Natalie Goldberg Quotes

I think journaling is an important, intrinsic experience, and a lot of us don't spend enough time on it.

If you spend enough time with yourself in silence, you'll be surprised what goes through your head.

So I started chanting when I was nineteen, which was about twelve years ago, and it really had a huge impact on my outlook, happiness, and general creativity.

I have a mess in my head sometimes, and there's something very satisfying about putting it into words. Certainly it's not something that you're in charge of, necessarily, but writing about it, putting it into your words, can be a very powerful experience.

I've kept a diary since I was 11. It's a way of taking stock, almost meditative, trying to make sense of stuff because life is chaotic.

I just think meditation is so important because it gives you a chance to see what's going on in your brain.

I write in a diary every night to collect my thoughts. It's very therapeutic to songwrite, because it's the same thing.

I do a lot of journaling.

I journal a lot for nobody but myself. Just to get my thoughts out and to clear my mind. That's very therapeutic to me.

I found meditation. It was more out of pure desperation: I just started to wake up at 5 and sit for one hour, and suddenly, day after day, piece by piece, I could really feel I was coming back into me.

If we are in silence - in absolute silence with no thoughts - for 10 minutes, it's only a thought that tells us we were silent for 10 minutes. Our only proof is a thought.

Almost every morning I write in my journal. I've been keeping it for a long time - I've filled more than 50 books. I write about what's going on in my personal and spiritual life or what's going on at work. It helps me keep things in perspective, especially when things get crazy or I get stressed or we have obstacles.

You find out what you think by talking to yourself.

Meditation was a turning point for me. It helped me deal with a lot of stress and has given me a lot of relaxation.

Every time you think a negative thought, it's one step in the wrong direction, for me.

I have always written only for myself - to clarify things, to clarify things with myself, to understand in an inner way what is actually happening.

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

Sometimes I journal three pages, sometimes I journal thirty pages, but I'm writing all the time, and whatever's happening is happening in real time for me.

Every now and then, I have a deep thought.

Even now when I am answering a question I am at the height of my own meditation.

I just want to live each moment, but it's kind of hard to do that when you are asked to analyze yourself constantly. But it's also good in that you are forced to think about things that you don't ordinarily think about. I think it's strange.

Once you get in a position where your rent is taken care of and you do have a job, you really get to deal with yourself and really become one with yourself. And you wake to your mind every day. That's your best friend and your worst enemy - your own brain.

Many scientists have been drawn to Buddhism out of a sense that the Western tradition has delivered an impoverished conception of basic, human sanity. In the West, if you speak to yourself out loud all day long, you are considered crazy. But speaking to yourself silently - thinking incessantly - is considered perfectly normal.

Mindfulness is so powerful that the fact that it comes out of Buddhism is irrelevant.

I thought when I started meditation that I was going to get real calm and peaceful and it's going to be over. It's not that way; it's so energetic. That's where all the energy and creativity is.