing occurs at random, but everything for a reason. Leucippus
Mind is infinite and self-powerful and mixed with nothing, but it exists alone itself by itself. Anaxagorus
Good and bad are the same. Heraclitus
That which benefits human life is God. Hippocrates
The patient’s nature is the doctor that cures his illness. Hippocrates
The nature, even of the body, can only beunderstood as a whole. Plato
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Tennyson
Every question is a disguised answer, quite as every problem is an unrecognized solution.
We cannot separate being and thought, for they are one and the same Parminedes
Whatever is, is real.
Nearly every question does not clearly pose the really needed one: "Is it I?" .
Analagously, nearly every answering reply does not really posit the really needed one: "It is I."
I do everything for myself; the appearance of another’s doing something for me is an illusion which,
in every instance, costs me life-saving self appreciation.
All is perfect.
Whatever is is perfect. Every appearance of evil,weakness, wrong, sin, badness, untruth, or of any other apparent
negation of good, is simply a perfect, desirable, helpful sign of an individual’s life-saving limits of momentary self-consciousness.
Education is nothing but one’s own contrived help to discover his own existing but still unrecognized divine
selfhood.
My agony is perfect, even as I am perfectly unaware that it is.
The self-analyst needs above all to renounce his (illusional) "imperfection, traceable to his resorting to
his objectivity (that is, his ignored subjectivity).
The hygenic truth is that only I can please or displease myself in any respect whatsoever; only my fellowman
can please or displease himself in any respect whatsoever.
Whatever is is perfect. Awareness of perfection is for the most part perfectly ignored
False is whatever we deny as our conscious identity, on account of its overwhelming my sense of my unity.
Self-reverence is the power that discloses all as perfect
Whatever is, is divinely perfect, or perfectly divine. Why is there so much written about utopia when this
is it?
Kant allowed no objective validity to knowledge.
Self-rejection allows its creator to escape overwhelming himself with responsibility.
Be kind to everyone and everything, it is I.
My discovery of my nature is my discovery of God.
God is All.
A thief is a divine thief; a cheat is a divine cheat; a drunkard is a divine drunkard; a liar is a divine liar.
Blasphemy can be no more than a prayer, a blessing, that has hidden itself.
My every symptom announces the consequences of my efforts to curb my mental freedom.
Depression is mourning the loss of my power for the sole purpose of making myself discover that I never did live
that power consciously as my own.
All loss is illusional.
Is it I? Is your ultimate test of every truth.
Denial of one’s divinity is the irreligion of the religious.
My own divinity is the only possible basis for my belief in God, for I am all of all I can conceive.
Your scripture reveals that your unerring way of ‘clearing’ up anything in your mind consists specifically
in your loving it.
I try to say yes to whatever I live. Without that first appreciation, my no can only mean repression.
My hate is hurt love
When I say that the material universe exists only in the mind, I mean that it is absolutely dependent on the conception
of the mind for its existence. The human body and the brain itself exist only mentally, in the same sense that other things
do. Johnathon Edwards.
Godliness is allness and therefore cannot be exalted at the expense of manliness or anything else.
Therapy which overlooks the perfection of what is, and denies helpfulness to any existing condition, is assuming
that one existent can influence another, and ignoring the allness of individuality and is claiming superiority for Whatever
is not.
Whatever is , is perfect—blame is perfect fault-finding based upon, and compensatory for, insufficient fact-finding
Against boredom even the gods themselves struggle in vain. Neitzsche
I contain multitudes. Whitman
If we cannot conceive of the Good and the Perfect, it is because we are afraid of overwhelming our sense of identity,
in our story about who we are. We have populated our world with beliefs about good and evil and upon this imaginative landscape
we have based our identity, and so we find it more helpful to resist the idea of perfection in order to maintain our sanity.
But from Augustine it had been written that whatever is, is good. John Dorsey picked up this theme in modern times and connected
the pieces of the puzzle into a therapeutic understanding of self-awareness. Whatever is, is divinely perfect, or perfectly
divine. In Symptoms I am picking up this theme again, 40 years later, to re-connect ourselves to the notion of Jesus
"Be ye perfect" to the understanding of St. Augustine;s "Whatever is, is good" to psychoanalyst, John Dorsey’s "Whatever
is, is perfect" to a Course in Miracles "I am as perfect as God created me."
