“KNOWING YOURSELF means being able to separate the true from the false in yourself - love from emotion, joy from sentiment, Will from desire. No man can teach another self-knowledge. He can only lead him or her up to self-discovery - the source of truth.”

—  Barry Long

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "KNOWING YOURSELF means being able to separate the true from the false in yourself - love from emotion, joy from sentime…" by Barry Long?
Barry Long photo
Barry Long 86
Australian spiritual teacher and writer 1926–2003

Related quotes

“The path that leads from the persona to the self, from the adult to the outlaw, consists of learning to distinguish between false desire and true desire, or superficial desire and profound desire, or obsessive desire and free passion, … or illusory needs and real needs.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 138

Carl Sagan photo

“The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgement to have safely traveled from star to star.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 398

Meher Baba photo

“It is your false self that keeps you away from your true Self by every trick it knows.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

7 Absolute Honesty, p. 8.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Context: Absolute honesty is essential in one's search for God (Truth). The subtleties of the Path are finer than a hair. The least hypocrisy becomes a wave that washes one off the Path.
It is your false self that keeps you away from your true Self by every trick it knows. In the guise of honesty this self even deceives itself. For instance your self claims, I love Baba. The fact is, if you really loved Baba you would not be your false self making the self-asserting statement!

“Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.”

Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) Journalist and writer

Source: If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Knowing Yourself - The true in the false, gradually strips away all self-delusion until all that remains is pure being.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Jon Kabat-Zinn photo

“A good place to start is with yourself. See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance, or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation—to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (2005)

“We seek to move from the self of separation to the self of relationship that knows that everything outside is also inside. Then we are not alone. This is not something we can accomplish in the normal sense of the word. It cannot be another achievement of the separate self. Rather, it is a gift we can receive—and it is a gift we can pass on.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

Charles Eisenstein, The Longing for Belonging http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-eisenstein/indigeneity-and-belonging_b_8011302.html, Huffington Post, 20 August 2015

Johann Georg Hamann photo

“Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter.”

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (1955-1975), vol. VI, p. 281.

Wilhelm Reich photo

“You are "free" only in one sense: free from education in governing your life yourself, free from self-criticism.”

Wilhelm Reich book Listen, Little Man!

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: Every physician, shoemaker, mechanic or educator must know his shortcomings if he is to do his work and make his living. For some decades, you have begun to play a governing role on this earth. It is on your thinking and your actions that the future of humanity depends. But your teachers and masters do not tell you how you really think and are; nobody dares to voice the one criticism of you which could make you capable of governing your own fate. You are "free" only in one sense: free from education in governing your life yourself, free from self-criticism.

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“There is no end to self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is only from moment to moment, and therefore there is a creative happiness from moment to moment.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

New Delhi India 1st Public Talk (14 November 1948)
1940s
Context: So, a man who is really earnest must begin with himself, he must be passively aware of all his thoughts, feelings and actions. Again, this is not a matter of time. There is no end to self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is only from moment to moment, and therefore there is a creative happiness from moment to moment.

Related topics