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Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
Energy is Eternal Delight.
The more detached and the purer the prayer, the more acceptable is it in the presence of God.
Reward? Do you seek any greater reward for being a good man than doing what is right and just?… Does it seem you a small and worthless thing to be a good man, and therefore a happy man?
Origen says the soul’s quest of God comes by self-observation. If she knew herself she would know God also.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
He that forsakes suffering is at his journey’s end.
I have often found a small stream at its source, that, when followed along its course, carried away the camel with its load.
In living creatures, ignorance of self is nature; in man it is a vice.
If God said,” Rumi pay homage to everything that has helped you enter my arms,” there would not be one experience of my life, not one thought, not one feeling, not any act, I would not bow to.
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear.
There is no death… Only a change of worlds.
Everyone, and especially the young, should understand that to devote your lives, or even to occupy yourselves with arranging by violence the lives of others according to your own ideas, is not only a crude superstition, but is an evil, criminal business, pernicious to the soul. Understand that the desire of an enlightened human soul for the good of others, is not satisfied by the vanity of organizing their lives by means of violence, but only by that inner labor with one’s own self, wherein alone a man is free and powerful. Only that work which increases love within one, can satisfy this desire. Understand that all activity directed to organizing the life of others by violence, cannot serve the welfare of mankind, but is always more or less consciously a hypocritical deception, hiding low passions — ambition, pride or cupidity — under the mask of service to man. Understand it, especially you, the young generation of the future, and leave off doing what most of you now are doing — cease to seek for imaginary happiness in shaping the welfare of the people by means of participation in Government, in Law Courts, by teaching other people, and (in order to do that) by entering institutions that — by accustoming you to idleness, conceit and pride — deprave you, namely, all sorts of Grammar Schools and Universities.
Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray.
Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure, you were created for Joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy you have not yet begun to live.
Forgiveness is commendable, but apply not ointment to the wound of an oppressor.
One Song
What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing, one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks a little different
on this wall than it does on that wall,
and a lot different on this other one,
but it is still one light.
We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
we are pouring them back in.
The cause of misery is the clash between the different forces of nature, one dragging one way, and another dragging another, rendering permanent happiness impossible.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
I find the doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.
There is no darkness but ignorance.
