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Aye, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff. And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
It is useless to hear and not to experience, to be told and not to practice.
Where there are difficulties to cope with, and unsatisfactory conditions to overcome, there virtue most flourishes and manifests its glory.
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
We know a lot about being in the wrong or right place externally, in space, but very little about being in the wrong or right place internally, in ourselves — and the latter is far more important.
That which is within a man, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in what is about to befall him.
From unreality lead me to the real, from darkness to the light, from death to immortality.
Most miserable
Is the desire that’s glorious: blest be those,
How mean soe’er, that have their honest wills,
Which seasons comfort.
Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice;
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence.
When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And When his wings enfold you yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And When he speaks to you believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth… All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
The inner life is the root of the outer one. What is created there, is eventually expressed here.
If there is so much friction, violence, and tension in the world, it is only because so many individual persons themselves are inwardly experiencing these things… If there is so little real peace in the world, it is only because there is so little real peace in the individuals who live in the world.
Every time that a fragment of inexpressible truth passes into words that, although they are not able to contain the truth that inspired them, have by their order a perfect correspondence with truth that furnishes support to every spirit that wants to find it.
We do not enter into the truth without having passed through our own nothingness; without having sojourned for a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.
We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.