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Only love overcomes the fragmentation of human nature.
This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.
Faith is a conviction of the reality of the things which we do not see. Through faith we understand that the world came into being and still exists at the command of God, so that what is seen does not owe its existence to that which is visible.
Epistle to the Hebrews (11, 1-3), Attributed to Paul the Apostle
Bring all opposites inside yourself and reconcile them. Understand that you are everywhere: on the land, in the sea, in the sky. Realize that you haven’t yet been begotten, that you are still in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you are dead, that you are in the world beyond the grave. Hold all this in your mind, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes. Then you can perceive God.
The greatest of all crosses is self. If we die in part every day, we shall have but little to do on the last. These little daily deaths will destroy the power of the final dying.
Many think that dying to themselves is what causes them so much pain. But it is actually the part of them that still lives that causes the problem. Death is only painful to you when you resist it. Your imagination exaggerates how bad death will be. Self-love fights with all of its strength to live. Die inwardly as well as outwardly. Let all that is not born of God within you die.
God will not only show you how physically weak you are, but how spiritually weak you are without Him. How strong you will be when you see that you are completely weak. Then you will always be able to believe that you are mistaken. Open yourself to the insight of others. Do not be dogmatic. Speak the truth simply. Allow others to evaluate you, but judge no one. Offer advice only to those who ask for it. Mention the faults of others without being heavy-handed or legalistic. And do not speak to gain a good reputation for yourself.
The crosses which we make for ourselves by over-anxiety as to the future are not Heaven-sent crosses. We tempt God by our false wisdom, seeking to forestall His arrangements, and struggling to supplement His Providence by our own provisions. The crosses actually laid upon us always bring their own special grace and consequent comfort with them; we see the Hand of God when it is laid upon us. But the crosses wrought by anxious foreboding are altogether beyond God’s dispensations.
God never ceases to speak to us, but the noise of the world without, and the tumult of our passions within, bewilder us, and prevent us from listening. All must be silent around us, and all must be still within us, when we would listen with our whole souls to this voice. It is a still, small voice, and is only heard by those who listen to no other. Alas! How seldom is it that the soul is so still that it can hear when God speaks to it!
As the light increases, we see ourselves to be worse than we thought. We are amazed at our former blindness as we see issuing forth from the depths of our heart a whole swarm of shameful feelings, like filthy reptiles crawling from a hidden cave. We never could have believed that we had harbored such things, and we stand aghast as we watch them gradually appear. But while our faults diminish, the light by which we see them waxes brighter, and we are filled with horror. Bear in mind, for your comfort, that we only perceive our malady when the cure begins.
Many persons use greater care to avoid injuries to the body rather than to shun harm to the soul. Thou art not flesh and hair but a will. If thou keep this beautiful then will you be beautiful.
The characteristic of a philosopher is that he looks to himself for all help or harm. The marks of a proficient are that he censures no one, praises no one, blames no one, accuses no one, says nothing concerning himself as being anybody, or knowing anything. When he is in any instance hindered or restrained he accepts this as his own responsibility. If he is praised, he smiles to himself at the person who praises him. If he is censured, he makes no defense. But he goes about with the caution of a convalescent, wary of anything that may suggest he is well. He restrains desire; he transfers his aversion to those things only which thwart the proper use of his own will; he employs his energies moderately in all directions; if he appears stupid or ignorant, he does not care; in a word, he keeps watch over himself as over an enemy and one in ambush.
There is only one thing for which God sent me into this world and that is to perfect my nature in all sorts of virtue and strength, and there is no thing that I cannot use for that purpose.
When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us seek the cause rather in ourselves than elsewhere. It is the action of an uninstructed person to lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others; of a partly instructed person to lay the fault on himself; and of one perfectly instructed neither on others nor on himself.
The more a man enters the light of understanding, the more aware he is of his own ignorance. And when the light reveals itself fully and unites with him and draws him into itself, so that he finds himself alone in a sea of light, then he is emptied of all knowledge and immersed in absolute unknowing.
God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance of wonder renewed daily, the source of which is beyond all reason.
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible: not to have run away.
The longest journey is the journey inward.
Christ would never have made the impression He did on His followers if He had not expressed something that was alive and active in their unconscious. Christianity would never have spread through the pagan world with such astonishing rapidity had its ideas not found an analogous psychic readiness to receive them. It is this fact which also makes it possible to say that whoever believes in Christ is not only contained in Him, but that Christ then dwells in the believer as the perfect man formed in the image of God.
The telling question of a person’s life is whether or not he is related to the Infinite.