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Here you will read the innermost thoughts and feelings of inspired seekers who have gone before you. Some names you may know… others you will be glad to meet!
Oh Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, I come to you as one of your many children. I need your strength and your wisdom. Make me strong not to be superior to my brother, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, Myself.
As your enemies and your friends, so are you.
One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked.
A voice asked, “Who is there?”
He answered, “It is I.”
The voice said, “There is no room for Me and Thee.”
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.
A voice from within asked, “Who is there?”
The man said, “It is Thee.”
The door was opened for him.
Take away your opinion and there is taken away the complaint, “I have been harmed.” Take away the complaint, “I have been harmed,” and the harm is taken away.
You are banging the walls. What walls? There are no walls. You are fighting the guards. What guards? They don’t exist. You are free right now. See this.
The winter’s frost must rend the burr of the nut before the fruit is seen. So adversity tempers the human heart, to discover its real worth.
God will not only show you how physically weak you are, but how spiritually weak you are without Him. How strong you will be when you see that you are completely weak. Then you will always be able to believe that you are mistaken. Open yourself to the insight of others. Do not be dogmatic. Speak the truth simply. Allow others to evaluate you, but judge no one. Offer advice only to those who ask for it. Mention the faults of others without being heavy-handed or legalistic. And do not speak to gain a good reputation for yourself.
If you cannot pray over a thing, and cannot ask God to bless you in it, don’t do that thing. A secret that you would keep from God is a secret that you should keep from your own heart. Open thy heart to God, if He be there, the outspread world will be thy book of prayer.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible: not to have run away.
But cruel are the times, when we are traitors
And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,
But float upon a wild and violent sea
Each way and none.
All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of honesty and good-nature.
Without this effort we fall every moment, prone and lifeless, into the overwhelming stream of time and event, and the circle of our reactions. For at every moment we can sink down into our habitual state of consciousness — where no integration is possible — where, indeed, we are, and can only be, divided up into innumerable little contradictory parts, which continually steal us from ourselves. Then we lie asleep in appearances, lost to ourselves, for then the sense of ourselves is derived only from the ever-changing response to the flicker of appearances. Then every event carries us away. Every event fastens its mouth upon our energy and consumes it. Life carries us away, now up, then down.
Bring all of yourself to his door. Bring only a part, and you’ve brought nothing at all.
We are free only so far as we are not dupes of ourselves, our pretexts, our instincts, our temperament. We are freed by energy and the critical spirit — that is to say, by detachment of soul, by self-government. So that we are enslaved, but susceptible of freedom; we are bound, but capable of shaking off our bonds.
He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.
One characteristic of a sane mind is its refusal to get involved in society’s insanity because it recognizes insanity when it sees it.
The central secret is, therefore, to know that the various passions and feelings and emotions in the human heart are not wrong in themselves; only they have to be carefully controlled and given a higher and higher direction, until they attain the very highest condition of excellence.
The more a man enters the light of understanding, the more aware he is of his own ignorance. And when the light reveals itself fully and unites with him and draws him into itself, so that he finds himself alone in a sea of light, then he is emptied of all knowledge and immersed in absolute unknowing.
It is better that one should not vow rather than to vow and not pay.