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Learn to know thyself.
Who knows himself, knows his Lord.
The true man of God sits in the midst of his fellow men, and rises and eats and sleeps and marries and buys and sells and gives and takes in the bazaars, and spends the days with other people, and yet never forgets God even for a single moment.
You are freed from your own desires only when God frees you. This is not effected by your own exertion, but by the grace of God. First he brings forth in you the desire to attain this goal. Then he opens to you the gate of repentance. Then… you continue to strive and… pride yourself upon your efforts, thinking that you are advancing or achieving something; but afterward you fall into despair and feel no joy. Then you know your work is not pure but tainted. You repent of acts of devotion which you had thought were your own, and perceive that they were done by God’s grace and that you were guilty of polytheism in attributing them to your own exertion. When this becomes manifest, a feeling of joy enters your heart… God opens to you the gate of love…
But still you think “I love” and find no rest until you perceive that it is God who loves you and keeps you in the state of loving, and that this is the result of divine love and grace, not of your own endeavor. Then God opens to you the gate of unity, and causes you to know that all action depends on God Almighty. Hereupon you perceive that all is God, and all is by him, and all is his (even) this self-conceit… Then you entirely recognize that you do not have the right to say ‘I’ or “mine.” At this stage you behold your helplessness; desires fall away from you and you become free and calm. You desire what God desires; your own desires are gone, you are emancipated from your wants, and have gained peace and joy in both worlds.
First, action is necessary, then knowledge, in order that you may know that you know nothing and are no one. This is not easy to know. It is a thing that cannot be rightly learned by instruction, nor sewed on with needle nor tied on with thread. It is the gift of God.
Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God, and of the Heaven that is in him. For where you would have your brother be, there will you think you are. Hear not his appeal to hell and littleness, but only his call for Heaven and greatness. Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him with me.
And this is a miracle: the moment that you realize that there is no way to make a home, then this whole existence is home. Then wherever you are, you are at home.
Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now.
My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son.
When the mountain disappears as a necessity to climb, the mountain climber disappears as a necessity to exist.
The only sane thing to do with the world is to let it struggle with its own problems. You can do this only when seeing clearly that the world prefers to struggle painfully with its problems, never really wanting solutions.
Enter yourself, let self-honesty turn you in the right direction, after which self-awareness lives your life for you. Wishing for something other than darkness is already a bit of light. Have no fear of exposing the illusion that your present world is a false world, for the end of the old reveals the new. Change starts with even the dim realization of being betrayed by our own faulty thoughts. Self-renewal occurs spontaneously when habitual thoughts are dropped. Few people realize how little truth they can take, but those who do will become new.
You are banging the walls. What walls? There are no walls. You are fighting the guards. What guards? They don’t exist. You are free right now. See this.
More and more our sincere seeker realizes his need to do nothing except to be an aware person from moment to moment. In one flash of insight he banishes the awful compulsion to scheme, protect, avoid, revise, attack, grab, cling, retreat, resist, regret, worry, expect, struggle, insist, demand, crave, battle, blame, apologize, persuade, believe. The whole terrible burden is cleared away. In its place he has quiet awareness.
You could be sitting all alone in your room, in anguish, regretful over the past, anxious in the present, and worried about the future, having nothing, hopeful for nothing – and if you would snap the hypnosis of your mind, all grief would vanish in a flash.
To change what you get you must change who you are.
Wander all alone, with nothing to call upon, nothing to depend on, and God, who exists, will keep his promise to you.
