Browse the Living Book by "The Search"

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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.

If you want what visible reality can give, you’re an employee.
If you want the unseen world, you’re not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish, but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is love’s confusing joy.

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207 – 1273)

There comes a time when, on the one hand, a vague awakening consciousness stirs the soul, the consciousness of the higher law… and the sufferings a man endures from the contradictions of life, compel him to renounce the social order and to adopt the new… And this time has now arrived.

Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)

Those that make you return, for whatever reason,
to God’s solitude, be grateful to them.
Worry about the others, who give you
delicious comforts that keep you from prayer.
Friends are enemies sometimes,
and enemies friends.

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207 – 1273)

The disciples said to him, “Tell us what our end will be.” Jesus said, “If you haven’t found the beginning, why ask about the end? For where the beginning is, the end is also. Blessed are those who stand at the beginning, for they will know the end, and they will not taste death.”

Jesus Christ (circa 4 B.C.E. – 30 A.D.)

The first lesson, then, is to sit for some time and let the mind run on. The mind is bubbling up all the time. It is like that monkey jumping about. Let the monkey jump as much as he can; you simply watch and wait. Knowledge is power says the proverb, and that is true. Until you know what the mind is doing you cannot control it. Give it the full length of the reins; many most hideous thoughts may come into it; you will be astonished that it was possible for you to think such thoughts. But you will find that each day the mind’s vagaries are becoming less and less violent, that each day it is becoming calmer… until at last it will be under perfect control, but we must patiently practise every day.

Vivekananda (1863 – 1902)

There is an immense ocean over which the mind can sail, upon which the vessel of thought has not yet been launched… Let us haul it over the belt of land, launch on the ocean, and sail outwards. There is much beyond all that has ever yet been imagined.

Richard Jefferies (1848 – 1887)