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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!
Men make little effort to exercise their intellect, or they imagine they possess knowledge before they really learn, the consequence being that they never begin to have knowledge.
God made man so that he should seek the Lord.
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more quiet and gentle we become towards the defects of others.
Not satisfied with the needs of nature, he demands the unnecessary.
If the Beloved is everywhere,
the lover is a veil,
but when living itself becomes
the Friend, lovers disappear.
That which is within a man, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in what is about to befall him.
Die before you die.
Freedom from what is unwanted by us begins by awakening to what is unknown within us.
Such endless depths lie in the Divinity, and in the wisdom of God, that as he maketh one, so he maketh every one the end of the World, and the supernumerary persons being enrichers of his inheritance. Adam and the World are both mine. And the posterity of Adam enrich it infinitely. Souls are God’s jewels, every one of which is worth many worlds. They are his riches because his image, and mine for that reason. So that I alone am the end of the World, angels and men being all mine. And if others are so, they are made to enjoy it for my further advancement. God only being the Giver and I the Receiver. So that Seneca philosophized rightly when he said “Des me dedit solu toti Mundo, et totum mundum mihi soli.” (God gave me alone to all the world, and all the world to me alone.)
You are the angel who will banish darkness from your life. You are the angel that will bring light to the land of your heart. You are the angel who will kill the dragons of doubt. You are the angel that will triumph — triumph over all that you cannot tolerate.
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and you are poverty.
Let each man think himself an act of God.
His mind a thought, his life a breath of God.
Sublime me,
Master Alchemist,
Again, again
And yet again
In the cracked
And sooty retort
Of my own unwilling
Skin.
In your cruel,
Impartial fires
Bone and brain
All vain desires,
Vanity and inward blight
Refine. Reform me
Free of what obscures your
Light.
Transparent
Make this vessel be
So to embrace,
Transmit and focus
Your life-searing energy
That so careless flows
To and through
Me. Amen.
Unless he attains inner unity man can have no ‘I,’ can have no will. The concept of “will” in relation to a man who has not attained inner unity is entirely artificial. The whole of life is composed of small things which we continually obey and serve. Our ‘I’ continually changes as in a kaleidoscope. Every external event which strikes us, every suddenly aroused emotion, becomes caliph for an hour, begins to build and govern, and is, in its turn, as unexpectedly deposed and replaced by something else. And the inner consciousness, without attempting to disperse the illusory designs created by the shaking of the kaleidoscope and without understanding that in reality the power that decides and acts is not itself, endorses everything and says about these moments of life in which different external forces are at work, “This is I, this is I.”
Man is a mystery. If you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
In this patient, though uncheered obedience, we become prepared for light. The soul gathers force.
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received.
Observe yourself as your greatest enemy would do… so shall you be your greatest friend.
The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being; expand, if possible, to his full growth; resisting all impediments, casting off all foreign, especially all noxious adhesions, and show himself at length in his own shape and stature, be these what they may.
The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.