O mind, you do not know how to farm!
Fallow lies the field of your life,
If you had only worked it well
How rich a harvest you might reap!
-Ramakrishna

When people will not weed their own minds,
they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
-Horace Walpole

"In me there are all faults and all merits that exist in the world,
and I can cultivate all that I wish to cultivate there,
and I can cut away all that should be removed from there."
It is like cutting off weeds and sowing the seed of flowers and fruit.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

What a great treasure it is
when a man has realized that in him are to be found
all the merits and all the faults that exist in the world,
and he can cultivate all that he wishes to cultivate,
and to cut away all that should be removed!
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

First we've got to clear the ground.
-Ivan Turgenev

Are you burning off the old crop
and plowing it under to make ready for new life?
-Jamie Sams

One has to work day and night
to plough and clean the field of the soul.
-Sana'i

It is only when one has cleared the field
and ploughed and sown and watched over it
that the harvests can be hoped for.
-Aurobindo Ghose

The larger the field that is placed under cultivation,
the greater the harvest.
-Christian Larson

It is astonishing what force, purity and wisdom it takes
for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.
-Margaret Fuller

Once the field has been cleared,
the channel is free,
and celestial currents no longer encounter obstacles
on their way to you.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

What kind of effort can avail
to disclose the eternally self-resplendent consciousness?
Being coated with the thick crust of infinite vasanas
it is not easily perceived.
The incrustation must first be soaked
in the running stream of mind control
and carefully scraped off with the sharp chisel of investigation.
Then one must turn the closed urn of crystal quartz -
namely, the mind cleanses in the aforesaid manner -
on the grinding wheel of alertness
and finally open the lid with the lever of discrimination.
-Tripura Rahasya

...a systematic and methodical disentanglement
from all attachments and involvements and illusions...
freeing oneself from all conditioning
with the consequent disaggregation of the personality and the notion of the self.
One ceases to create conditions that bind one.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

The factors that distort the human personality are its equipments.
They cause the state of absolute and supreme Bliss
to be broken up into fragments of regrets over the past,
excitements about the present, and anxieties about the future.
-Chinmayananda

The state of consciousness in which you are a prisoner is called your past.
Whenever you are stuck in your physical, emotional or mental hang-ups,
you are living in the past.
-Torkom Saraydarian

If you are unconscious of an aspect of yourself,
if it operates outside your field of awareness,
that aspect has power over you.
-Gary Zukav

If you have conflicting intentions,
different dynamics will be set in motion and oppose each other.
If you are not aware of all your intentions,
the strongest one will win.
-Gary Zukav

Eliminate every burden of mind or body.
-Christian Larson

One begins to analyze one's mind.
One begin to see where it is wrong and where it is right;
what is wrong in it and what is right in it;
whether it is clouded, whether it is rusted,
whether it has become too cool
or whether it has become overheated.
And then, in accordance with its conditions,
one can train it oneself,
and one can be the best trainers of one's mind,
better than anyone else in the world.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

You must sternly refuse to indulge
impulses, desires and tendencies
not in consonance with the dictates of your Higher Self.
-William Walker Atkinson, "A. P. Mukerji"

Cleanse you passions, impulses, attitudes and reactions.
That is the essence of spiritual discipline as laid down in all faiths.
-Sai Baba

Freedom from all the forms, biases and idiosyncrasies
of the particular culture and class
in which one has been born and educated
is a sine qua non of the consciousness truly "on the Path."
-Dane Rudhyar

If you want rapid progress in the spiritual path,
watch every thought.
-Sivananda

One must train oneself, by small frequent efforts,
to dominate one's feelings.
-Alexis Carrel

Anything short of absolute control of thought, word and deed
is only sowing wild oats.
-Vivekananda

Ultimately, a disciple must understand his lower nature in detail,
and engage in the task of dominating its every movement.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

To acquire serenity
one must first eliminate certain weaknesses
of the human animal,
namely nervous impatience, instinctive haste, and instability.
-Isha Schwaller de Lubicz

