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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!
We become so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that at last we are disguised to ourselves.
Walk in My presence and you will be perfect.
Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self, for what we wish to believe, we readily believe, but such expectations are often inconsistent with the real state of things.
When all limitations are transcended, nothing remains but the One Will that is ‘I.’
If it is not advantageous, do not move. If objectives can not be attained, do not employ the army. Unless endangered, do not engage in warfare. The ruler cannot mobilize the army out of personal anger. The general cannot engage in battle because of personal frustration. When it is advantageous, move When not advantageous, stop. Anger can revert to happiness, annoyance can revert to joy, but a vanquished state cannot be revived The dead cannot be brought back to life.
Energy is spent chiefly on unnecessary and unpleasant emotions, on the expectation of unpleasant things, possible and impossible, on bad moods, on unnecessary haste, nervousness, irritability, imagination, day-dreaming, and so on. Energy is wasted on the wrong work of centers, on unnecessary tension of the muscles out of all proportion to the work produced, on perpetual chatter which absorbs an enormous amount of energy, on the “interest” continually taken in things happening around us or to other people and having in fact no interest whatever, on the constant waste of the force of “attention,” and so on, and so on.
To sum up all in a word: Nothing has separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God. All the disorder and corruption, and malady of our nature, lies in a certain fixedness of our own will, imagination, and desires, wherein we live to ourselves, are our own center and circumference, act wholly from ourselves, according to our own will, imagination and desires. There is not the smallest degree of evil in us but what arises from this selfishness, because we are thus all in all to ourselves.
Every man stamps his value on himself. The price we set for ourselves is given us… Man is made great or small by his own will.
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
No tongue can tell Your secret
For the measure of the word obscures Your nature
But the gift of the ear
Is that it hears
What the tongue cannot tell.
There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in explanation of our gusts and storms.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Ever building, building to the clouds, still building higher, and never reflecting that the poor narrow basis cannot sustain the giddy tottering column.
Mark how to know yourself. To know himself a man must ever be on the watch over himself, holding his outer faculties. This discipline must be continued until he reaches a state of consciousness. The object is to reach a state of consciousness — a new state of oneself. It is to reach now, where one is present to oneself. What I say unto you I say unto all: Be awake.
The anger of an ape — the threat of a flatterer — these deserve equal regard.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
One ounce of the practice of righteousness and of spiritual self-realization outweighs tons and tons of frothy talk and nonsensical sentiments. Show us one, but one, gigantic spiritual genius growing out of all this dry dust of ignorance and fanaticism… open the windows of your hearts to the clear light of truth, and sit like children at the feet of those who know what they are talking about… Let us then listen attentively to what they say.
He who knows others is wise,
He who knows himself is enlightened.
If you seek, how is that different from pursuing sound and form? If you don’t seek, how are you different from earth, wood, or stone? You must seek without seeking.
All creatures live bewildered, save some few.
