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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 must be aware of the wisdom and the strength that is in them if their understanding is to be expanded.
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said “All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them.”
We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a spirit home according to his deserts. This I believe, and all my people believe the same.
Take away their diversion, and you will see them dried up with weariness. They feel then their nothingness without knowing it… If our condition were truly happy, we would not need diversion.
He who is one with himself, is everything.
Nought’s had, all’s spent,
When our desire is got without content:
‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.
What frightens you? Stand then and be free. If the sun comes down, the moons crumbles into dust, systems after systems are hurled into annihilation, what is that to you? Stand as a rock; you are indestructible… so break this chain and be free forever. What frightens you, what holds you down? It is only ignorance and delusion; nothing else can bind you… Therefore, if you dare, stand on that.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
When a man begins to know himself he is no longer a machine. He may, indeed, even become a man.
Love thyself last.
We are but shadows: we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream — till the heart be touched. That touch creates us — then we begin to be — thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity.
To those who awake, there is one world in common, but to those who are asleep, each is withdrawn to a private world of his own.
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.
True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.
It is an extraordinary fact and an extraordinary piece of evidence for the truth of religion, that a person’s long hours spent in silent communication with God, who never directly answers, is nevertheless manifestly a two-way communication. Such a person is gradually and permanently altered in the depths of his personality in ways which would be inconceivable if there was really nothing there at all.
Even a man’s exact imitation of the song of the nightingale displeases us when we discover that it is mimicry, and not the nightingale.
If men who do not understand life would only approach nearer to the phantoms which alarm them, and would examine them, they would see that they are only phantoms, and not realities.
As the light increases, we see ourselves to be worse than we thought. We are amazed at our former blindness as we see issuing forth from the depths of our heart a whole swarm of shameful feelings, like filthy reptiles crawling from a hidden cave. We never could have believed that we had harbored such things, and we stand aghast as we watch them gradually appear. But while our faults diminish, the light by which we see them waxes brighter, and we are filled with horror. Bear in mind, for your comfort, that we only perceive our malady when the cure begins.
No thought which I have ever had has satisfied my soul.