If whatever is, is good, that includes our symptoms. If we cannot envision our symptoms as valuable information
about our short-sighted story, then we will continue to suffer distorted self-esteem. You cannot ignore your perfection without
distorting your self-esteem. You cannot ignore your divinity without distorting your humanity. A Course In Miracles picks
up the theme that you are the perfect son of God as God created you. We have chosen to ignore our divinity, although Jesus
did not ignore his perfection and divinity nor ours. Almost no one in modern times speaks of perfection. I have searched the
literature high and low and there is almost nothing in mainstream western philosophical and western literature on the subject.
Why has John Dorsey’s contribution been ignored? Perfection is considered to be pure ignorance; sounding insane, it
is a threat to our present sense of identification with guilt and punishment. Psychologists see it as a brand of compulsivity.
For the most part it is a forbidden word, although we may hear words like wholeness or holistic. In order to use the word
"perfect" you have to be able to use the word in a spiritual/metaphysical sense. Some, such as Jung, have turned to eastern
thought and speak of the Self.
There is surely a piece of Divinity in us…He that understands not this much hath not his instruction
or first lesson, is yet to begin the alphabet of man
Thomas Brown, Religio Medici
The question is have we started on our conscious spiritual path, or are we still on our unconscious spiritual path.
We are either conscious or unconscious spiritual beings in a human body.
Loving whatever I experience, painful or not, is essential for the activation of my self-healing power.
To the degree that we are conscious spiritual beings, we begin to see our view of the world changing. As long as
we hold any grievance, we will not see perfection. Grievances are created by a chaotic impotent mind. If we have a sadistic
or impotent god, such a god was created by our finite mind.
My word ‘god’ is my name for my conscious perfection; my word ‘devil’ is my
name for my unconscious perfection
John Dorsey
Every sign and symptom of health trouble describes (1) the nature of the disturbance, and (2) the
nature of the cure. Therefore, painful as it may be, it is the course of wisdom to regard every indication of my heath ordeal
as being positively healthful, in view of its profound and indispensable meaning for my learning how to mend and thus preserve
my life.
John M. Dorsey
I would not trade the reality of perfection for the illusion of progress.
John M. Dorsey
Divinity is scientifically observable
John M. Dorsey
…illusional dualities include God-devil, good-evil, heaven-hell, right-wrong, just-unjust, condemnation-redemption,
sacred-profane, better-worse, spirit-flesh
John M. Dorsey
A negative feeling can be nothing but an inhibited positive one
John M. Dorsey
Marvelous advance in self-appreciation can result by my growing from ‘What is there in it for
me’ to ‘What is there of me in it?’
John Dorsey
Unless I learn how to handle my instinctive avoidance of pain and search for pleasure, I shall be
unable to discover the life-saving and life-giving function of my pain and unhappiness. Large areas of my living are painful,
and must be endured as my own living if I would grow consciously whole.
John M. Dorsey
All of my existence is here and now living. Eternity consists of nowness; infinity consists of hereness.
Such understanding of the necessary presence of my mental activity discloses the necessarily illusional nature of memory,
including forgetting. It can also rescue me from my addiction to my deadening illusion of being a ‘mortal’ one
conducting a merely ‘mortal’ existence.
John M. Dorsey
The all-abiding and all-pervading truth is that only perfection can exist. What I am not ready to
live consciously as my self-identity, I can live unconsciously as not-I. I actually owe my being alive to my just being able
to live through whatever I do experience. Later, gradually, I can grow the conscious self-interest to live it with grateful
appreciation.
John M Dorsey
Dorsey has learned to reduce to self-consciousness all that passes for science, logic, religion, philosophy,
sensation, perception, observation, emotion or every other mental seeming.
Symptomatic living is the living of our limited story. All living is spiritual living, whether with awareness or
unawareness. The stronger our ego story, the weaker our God-awareness. Healing is the extension of I into non-I. Wherever
we do not expand into Not_I, an illness, accident or misfortune will arise to signify self-ignorance. The purpose of education
as well as healing is to expand self-awareness and decrease self-ignorance, to decrease the size of the zone of Not-I.
