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Share in the accounts and discoveries of the many individuals who, just like you, set out to find new, true answers that could stand up to the test of passing time with its ever-changing conditions. Welcome these inward and uplifting thoughts as if they were your own, for in one sense… they are.
Ring the bell that still can ring.
Forget the perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
Another thing that people must sacrifice is their suffering. It is very difficult also to sacrifice one’s suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering. Man is made in such a way that he is never so much attached to anything as he is to his suffering. And it is necessary to be free from suffering. No one who is not free from suffering, who has not sacrificed his suffering, can work. Later on a great deal must be said about suffering. Nothing can be attained without suffering, but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering. Now, decipher what this means.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
Origen says the soul’s quest of God comes by self-observation. If she knew herself she would know God also.
“Is there anything that I can do to make myself enlightened?”
“As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.”
“Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?”
“To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.”
A mind that is truly free has reached the state in which opposites are seen as empty. This is the only freedom.
As to the thirst after knowledge, it is an old law that we all get whatever we want. None of us can get anything other than what we fix our hearts upon… The success sometimes may come immediately, but we must be ready to wait patiently even for what may look like an infinite length of time. The student who sets out with such a spirit of perseverance will surely find success and realization at last.
A little time alone in your own room will prove more valuable than anything else that could even be given to you.
Every living being longs always to be happy, untainted by sorrow; and everyone has the greatest love for himself, which is solely due to the fact that happiness is his real nature. Hence, in order to realize that inherent and untainted happiness, which indeed he daily experiences when the mind is subdued in deep sleep, it is essential that he should know himself. For obtaining such knowledge the inquiry “Who am I?” in quest of the Self is the best means.
And this is a miracle: the moment that you realize that there is no way to make a home, then this whole existence is home. Then wherever you are, you are at home.
A little boy wearing the mask of a lion looks quite fierce. He runs out where his little sister is playing and shrieks out in a horrible voice, which shocks and terrifies his sister, making her cry out in terror, and making her attempt to escape from the frightening creature. But when her brother takes off the mask, she runs back to exclaim, “It is my nice brother after all!”
I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Nothing does so establish the mind amidst the rollings and turbulence of present things, as a look above them and a look beyond them — above them, to the steady and good hand by which they are ruled, and beyond them, to the sweet and beautiful end to which, by that hand, they will be brought.
The path of self-knowledge has this aim in view, for no one can know himself unless he turns inwards away from sense-perception, and unless he learns what to seek for. By oneself this is impossible. A man cannot get to know himself alone. His imagination stands in the way. There is no sufficient point in himself from which he can view himself aright, no sufficient knowledge. The establishing of this point is a matter of long work upon oneself with the assistance of those in whom this point is already established.
Who knows the mind has the key to all things else.
He is unwise who looks at the fruit of lofty trees, but does not measure their height.
Open up your inward sense, and see and hear.
If you bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will save you. If you fail to bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will kill you.
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only aim of life.
By every thought you mould your soul,
Which from the whole exacts a toll,
That will just fill the impressed mould
Which contemplation thus does hold.
God your answer is bound to pay;
The law’s exact, the same always.
For God is you and you are He,
Just like a drop is to the sea.
Know that to think is to create,
And you will love instead of hate;
For when you think you make a mould
The Law will fill, if you but hold.
That which is non-existent can never come into being, and that which is can never cease to be. Those who have known the inmost Reality know also the nature of “is” and “is not.”
Now understand me well — it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary… the road is before us! It is safe… I have tried it.
Therefore, if God’s essence is to be seen at all, it must be that the intellect sees it through the divine essence itself… so that in that vision the divine essence is both the object and the medium of vision.
People, generally, are not aware of the ease of mind there is in knowing where they are, and where they are going. The sensation of being lost is a keen distress.
I have often found a small stream at its source, that, when followed along its course, carried away the camel with its load.
