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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.
Eternity alone understands about compassion. If you therefore wish to learn to understand compassion, you must learn it from eternity. But if you wish to understand the eternal, then there must be quiet about you, while you absolutely center your attention on inwardness.
Without going out of doors, one may know the whole world; without looking out of the window, one may see the way of heaven. The further one travels, the less one may know. Thus it is that without moving you may know; without looking you shall see; without doing you shall succeed.
With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
If a man would find the Key of Knowledge, let him find himself.
If we would put some slight stress on ourselves at the beginning, then afterwards we should be able to do all things with ease and joy.
We survive in adversity and perish in ease and comfort.
You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building nests in your hair.
It is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your own reason, and not of others, that should make you believe.
I may be asked what I mean by “Inward Spiritual Freedom”… Spiritual freedom is the attribute of a mind in which reason and conscience have begun to act, and which is free through its own energy, through fidelity to the truth, through resistance to temptation… We are in the midst of influences which menace the intellect and heart; and to be free is to withstand and conquer these.
My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.
Chief among the causes of liberty is devotion, the watchfulness of the spirit towards its own nature.
Do not sit at home, do not go to the forest,
But recognize mind wherever you are.
When one abides in complete and perfect enlightenment,
Where is Samsara and where is Nirvana?
The wish to be cured is part of the cure.
There comes for ever something between us and what we deem our happiness.
Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it; and with this I begin and end.
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
Dare to be wise!
All men wish to be happy, but are dull at perceiving exactly what it is that makes life happy.
Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake, in little things, and then proceed to greater.
If you are in Gyaros, do not let your mind dwell upon life at Rome; do not think about the pleasures offered to you when living in Rome, and all that would reward your return. Instead, be intent on discovering how the man who lives in Gyaros can live in Gyaros like an inspired man. And if you are in Rome, do not let your mind reflect upon life in Athens, but learn how to live in Rome.
Bring all of yourself to his door. Bring only a part, and you’ve brought nothing at all.
He that forsakes suffering is at his journey’s end.
And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.
In the beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with the animals, for Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent certain animals to tell men that he showed himself through the beast, and that from them, and from the stars and the sun and moon should man learn… all things tell of Tirawa.
If we could penetrate to the eternal reality of our own being we would find the one and only solution for every situation — in the right sense of our own existence — primarily in itself.