Jean claimed that she had poor memory, and couldn’t recall the most simple math tables, although she is quite
bright, but when she told me about her childhood, it is no wonder, because all of her available memory was eaten up by pain,
and there was little left for times tables.
Criticism is unawareness; gratitude is awareness. All conflicts is a conflict between one illusion and another,
between one false self and another. There is no conflict between truth and illusion.
My problem cannot be that I am too selfish, but that I am not sufficiently selfish about all of me, including my
"you." My every word is a synonym for I, but it seems easier common sense to write pages of futility taceabel to pluralities
of no possible responsibility,. Self-repudiation and self-ignoration run the highest possible health risk.
All that I can ever do is to be; and all that I can ever consciously be is whatever I am willing to discover of
me.
The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats. Emerson
My solisptic stand is the most objectionable of all, the most unpopular, denounced and defamed because it discovers
the most personal resistances. Discontent occurs when we repudiate any mental content as our own. I have learned to appreciate
all unpleasure as inhibited pleasure. I discern Universal Man only in individual man. All of my understanding is intuitive.
Everyone is great. Consciously honored greatness is necessary for the direct spirited perception of truth. However much of
my fellowman I see as in need, that much of myself I see in need.
Self-consciousness is my choice life vocation. If I do not consciously experience my innate goodness, then I experience
doubt, misgiving, fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, and other similar symptoms of impeded love. I am whatever I mind. My university
is all about me. I grew from duality to unity. It is impossible to influence or be influenced by another. If I am called unorthodox,
mystic, or pantheistic, I realize I am my likes as well as my dislikes. I do not allow names to petrify self-unkindness. Any
so-called bad name is a repressed good name. My diagnostic power begins and ends with one truth, namely, It is I. My initial
and final diagnoses are always, It is I. Faith in illusional materiality arises from being unfaithful to my spirituality.
Every pupil and teacher is always his one and only subject. I discover the new man ever existing in myself. My love of nature
is entirely an extension of my self-interest. The hardest study of all is self-study, which is the only study there is.
All of my mind is my own. I cannot admit that I generate my all. I am allured into all kinds of studies which seem
easier than self-study. All other studies are easier to master. I live all of my disowned experiences with distress. I cannot
repudiate any of my mind's nature without its assuming obsessive force and illusional meaning. Whatever seems alien to me
is unconscious self-control. Any commonsense vocabulary is built-in self-belittlement. The Upanishads say that a husband is
dear because you love the Self. Whatever exists is its own cause, its own effect, its own all. Straying from the responsibility
of conscious responsibility for any and all of my living is signalized by symptoms of health trouble. I honor every sign or
symptom of health trouble to warn me about such perilous straying.
When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- My conscious silopsism can grow only out of my unconscious solipsism. Self-insight, or willing self-consciousness,
is the unit of mental strength. My divinity is the most difficult of all self-meaning to see as entirely my own. Who I am
is who I live self-consciously, and is entirely my own responsibility. At birth I was incapable of understanding what it meant
to be an individual, but for the rest of my life it is my responsibility to grow what I consider to be an individual. All
of my present mentality must include and honor all of my previous mentality. To repress any of my past living is not healthy.
I cannot disconnect myself from myself. Being a conscious individualist is rooted in being an unconscious individualist. All
of mentality, including my seeming objectivity, is really subjectivity. I can acquire no addition to my being, I can only
grow it. (How can I add anything to myself, when myself is all that is?) Self-trust must include appreciating my capacity
for self-deception.
I help myself to realize the genius in the commonplace, the imaginary in the real, the spiritual in the material,
the sanity in the irresponsible, the societal in the solitary, the health in sickness, the tender in the tough, the strength
in weakness, the conscious in the unconscious. I renounce every word of mine which implies habitual suffering. Living difficultly
is always a strengthening experience. I cannot make an unintegrated self integrated. I have always been integrated. I am learning
of my integration and wholeness. Knowledge is grown, not acquired.
Life is a story told by idiots. Shakespeare
Had you rather be a victim or responsible? There is no such thing as a responsible victim. Had you rather be an
insane or responsible? There is no such thing as responsible insanity. What does it mean to be responsible? It means to be
aware, that is all. Unawareness is irresponsibility for that which we have rejected as not-I. Awareness is responsibility
for all of my living. Symptoms arise when I believe that the awareness of responsibility is overwhelming.
