9 mind-bending epiphanies

1. you are not your mind
   “life is nothing but passing experiences, and my thoughts are just one more category of things I experience”
    
2. life unfolds only in moments
   “anyone can summon the resolve to deal with a single, present moment, as long as they are truly aware that it’s their only point of contact with life, and therefore there is nothing else one can do that can possibly be useful”
    
3. quality of life is determined by how you deal with your moments, not which moments happen and which don’t
   “to encounter an undesirable situation and work with it willingly is the mark of a wise and happy person”
    
4. most of life is imaginary
   “most of what we interact with is not the world itself, but our beliefs about it, our expectations of it, and our personal interests in it”
    
5. human beings have evolved to suffer, and we are better at suffering than anything else
   “this insight is liberating because it means: 1) that suffering does not necessarily mean my life is going wrong, 2) that the ball is always in my court, so the degree to which I suffer is ultimately up to me, and 3) that all problems have the same cause and the same solution”
    
6. emotions exist to make us biased
   “your passing emotional states can’t be trusted for measuring your self-worth or your position in life, but they are great at teaching you what it is you can’t let go of”
    
7. all people operate from the same two motivations: to fulfill their desires and to escape their suffering
   “these are motives we can all understand; we only vary in method, and the methods each of us has at our disposal depend on our upbringing and our experiences in life, as well as our state of consciousness
    
8. beliefs are nothing to be proud of
   “the stronger your beliefs are, the less open you are to growth and wisdom, because “strength of belief” is only the intensity with which you resist questioning yourself”
    
9. objectivity is subjective
   “subjectivity is primary experience — it is real life, and objectivity is something each of us builds on top of it in our minds, privately, in order to explain it all”