Unless you know what the mind is doing,
you cannot control it.
-Vivekananda

If you don't learn to control your mind,
then your mind controls you.
-Steven Sadleir

The thought-machine must be brought under control,
in order that it may be rightly used
to raise consciousness to its limits and beyond.
The operative word is control.
-Christmas Humphreys

The mind is restless, turbulent, obstinate, and very strong.
To subdue it is more difficult than controlling the wind.
-Bhagavad Gita

Trying to stop the mind
is like trying to stop the wind,
dressed as a kite.
-Anthony Paul Moo-Young, "Mooji"

There is nothing as hard as undertaking a struggle with one's baser nature,
but nothing as stimulating as carrying on the struggle
once you have undertaken it.
-Olga Ilyin

The mind is the mischief-maker.
It jumps from doubt to doubt;
it puts obstacles in the way.
It weaves a net and gets entangled in it.
It is ever discontented;
it runs after a hundred things
and away from another another hundred.
-Sai Baba

The mind is the most capricious of insects -
flitting, fluttering.
-Virginia Woolf

In the presence of silence,
the conditioned self rattles and scratches.
-Joan Halifax

Minds that have no firm foundation and one-pointed direction
are influenced by the irrationality of the world...
The directions of the mind are in the hands
of substances and energies existing in the mental body,
agitated and moved by outer and inner influences.
-Torkom Saraydarian

Unless you keep them [minds] busy
with some definite subject and control them,
they throw themselves into disorder hither and yon
in the vague field of imagination.
And there is not mad or idle fancy
that they do not bring forth in agitation.
-Michel de Montaigne

The mind of the average person
may be pictured as an unruly horse
that jumps and kicks and throws anyone
that tries to ride it.

Mind is not always so unruly;
it proves to be unruly when it wants to rule itself.

As soon as one disciplines it,
it becomes like a restive horse that one has to master.
The difficulty starts when one tries to concentrate;
it begins to jump, while at other times it only moves about.

The thoughts and imaginations are all so unruly
that we cannot think or feel what we wish.

If you are not able to control your thought
you cannot hold it.

When we do not feel what we wish to feel,
when we do no think what we wish to think,
it is just because a lack of will-power.

The mind is just like a wild horse,
and the will is the only thing which can catch it.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Let your horse have its head for a moment,
and when you feel that it has pranced about sufficiently
and it is no longer on its guard,
jump on its back and direct it in the way you have chosen to go.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

One should say to the mind,
"Look here, you are my mind,
you are my instrument.
You are my slave and servant.
You are here to help me,
to work for me in this world.
You have to listen to me.
You will do whatever I wish.
You will feel whatever I wish.
You will not think or feel differently from my wishes,
for you are my mind
and you must prove in the end to be mine.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Make no violent effort to control the mind,
but rather allow it to run along for a while,
and exhaust its efforts.
It will take advantage of the opportunity
and will jump around like a monkey at first,
until it gradually slows down and looks to you for orders.
It may take some time to tame the mind
but each time it will come round to you in a shorter time.
-Sivananda

The mind is by nature restless.

Begin liberating it from its restlessness;

give it peace;

make it free from distractions;

train it to look inward;

make this a habit.

-Ramana Maharshi

Having stilled its clamour for awhile,
take up the subject chosen, or 'seed' and consider it.
The mind will wander at once.
Bring it back.
It will wander off again, so bring it back again.
Don't be cross with it, for you have made it what it is
and you will not train it in a day.
-Christmas Humphreys

For a moment it is a struggle with oneself;
it is controlling an impulse;
but afterward the same thing becomes a power.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

The state of identifying with thought activity
is called monkey mind.
The state of non-identification
is called monk's mind.
-Mooji

Living in the present moment
is the only way to tame the mind.
-Ann Mortifee

When thoughts which you do not like come,
if you just brush them away
and do not pay any attention at all,
after some time they won't come any longer.
But you must do this very persistently and regularly.
-Mirra Alfassa, "The Mother"