All nature is but art, unknown to thee
All chance direction, which thou dost not see
All discord, harmony not understood,
All partial evil, universal good
And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right
Alexander Pope
Whatever is, is one.
John Dorsey
Hate is hurt love
Guilt is hurt responsibility
Anxiety is hurt potency
Anger is hurt peace
Jealousy is unappreciated self-possession
Blame is repudiated praise
Disgust is rejected hunger
Suspicion is forbidden trust
Doubt is denied faith
Shame is prohibited pleasure
Intolerance is strained tolerance
Pain is disowned pleasure
Boredom is overwhelmed averted excitement
Unpleasantness is undeveloped joy
Unhappiness is prohibited happiness
Hate is inflamed love
Hate is the resistance to the living of loving
Blame is the resistance to the living of praise
Suspicion is the resistance to the living of trust
Intolerance is the resistance to the living of tolerance
Unhappiness or pain is the resistance to the living of happiness or pleasure
My every painful feeling is a symptom expressing my complaining self-love and is a health ordeal constituted
of struggling love. My each unpleasant kind of living is my love’s healing effort.
The sane person… offers no advice, no correction, , no knowledge, no law, no treatment, --only
profound reverence for his human individuality as ever divine.
John Dorsey
Working to create further self-insight…stirs up my ancient fear of losing my prevailing cherished sense
of my personal identity
John Dorsey
Knowing your neighbor is impossible. All that you can know is your own creation of your neighbor, and what
your neighbor knows about you is his creation of you. I grow the meanings which I name my neighbor.
One does not see anything until he sees its beauty. Oscar Wilde
You can’t get rid of what is truly yours, even if you were to throw it away
Goethe
The idea that any of my mental growth is alien to me necessarily involves me in delusions of alien
control.
John Dorsey
What nature makes thee mourn, she makes thee heal
Coleridge
All language is poetry, waiting to be named self
John Dorsey
I cannot know anything about anyone or anything but myself.
To claim that I can is to deny the allness and nowness of my subjectivity.
Dorsey
Symptom formation occurs in the interest of avoiding overwhelming anxiety
Freud
If I do not appreciate the life-saving meaning of anxiety, I create a symptom.
I see all of my living as helpful. Appreciation for my Whatever Is helps me to realize my wholeness.
My Whatever Is which appears to injure is necessarily the only helpful event which can possibly occur when it does. Any so-called
therapy which presupposes melioration overlooks the perfection and helpfulness of What Is.
Guilt marks the spot where I am unable to support the feeling of personal responsibility 93 I renounce my every
temptation to live my fellow creature live himself as if he coukld be a tool of an illusional exploiter. I must be able to
conceive myself as able to perpetuate every kind of crime if I would live my delinquency experience insightfully. A delinquent
tries to believe that he can help himself by breaking the law, that one part of himself can gain from the loss of, and to,
another part of himself
He learns to see that he is both the perpetrator and victim of his crimes.
Be a man and do not follow me--follow yourself.
Neitzsche
I never complain about any of my living that I see as my living
When I see that I am both the persecuted and the persecutor, I can see how I am rejecting myself.
"That too, I am" is my alternative to self-hypnosis.
My legs refuse to function is a rejection of my own authority
I see through my eyes, not with them
I am the author of my world and responsible for it.
I am is the only unencumbered posture; I have is human imposture l
I deny nothing. Every consideration has its righful existent
Every patient is a conscious or unconscious psychotherapist
Every woman has her husband and her child with her wherever she is
Love is wholly in him who loves; the beloved is only a pretext. Alphonse Karr
Every man’s his own friend my dear…Charles Dickens
Number one is the magic number. You can’t consider yourself as number one, without considering me too as
the same and all the others.
The physician’s wife's husband is always with her; her husband lives his wife 24 hours a day.
Each person can be faithful or unfaithful to himself or herself, only.
My mind experiences only itself; its every adventure is within.
How can I enjoy the power and glory of my life responsibly, if I cannot see it as mine..
Out there is always a dislocation of in here.
