BREAKTHROUGH / EPIPHANY / TURNING POINT

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

After a time of darkness comes the turning point. The old is discarded and the new appears. Persevere quietly on the path of inner truth. To return to the light in yourself, depend on the teachings of the sages. All is well.
Yi Jing
c. 1150 BCE, Chinese Oracle
"Fu: The Turning Point"

Once you suddenly smash through,
and go on to make the leap beyond,
you will find that everything
around you and all that you do,
whether active or at rest,
is the scenery of the
fundamental ground,
the original Mind.
There will be not a hairsbreadth
of difference between you
and other things;
there will be no other thing.
Daito
1282-1334

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side … when the glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time … is a very good one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist, Philosopher

Your thought is obscure – lightning flashes darting gleams – but that is the way truth is.
William James
1842-1910, American Psychologist, Philosopher
The Letters of William James , Vol. II

Who dream the dream which all men always declare futile,
Who dream the hour which is not yet on earth – and lo! it strikes.
Edward Carpenter
1844-1929, English Writer, Poet, Social Activist

No great inner event befalls those who summon it not.
Maurice Maeterlinck
1862-1949, Belgian Poet

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh – at yourself.
Ethel Barrymore
1879-1959, American Actress

Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.
Franz Kafka
1883-1924, Czech Writer
in The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose , Stephen Mitchell, ed., 1991

Like a saint's vison of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see – and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall …
Eugene O'Neill
1888-1953, American Dramatist, 1936 Nobel Laureate
Long Day's Journey into Night

At a certain moment the individual is carried beyond his rational self onto another ethical plane where his actions are judged by new standards. The impulse which moves him to irrational action I have called the sense of glory.
Herbert Read
1893-1968, British Writer, Critic
Autobiographies

Unless we understand the whole psychological structure of society of which we are a part, which we have put together through the centuries, and are entirely free from that structure, there can be no total psychological revolution – and a revolution of that kind is absolutely essential.
Krishnamurti
1895-1986, Indian Philosopher, Writer

Sometimes a glance, a few casual words, fragments of a melody floating through the quiet air of a summer evening, a book that accidentally comes into hands, a poem or memory-laden fragrance may bring about the impulse which changes and determines our whole life.
Anagarika Govinda
1898-1985, German/Indian Buddhist Lama, Scholar, Writer

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment – the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Jorge Luis Borges
1899-1986, Argentinian Writer, Poet, Librarian

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
1900-1944, French Writer, Aviator

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you survives all hurt.
Max Lerner
1902-, American Writer, Educator

We are at this moment participating in one of the very greatest leaps of the human spirit to a knowledge not only of outside nature but also of our own deep inward mystery.
Joseph Campbell
1904-1987, American Mythologist, Educator, Writer

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
Graham Greene
1904-1991, English Writer, Dramatist

There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life's point of no return.
Dag Hammarskjold
1905-1961, Swedish Diplomat, UN Secretary-General
Markings , 1964

When I look back at the three or four choices in my life which have been decisive, I find that, at the time I made them, I had very little sense of the seriousness of what I was doing and only later did I discover what had seemed an unimportant brook was, in fact, a Rubicon.
W. H. Auden
1907-1973, British/American Poet, Essayist, Critic, Dramatist
The Dyer's Hand and other Essays

Creating change happens when people see for themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their present one.
Eknath Easwaran
1911-1999, Indian/American Writer, Translator, Teacher

I had no idea history was being made. I was just tired of giving in.
Rosa Parks
1913-, African-American Civil Rights Activist

If we can be courageous one more time than we are fearful, trusting one more time than anxious, cooperative one more time than we are competitive, forgiving one more time than we are vindictive, loving one more time than we are hateful, we will have moved closer to the next breakthrough in our evolution. One warning: Evolutionary behavior is addictive. Once you start, it's very hard to stop. After all, why live and evolve unconsciously when we can live consciously and, at the same time, speed up the process of evolution for ourselves and others?
Jonas Salk
1914-1995, American Physician, Virologist

Our ordinary waking life is a bare existence in which, most of the time, we seem to be absent from ourselves and from reality because we are involved in the vain preoccupations which dog the steps of every living man. But there are times when we seem suddenly to awake and discover the full meaning of our own present reality. Such discoveries are not capable of being contained in formulas or definitions. They are a matter of personal experience, of incommunicable intuition. In the light of such experience it is easy to see the futility of all the trifles that occupy our minds. We recapture something of the calm and the balance that ought always to be ours, and we understand that life is far too great a gift to be squandered on anything less than perfection.
Thomas Merton
1915-1968, American Trappist Monk, Writer
The Ascent to Truth

There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Each of these must be right for the particular moment of history, or nothing happens.
Coretta Scott King
1927-, Civil Rights Activist

Many people experience a fundamental shift in thinking when they face a life-threatening crisis and suddenly see their priorities in a different light, or when they suddenly step into a new role.
Stephen Covey
1932-, American Management Educator, Writer
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , 1989

The moment we find the true reason for some feeling that has an irrationally powerful hold over us, whether it has to do with body image or anything else, the spell is broken.
Gloria Steinem
1934-, American Feminist, Writer
Revolution From Within , 1992

The crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, "The emperor is naked!" – when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game – everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.
Vaclav Havel
1936-, Czech President, Poet, Dramatist
in Living in Truth , Jan Vladislav, ed., Paul Wilson, tr., 1986

When we realize we are already dead, our priorities change, our heart opens, our mind begins to clear of the fog of old holdings and pretendings. We watch all life in transit and what matters becomes instantly apparent: The transmission of love, the letting go of obstacles to understanding, the relinquishment of our grasping, of our hiding from ourselves.
Stephen Levine
1937-, American Writer, Counselor
Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying , 1982

To become less certain of one's gender may be the turning point at which one begins to discover the richness of one's masculinity and femininity.
Thomas Moore
1940-, American Psychologist, Writer
Original Self , 2000

If people really paid attention to their everyday lives, they will discover (the) magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists – a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.
Paul Coelho
c. 1947-, Brazilian Writer
By the River Piedra I Sat down and Wept , Alan R. Clarke, tr., 1996

You can have certain breakthrough experiences – satori , for example – but these are just the beginning of an endless process of riding the new waves of Form as they ceaselessly arise. So in this sense … you are never "fully enlightened," any more than you could say that you are "fully educated." It has no meaning.
Ken Wilber
1949-, American Transpersonal Psychologist, New Age Theorist
A Brief History of Everything , 1996

Sooner or later on the spiritual journey one will come to a point where a leap of faith – a leap of trust – will be required.
Andrew Cohen
1955-, American Spiritual Teacher, Writer

Gradually, we begin to realize that to come out is not to become something or someone we were not, but to become what we already are, what we always have been. Coming out is the armor falling, the butterfly emerging from the cocoon, the bud becoming the full-blown rose … the act of coming out may be viewed as an act of creation by way of deciphering or excavating and then manifesting and personalizing an already embodied, perhaps, archetypal, form.
Randy P. Conner
American Educator, Activist, Writer
Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming the Connections Between Homoeroticism and the Sacred , 1993

It is to the remote we look for a revelation, while all the time it would speak to us from the eyes of those who are near us and would voice itself through the commonplace world in which we live.
Edward Griggs
American Scholar, Educator, Writer
A Book of Meditations

The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Musician, Composer

When people are stuck, their stuckness has to be theirs until such a point that they can come away from it, because people always come away a little bit. Absolute stuckness doesn't exist.
- Andrew Rawlinson

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Wisdom for The Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, © 2004