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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.
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.
All the matter of the world that surrounds us, the food that we eat, the water that we drink, the air that we breathe, the stones that our houses are built of, our own bodies — everything is permeated by all the matters that exist in the universe. There is no need to study or investigate the sun in order to discover the matter of the solar world; this matter exists in ourselves and is the result of the division of our atoms. In the same way we have in us the matter of all other worlds. Man is, in the full sense of the term, a “miniature universe”; in him are all the matters of which the universe consists; the same forces, the same laws that govern the life of the universe, operate in him; therefore in studying man we can study the whole world, just as in studying the world we can study man.
Look within. Let neither the special quality of anything, nor its value, escape you.
Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation.
Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
But graciously to know I am no better.
The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself: the spirit is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be emptied of its imperfections, and taken up with divine thoughts and contemplation.
A capacity for self-recollection — from withdrawal from the outward to the inward — is in fact the condition of all noble and useful activity.
What remains concealed can never be healed.
Do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote effects; let the soul be erect, and all things will go well.
We must try to penetrate our most secret self, and examine our being from all sides… And so, for the first time in my life perhaps (although I am supposed to meditate every day!), I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came — arising I know not from where — the current which I dare to call my life.
