Home > Author > Hugh Prather
1 " If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write. "
― Hugh Prather
2 " You say you just want to be my friend. I know that you mean you want to relate to my mind but not my body. I can understand that and will not ask you to relate to me in a way that you don't want to, or talk to me about subjects you find uncomfortable. But likewise I refuse to castrate myself for you by pretending not to have the feelings I have. If you want me as your friend you will have to accept my penis along with me. "
― Hugh Prather , Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person
3 " Sometimes I doubt and sometimes I believe. And I like not making myself believe when I am doubting, and not making myself doubt when I am believing. Surely neither God nor Accident need my consistency. "
― Hugh Prather , I Touch the Earth, the Earth Touches Me
4 " Today I acknowledge that I am not in position to judge what mistakes anyone is making or what lessons anyone needs to learn. I don’t know how far someone has come or when that person will have a breakthrough, I simply don’t know what other people should be doing. But when I think I do know, I clearly am not doing what I should be doing, which is taking responsibility for my own life. "
5 " It's not that we fear the place of darkness, but that we don't think we are worth the effort to find the place of light. "
6 " No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves "
7 " Egos clash. That's the nature of egos.Treat these outbursts as sneezing fits. "
8 " I sometimes react to making a mistake as if I have betrayed myself. My fear of making a mistake seems to be based on the hidden assumption that I am potentially perfect and that if I can just be very careful I will not fall from heaven. But a 'mistake' is a declaration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, a reminder I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes I have grown. "
9 " Boredom or discontent is useful to me when I acknowledge it and see clearly my assumption that there's something else I would rather be doing. In this way boredom can act as an invitation to freedom by opening me to new options and thoughts. For example, if I can't change the activity, can I look at it more honestly? "
10 " I also sense that I am misusing the idea of being real whenever I discover myself anxiously weight my words and actions, that is, whenever I am being careful to be "real". When I do this I am only playing a new role - the role of the "real person". Calculation does not enter into being real. Concerns with appearances does not enter into it. Being real is more of a process of letting go then it is the effort of becoming. I don't really have to become me, although at times it feels this way - I am already me. And that is both the easiest and the hardest thing for me to realise. "
11 " La vita è fatta di problemi irrisolti, vittorie ambigue e vaghe sconfitte, con qualche momento di autentica pace. "
12 " All my life, I have made it complicated, but it is so simple. I love when I love. And when I love, I am myself. "
13 " If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire is not to write "
14 " By approaching my problems with "What might make things a little better?" rather than "What is the solution?" I avoid setting myself up for certain frustration. My experience has shown me that I am not going to solve anything in one stroke; at best I am only going to chip away at it. "
15 " I don't need a "reason" to be happy. I don't have to consult the future to know how happy I feel now. "
16 " perfectionism is a slow death. if everything were to turn out just like i would want it to, just like i would plan for it to, then i would never experience anything new; my life would be an endless repetition of stale successes. when i make a mistake i experience something unexpected.... when i have listened to my mistakes i have grown. "
17 " Don't strive for love, be it. "
18 " Now that I know that I am no wiser than anyone else, does this wisdom make me wiser? "
19 " I'm convinced that this anxiety running through my life is the tension between what I "should be" and what i am. My anxiety doesn't come from thinking about the future but from wanting to control it. It seems to begin whenever I smuggle into my mind an expectation about how I or others should be. It is the tension between my desire to control the world and the recognition that I can't. "I will be what I will be" - where is the anxiety in that ? Anxiety is the recognition that I might not reach the rung on the opinion ladder I have just set for my self. I fear death most when I am about to exceed what I believe others think of me; then death threatens to cut me off from myself, because "myself" is not yet. "
20 " What an absurd amount of energy I have been wasting all my life trying to find out how things 'really are', when all the time they weren't. "
