From Chapter 11 of A Thousand Names for Joy by Byron Katie:

... if you want to open your heart, question your thinking.

Inquiry always leaves you with less of a story. Who would you be without your story? You never know until you inquire. There is no story that is you or that leads to you. Every story leads away from you. You are what exists before all stories. You are what remains when the story is understood.

Life on the other side of inquiry is so simple and obvious that it can't be imagined beforehand. Everything is seen to be perfect, just the way it is. Hope and faith aren't needed in this place. ... The wonderful thing about knowing who you are is that you're always in a state of grace, a state of gratitude for the abundance of the apparent world. I overflow with the splendor, the generosity of it all. And I didn't do anything for it but notice.

The litmus test for self-realization is a constant state of gratitude. ...

(cf. HowGreatThouArt (2005-03-16) for perhaps-related quotes from the film Joe Versus the Volcano, and Beginner's Guide to Insight Meditation (2011-08-05), Ground of Being (2013-10-03), ...) - ^z - 2014-10-10