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Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
Jesus’ followers asked him, “When will the kingdom come?” He answered, “It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘Look, there it is.’ Rather, the father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.”
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.
For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.
The answer to the last appeal of what is right lies within a man’s own heart. Trust yourself.
I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.
When you sincerely enter into prayer, you will come forth with all your prayers answered. But a hundred prayers that lack sincerity will leave you still the bungler that you are, your work a failure. Prayers said from habit are like the dust that scatters in the wind. The prayers that reach God’s court are uttered by the soul.
What sort of tree is there which will not, if neglected, grow crooked and unfruitful, but which will, if given right attention, prove to be productive, and bring its fruit to maturity?
Recognize what is in your sight, and what is hidden will become clear to you.
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys… He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
Seeking the way, you must exert yourselves and strive with diligence… free yourselves from the tangled net of sorrow. Walk in the path with steadfast aim. A sick man may be cured by the healing power of medicine and will be rid of all his ailments without beholding the physician.
No man can see over his own height. Let me explain what I mean. You cannot see in another man any more than you have in yourself. Your own level strictly determines the extent to which he comes within your understanding. If your intelligence is unawakened, mental qualities in another, even though they be of the highest kind, will have no effect on you at all… his higher mental qualities will no more exist for you than colors exist for those who cannot see.
It is useless quibbling over a mere word, even if that word is God. To accept or reject it, when we have no knowledge of what it may represent, is equally inappropriate. God is a mystery, and the mystery remains, whatever name we give to it.
Hakim Sanai (circa 1080 – 1141), from The Walled Garden of Truth
There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune. It is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we set upon ourselves.
It Cuts the Plow Reins
What does Purity do?
It cuts the plow reins.
It frees you from working and dining
In the mud.
It frees you from living behind
A Big ox
That is always breaking wind.
What can Purity do, my dear?
It can lift your heart
On a rising, bucking Sun
That makes the soul hunger
To reach the roof of Creation.
It offers what the whole world wants…
Real Knowledge and Power.
It offers what the wise crave…
The priceless treasure of Freedom.
Pure Divine Love is no meek priest
Or tight banker.
It will smash all your windows,
And only then throw in the holy gifts.
It will allow you to befriend
Life and light and sanity,
And not even mind waking
To another day.
It reveals the excitement of the Present
And the beauty of Precision.
It confers vitality and a sublime clarity,
Until finally all the heart can do
Is burst open
With great love and laughter!
O Purity,
O dear Truth and Friend within me,
Why didn’t you tell me sooner
You could do all this?
Cut the reins of illusion,
So we can all
Just go wild
Loving God
And everyone all day!
All day long a little burro labors, sometimes with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries about things that bother only burros. And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting than physical labor. Once in a while a kind monk comes to her stable and brings a pear, but more than that, he looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears and for a few seconds the burro is free and even seems to laugh, because love does that. Love frees.
What is it that any thoughtful, serious men could wish for, but to have a new heart, and a new spirit, free from the hellish self-tormenting elements of selfishness, envy, pride, and wrath.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought… Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for making gods.
Your changed complexions are to me a mirror
Which shows me mine changed too; for I must be
A party in this alteration, finding
Myself thus alter’d with’t.
All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center, observe degree, priority, and place.