More Dorsey Quotes:
There are drugs for putting me to sleep, and for exciting me in my dream of being awake--but there is no drug for
my waking myself up to myself
It is only possible for a given individual to understand or misunderstand, himself.
I make myself conscious so that I can avoid making myself cancerous, contagious, criminal, contentious, and otherwise
crazed.
It is hell on earth to be born a god and to die with a shrinking and sinking estimate of my adorable self
Every pain is a growing pain. Living is awfully wonderful
When the precious power of spirituality is repressed, one’s own divinity is not discovered.
The pleasing illusion that one person can agree with another leads to the displeasing illusion that one can disagree
with another.
All that any man can really want is himself, and his conscious discontent is desirable until he succeeds in finding
himself.
There is but one sin and one sickness, the illusion of separation, which reminds me that I am
separating my sense of personal identity from my whole divinity.
Guilt is the spot where I cannot feel responsible, so I feel guilty for any area of self that I deny.
Hatred is outraged love. Jealousy is narrowly restricted love. Fear is threatened loss of love. Guilt is repudiated
love.
God is my name for conscious perfection. Evil is my name for my unconscious perfection.
My symptoms are my attempts at self-help because they are being used by me to support my belief in my separated
self.
If my loved one is helping himself or herself with infidelity, I need to recognize that it is his or her problem
only.
One never complains about any of his own living which he clearly sees as his own.
Depression is the mourning of any so-called loss of power for the purpose of making myself discover that I never
did live that power consciously as my own.
All loss is imaginary and illusional.
All of my symptoms are therapeutic self-rejections I use to escape overwhelming myself with responsibility.
Be kind to your everyone and everything
Resistance is resistance to my prevailing sense of personal identity.
Any Not-I idea is a fixed idea and controls me
My recognition of the useful educational force of every symptom has been my supreme medical insight.
I make myself jealous to make myself aware that I am practicing self-rejection.
All fidelity is self-fidelity
Only life teaches everyone what he is. Goethe
If I love you, what concern is that of yours? Goethe
Self-ignorance is the most costly form of bliss
My enjoyment of myself is basically my life’s work
Living with the Essenes was conducive to Jesus discovering his divinity.
In sickness let me not so much say, am I getting better of my pain? as am I getting better for it? Shakespeare
The conscious study of the ultimate ground of existence: reality, the world of imagination
I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart’s affection and the truth of imagination.
Keats
Let me consciously use my protean imagination, rather than seem subject to it
Sin is a sign of my unreadiness to recognize salvation in that disguise
A fall from grace can only be a fall to unrecognized grace
We try to limit imagination’s work to the one assignment of assuring himself that he lives in an external
world (concealing the truth that his external world exists only in and of himself).
Phenomenon is noumenon unrecognized
The term "imagination" subsumes the activation of any of my mental powers
Insofar as I require praise, I lack conscious self-respect
You cannot get outside of your own experience
We are gifted with the power of imagination…even in science some regard imagination as a faculty to be feared
and avoided rather than employed. John Tyndall
I see only benefit deriving from complete freedom of my imagination
All passivity is illusional
I need all of the power of my creative imagination to be able to conceive that I really am whatever momentarily
may appear as not-I
I renounce any victorious living and rely on self-conscious living, for what could I be victorious over?
My repression always involves self-rejection, resistance to consideration, withdrawal from conscious imagination
All of my frustration and feeling of impotence derives only from my limited use of my conscious imagination.
All of my life satisfaction and feeling of power derives only from my uninhibited use of my conscious imagination.
Research is me-search
In rescuing his overworked imagination from his chronic addiction to indulging his illusion of not-self, every
physician begins to esteem his imagination as his most cherished possession. He becomes willing to classify all of his mental
activity as imagination, thereby obviating such false distinctions as real or imagined pain, and real or imagined pleasure.
My patient’s craving for medical attention is a necessary specific compensation for restrictions of consciousness.
Attention is a function of consciousness.
All sickness is unrecognized health
Every man is his every woman as every woman is her every man.
Every patient’s disease is his only available treatment
There is no peace except that which each individual consciously makes with himself
I need to see and consciously exercise my spiritual insight and self-control, and also to indulge my habits of
a lifetime which appear to deny the allness-oneness-wholeness-nowness of my individuality.
