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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.
By neglecting self-interest we achieve self-interest.
Even so
Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide
In storms of fortune.
The world is imprisoned by its own activity.
Only let your present and past distress make you feel and acknowledge this twofold great truth: first, that in and of yourself, you are nothing but darkness, vanity, and misery; secondly, that of yourself, you can no more help yourself to light and comfort, than you can create an angel. People at all times can seem to assent to these two truths, but then it is an assent which has no depth or reality, and so is of little or no use, but your condition has opened your heart for a deep and full conviction of these truths. Now give way, I beseech you, to this conviction, and hold these two truths, in the same degree of certainty as you know two and two to be four, and then you are with the prodigal come to yourself, and above half your work is done.
If you understand, you can make use of it on the road, like a dragon reaching the water, like a tiger in the mountains. If you don’t understand, then the worldly truth will prevail, and you will be like a ram caught in a fence, like a fool watching over a stump waiting for a rabbit.
It is only when everything, even love fails that with a flash, man finds out how vain, how dream-like is this world. Then he catches a glimpse of the beyond. It is only by giving up this world that the other comes, never through holding on to this one.
Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
Nothing
in the world
is usual today.
This is
the first morning.
Come quickly — as soon as
these blossoms open,
they fall.
This world exists
as a sheen of dew on flowers.
For when your spirit within yourself is able to penetrate inward through and beyond your own flesh and life, and is able to catch hold of the innermost moving of God, then you are clearly in Heaven.
To be upset at anything which happens to us is a separation of ourselves from nature.
The more we know, the greater our thirst for knowledge. The water-lily, in the midst of waters, opens its leaves and expands its petals at the first pattering of showers, and rejoices in the raindrops with a quicker sympathy than the parched shrub in the sandy desert.
Abba Lot came one day to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Father, I keep my little rule to the best of my ability. I observe my modest fast and my contemplative silence. I say my prayers and do my meditation. I endeavour as far as I can to drive useless thoughts out of my heart. What more can I do?”
The elder rose to answer and lifted his hands to heaven. His fingers looked like lighted candles and he said, “Why not become wholly fire?”
Sweet are the uses of adversity.
Someone once asked Dhu’l-Nun, “When does the Sufi reach his goal?”
He said, “When he is as he was where he was before he was.”
The chief of our concerns is that of ourselves, yet how often have we not been told by the inner voice, that to pursue our own interests at the expense of others would be to do wrong! So we imagine that we are sometimes obeying the impulse of nature, but all the while we are resisting it. In listening to the voice of our senses, we turn a deaf ear to the dictates of our heart.
Let love be your guide and you will always find what you’re looking for.
The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains.
Give yourself more diligently to reflection; come to know yourself.
Freedom is not a constant attribute which we either “have” or “have not.” In fact, there is no such thing as “freedom” except as a word and an abstract concept. There is only one reality: the act of freeing ourselves in the process of making choices. In this process the degree of our capacity to make choices varies with each act, with our practice of life.
Recognize what is in your sight, and what is hidden will become clear to you.
Dare to believe only in yourselves.
Go within, or go without.
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.
Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
Loud clamour is always more or less insane.
