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Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you.
I have given you the refreshing drink called the perception of truth, and he who drinks of it becomes free from excitement, passion, and wrong-doing.
We learn to love the light by seeing clearly what the darkness does to us.
The central secret is, therefore, to know that the various passions and feelings and emotions in the human heart are not wrong in themselves; only they have to be carefully controlled and given a higher and higher direction, until they attain the very highest condition of excellence.
To be united with the Beloved is to love all, for in all dwelleth the Beloved.
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.
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.
When I see an anxious man, I say, “What does this man want?” If he did not want something which is not in his power, how could he be anxious? For this reason, a lute player when he is singing by himself has no anxiety, but when he goes to the theatre, he is anxious, even if he has a good voice and plays well on the lute, for he not only wishes to sing well, but also to obtain applause, which is not in his power.
The mercy of God has no limits, nothing is too great for it. That is the reason why anyone who despairs of it is the author of his own death.
To live rightly in this world we must first become aware of it. The problem is a man’s false assumption that he is already aware, which leaves him no motive for investigation. Do not assume that the only existing world is that presented by the five senses and the surface mind.
He alone has energy who cannot be deprived of it.
There is no reaching the Self. If Self were to be reached it would mean that it is not here and now but that it is yet to be obtained. What is got afresh will also be lost. So it will be impermanent. What is not permanent is not worth striving for. So I say the Self is not reached. You are the Self. You are already That.
Being overly concerned with your faults is worse for your spiritual condition than the fault itself.
Truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.
It is only through the morning gate of the beautiful that you can penetrate into the realm of knowledge. That which we feel here as beauty, we shall one day know as truth.
Progress is the law of life; man is not man as yet.
It is the understanding that sees and hears; it is the understanding that improves everything, that orders everything, and that acts, rules, and reigns.
If you want to be an astronomer you must go to the observatory, take a telescope, study the stars and planets, and then you will become an astronomer. Each science must have its own methods. I could preach you thousands of sermons but they would not make you religious, until you first practiced the method. These are the truths of the sages of all countries, of all ages, men pure and unselfish, who had no motive but to do good to the world. They all declare that they have found some truth higher than that the senses can bring to us, and they challenge verification. They say to you, take up the method and practice honestly… So we must work faithfully, using the prescribed methods, and light will come.
For each believes his lamp to be the light of day!
Morality or the moral life may be described as that solution of the contradiction between man’s higher and lower nature which is accomplished by the transformation of the lower into the organ or expression of the higher.