My every so-called external fact is a real figment of my creative imagination.
I am consciously devoted to enjoying my wonderfully difficult, embarrassingly unexpected, tremendously troublesome,
enormously demanding, perfectly just, inconceivably powerful , and in every respect divinely awesome, peaceful existence.
Anxiety-free placid contentment is but one kind of joyful living.
All of my error, ignorance, and illusion and every other kind of self-deception is a product of imagination.
Psychotherapy means getting to know myself, getting to imagine all of my experience as self-activity.
A healthy happy marriage means continually conceiving one’s spouse as a stranger (i.e. beloved, independent,
original, novel, peace-making). Everyone is always a stranger to himself. Appreciate your spouse and child as ever new, not
familiar. A child thinks, imagines, and phantasies as it pleases. Potency of imagination is one’s only potency
As a blind artist I can paint in my imagination; as a deaf mute I can speak and hear in my imagination, on a strict
dietary regimen I can eat and drink as I please in my imagination. My running and jumping experiences have always been entirely
psychological experiences.
All resistance is resistance to dangerous living. I resist extending the use of my imagination, which although
healthful, is fraught with the greatest danger to my prevailing sense of personal identity.
A fixed idea is any idea which has subjected the man to himself. Max Stirner
Living one’s fellowman with appreciation and equality is divine living.
It hardly occurs to a patient to try to imagine what might be the matter with him beyond the reporting of his symptom.
His first effort to use his imagination beyond its familiar limitations always confronts him with his fear that he is going
out of his acknowledged mind. He sorely needs to live a physician who see his own imagination as his mind’s consciously
unifying health power.
Every educational system which denies human freedom creates helpful symptoms of such self-deception. Every sign
and symptom of so-called impaired health, error and failure, announce the consequences of efforts to curb mental freedom.
All loss is illusional.
People are dying for this knowledge, for this good news, literally not figuratively. .
The patient, the physician and the illness have nothing to do with each other. Each is all and only about itself.
I live in varying degrees of stupor of my divinity.
Man lives by imagination. Havelock Ellis
My learning, thinking, perceiving, sensing or every mental activity is really my imagination, my creative intelligence
Whatever I, is perfect—blame is perfect fault-finding based upon, and compensatory for, insufficient fact finding.
All of my so-called personal power derives from my free use of my imagination.
All of my life finds its realization in my imagination; all of my imagination finds its idealization in my practical behavior.
Imagination is reality.
Eternity consists of nowness; infinity consists of hereness.
A negative feeling can be nothing but an inhibited positive one.
Imagination is a name which covers every use of mind.
I have had to drive myself sane enough to see: be kind to everyone and everything, it is I.
However a person lives his life is divine. A thief is a divine thief.
Whatever you cannot live consciously as perfect is already undergoing repression.
When and where is paradise…Do not let any sophistry teach that thy God is far aloft from thee as the
stars are. God is in thee. Power, might, majesty, heaven, paradise, elements, stars, the whole earth is thine.
Boehme
Every educational system which denies human freedom creates helpful symptoms such as self-deception.
All objectivity is unrecognized subjectivity.
"It is I" is the ultimate test of truth.
Ontological otherness is unconscious selfness
Problems are phantoms
The imagination is the most scientific of faculties because it alone understands the universal analogy. Baudelaire
No objects interest us except man. We only believe as deep as we live.
I am my own Nazi, my own tormentor and persecutor
All that is not one, must ever suffer with the wound of Absence. Jelaleddin
A genius is one who appreciates being human. The greatest genius is one who sees his own human being most extensively in
his fellow creatures.
Nothing can come to my consciousness which is not consciousness itself. All consciousness is self-consciousness.
Each of my notions of self-permanence is an illusional attempt to keep the status quo
Social justice is each person minding his own business. Plato
Nothing is possible which implies either agreement or contradiction. I disagree with myself and you disagree with yourself
A self cannot be the object even for its own consciousness
In vain man may try to experience that which is not his own identity, and call that, instead of himself, God.
I cannot speak directly or indirectly to or with anyone else. You can only speak or listen to yourself. No one can do my
listening to myself for me.
I do not move around in my world, I see my world as moving around in me.