It is like an uninvited guest
who, when ignored, gradually stops coming.
-Ramana Maharshi

All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome,
not by fighting, but by rising above them.
-Charles Caleb Colton

Self observation is an essential factor
in the gradual transcendence of one's
shortcomings and angularities,
idiosyncrasy and emotional immaturity,
parochialism and dogmatism.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

If we constantly bear our short-comings in mind,
and if we try to tear the veil of inessentials from them,
they become clearer to us than if we take them as given.
We must dig at their roots until they perish.
-Hans-Ulrich Rieker

The struggle with the mind is an easy struggle
if you are constantly vigilant,
always doing what you know you should do,
not allowing your individual awareness to become instinctive,
not excusing it when it does become instinctive,
not allowing it to justify, rationalize, excuse or become combative.
-Subramuniya

The superior man will watch over himself when he is alone.
He examines his heart that here may be nothing wrong there,
and that he may have no cause of dissatisfaction with himself.
-Confucius

The process of inner change
is one of patiently, continuously
loosening the bonds of fascination,
and substituting an attachment, an interest,
and inner sensitiveness to higher influences.
-Rodney Collin

On the way into the hidden recesses of our mind,
we encounter all sorts of emotions
that require cleaning out or transmutation.
-Georg Feuerstein

You don't have to struggle with negative emotions;
rather through our witnessing they gradually diffuse themselves,
giving us more and more inner space, or tranquillity.
-Georg Feuerstein

You must first know what something is
before you can give it up.
-Nisargatta

Once you know something, you are free of it.
it simply drops like dead leaves from a tree.
It is not renunciation;
there is no fight involved at all.
-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

A small daily investment of working with your mind
will yield fabulous returns.
-Dick Sutphen

All wrong-doing arises because of the mind.
If the mind is transformed,
what wrong-doing can remain?
-Buddha

To see the face of the enemy
it is only necessary to look in the mirror three times -
once for the body, once for the emotions, and again for the mind.
By clear knowledge and dedicated striving
the three images dissolve in light,
and are transformed into light.
This is the phoenix experience.
-James Davis

After determining your three worst defects
sacrifice them to be burned in a fiery striving.
-Agni Yoga

The question is not of finding
in your thought what is right and what is wrong,
in your actions what is right and what is wrong.
It is a question of finding a consciousness so total and so intense
that only what is right remains and whatever is false burns out.
-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

Know that in the movement of thy own mind
thou art thine own lord and master,
that there will rise up no fire
in the circle or the whole circumference of thy body and spirit
unless thou awakest it thyself.
-Jacob Boehme

Refuse to carry the burden
of mental and moral weakness acquired in past years;
burn them in the fires
of your present divine resolutions and right activities.
-Yogananda

Life is a wonderful opportunity
to live fully, wonderfully, excitingly right now.
Why drag along this great sack of stuff from the past?
We can let it go just like that....
-Shaun de Warren

We hardly ever realize
that we can cut anything out of our lives,
anytime, in the blink of an eye.
-Carlos Castaneda

Cut off all useless thoughts and words
and there's nowhere you cannot go.
-Seng-ts'an

The important thing
is to pull yourself up by your own hair
to turn yourself inside out
and see the whole world with fresh eyes.
-Peter Weiss

From this hour
I ordain myself loos'd
from every limit and imaginary bond.
-Walt Whitman

I now put off the nature of the world.
-Lascelles Abercrombie

Review the anchors and chains...
Then lightly toss each one of these weights
from off your mind, until, clean and free,
you can leave the old world behind,
not as something you dislike,
but as a place that no longer has any meaning for you at all.
And soar like a beautiful ballon into the light
of a new and rapturous world,
which is your Life and your right.
-Hugh Prather

The true human condition in its most perfect form has no secrets.
It does not hide, but exists in clear love.
-Gary Zukav