Man cannot get along with or without his fellow man, only as him. I enjoy my living of my fellow man’s voicing
his view to himself. All of I-living and not-I living I experience as helpful. Mind is nothing but experience.
It is only in the true realm of conscious selfhood where symptom free living is possible.
Whatever is, is one, for it is one view in the mind beholding it
Hate is hurt love; guilt is hurt responsibility; anxiety is hurt potency; anger is hurt peace; jealousy is unappreciated
self-possession; blame is repudiated praise; disgust is rejected hunger; suspicion is forbidden trust; doubt is denied faith;
shame is prohibited pleasure; intolerance is strained tolerance; pain is disowned pleasure; boredom is averting overwhelming
excitement; unhappiness is prohibited happiness. Self-love’s stressful condition shows itself in anxiety, pain, guilt
or shame.
My every painful feeling is a symptom expressing my complaining self-love, and quite like every symptom, is a health ordeal
constituted of struggling love.
Love or ecstasy is the natural feeling of human life.
The sane therapist offers no advice, no correction, no knowledge, no law, no treatment—only profound reverence for
his human individuality as ever divine. .
My love is all about itself; my consciousness is all about itself; my belief is all about itself; my body is all about
itself; my external world is all about itself; my divinity is all about itself. You cannot know your neighbor; your neighbor
is your own creation; only he can know himself. I grow the meanings which I name my neighbor.
A poem is a sililoquy of a positive assertion of oneself, to oneself.
You can only repress your selfness.
Human speech is always a form of one growing himself outloud.
All language is poetry waiting to be named self. I cannot know anyone or anything but myself.
Symptom formation occurs in the interest of avoiding overwhelming responsibility. Freud.
If I do not own my world and my god and my fellow man as my own creative consciousness, then I do not own myself.
Imagination is the creative power of my universe. I create all of my own experiences. If I disown any of my experiences
as my own creation, then I become a victim of that not-I.
What I reject, comes back to me as fate. Jung
When God speaks to me, out of a whirlwind, then a new dimension of my consciousness has appeared for me to love and
appreciate. The only enemy I can love is the enemy I have made. I must help myself to see my unity in my apparent diversity.
The Individual is the Universal.
My solipsistic stand is the most unpopular, denounced, and defamed position one can take, unless it remains concealed.
I should expect resistance from anyone who has not worked up to full responsibility for being all of his self.
Discontent means that I am not honoring some of my own creation.
Self-awareness is my only education; self-consciousness is my vocation; the meaning of life is the science I study; healing
of consciousness is the therapy I practice. Anxiety, guilt, fear and doubt are symptoms of impeded love. I cannot live
for you or gain insight for you.
My every duality was just a convenient device for solving my current inability to observe my ever-prevailing healthful
unity, wholeness and perfection.
Nothing can happen until sufficient truth is present to make it happen. Every change must undergo the rigor of rejection
before it can find lovable room for itself in my status quo mind.
I am my likes and dislikes and will not upset myself over names that people call me which petrify self-unkindness.
All of my diagnostic power begins and ends with one truth: It is I.
Faith in materiality is purchased at the price of my spirituality. Spirituality is my only possible conscious reality.
Wholesome self-awareness requires studied self-discipline. To ignore or reject this responsibility is unhealthy.
I discover the new man in me each day.
To attain full human happiness, man must attain knowledge of his union with the whole of nature. Spinoza
All of my mind is my own. I live all of my disowned experience with some form of distress.
Where are you hiding your confidence, your power, your creativity?
We can never solve the so-called world-riddle because what seem like riddles to us are merely the contradictions we have
ourselves created. We make our own world; when we make it awry we can remake it approximately truer…
Man lives by imagination. Havelock Ellis
Language, in fact, is not only a means by which we hide our thoughts from other people; it is a veil which helps us to
hide our own lives from ourselves. C.K. Ogden
I am the creator of each word I use and all of its meaning.
- Degrees of self-depreciation are always accompanied by signs of ignored divineness. Adversity can only introduce a man
to his power. Every great awakening of a person is to new perception of his authority. Acknowledged authority is the only
basis for acknowledged responsibility. The precious power of divinity is usually repressed and disowned. Our sense of godhood
becomes a source of embarrassment.
