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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!
The whole duty of man in this Day is to attain that share of the flood of grace which God poureth forth for him. Let none, therefore, consider the largeness or smallness of the receptacle.
We are surrounded by a wall built of our conceptions of the world, and are unable to look over this wall at the real world.
In the fear of life, the temptation of sorrow is created.
He alone has energy who cannot be deprived of it.
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.
In order to become mature, in short, we must not only reject the authority of our parents — but at the same time, in order to replace them, we must kill off our fantasy selves. Only by killing this fantasy self can a man become fully mature. Unless he does so, he is still in a state of rebellion, a perpetual state of immaturity…
Ultimately, to overcome our fantasy self is the supreme contribution that a man can make to mankind. All the fantasies that are around us, that infect the collective human organism, are in the end just one fantasy, made up of all the separate unresolved images and acts of self assertion that are fed into it from each individual fantasy-self of all the thousands of millions of human beings on earth…
Every man who asserts his ego against the general framework in any way, however small, or adds to the sum of unresolved imagery, however idly, is playing his tiny part in increasing the sum of the world’s discords and miseries…
However much one wishes to change the outside world, the only thing one can change or have any control over is ultimately oneself. Which is why the greatest good any man can do to change the world is the least dramatic act of all — to withdraw his own contribution from the general sum of evil.
It is not “man” in the abstract who recognizes anything. It is always a certain principle, having become active in him, that recognizes its own counterpart in external nature, when it comes in contact with it. Only he in whom is light can see the light; only the element of love can feel love; only the divinity in man can know God in and through man.
As one beholds through a small window
A single green leaf,
a small patch of the vast blue sky,
So I began to perceive Thee,
in the beginning of All things.
As the leaf faded and withered,
the patch covered as with a Dark cloud,
So didst Thou fade and vanish,
But to be reborn again,
As the single green leaf,
as the small patch of the blue sky.
For many lives have I seen the bleak winter and the Green spring.
Prisoned in my little room,
I could not behold the entire tree nor the whole sky.
I swore there was no tree nor the vast sky — That was the truth.
Through time and destruction My window grew large.
I beheld, Now,
A branch with many leaves,
And a greater patch of the blue, with many clouds.
I forgot the single green leaf,
the small patch of the vast blue.
I swore there was no tree, nor the immense sky — That was the truth.
Weary of this prison,
This small cell, I raged at my window.
With bleeding fingers I tore away brick after brick,
I beheld, Now,
The entire tree, its great trunk,
Its many branches, and its thousand leaves,
And an immense part of the sky.
I swore there was no other tree,
no other part to the sky — That was the truth.
This prison no longer holds me, I flew away through the window,
O friend, I behold every tree and the vast expanse of the limitless sky.
Though I live in every single leaf and in every small
Patch of the vast blue sky,
Though I live in every prison,
looking out through every small casement, Liberated am I.
Lo! not a thing shall bind me — This is the truth.
Humility is often only a feigned submission, of which we make use to make others submissive. It is the trickery of pride which abases itself in order to exalt itself, and though it transforms itself in a thousand different ways, it is never better disguised and more capable of deceiving than when it conceals itself under the cloak of humility.
What you are looking for is what is looking.
Most are, in effect, deaf to that internal voice which, nevertheless, calls to them so loud and emphatically. A mere machine is evidently incapable of thinking… whereas in man there exists something perpetually prone to expand, and to burst the chains by which it is confined.
The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see. Observe things as they are and don’t pay attention to other people.
Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now.
There are different kinds of curiosity; one springs from interest, which makes us desire to know everything that may be profitable to us; another from pride, which springs from a desire to know what others do not know.
God’s divinity comes of my humility, and this may be demonstrated as follows. It is God’s peculiar property to give; but He cannot give unless something is prepared to receive his gifts. If, then, I prepare my humility to receive what He gives, by my humility I make God a giver. Since it is His nature to give, I am merely giving God what is already His own.
It is like a rich man who wants to be a giver but must first find a taker, since without a taker he cannot be a giver. Similarly, if God is to be a giver, He must first find a taker, but no one may be a taker of God’s gifts except by his humility. Therefore, if God is to exercise his divine property by his gifts, He well may need my humility; for apart from humility He can give me nothing — without it I am not prepared to receive His gift. That is why it is true that by humility I give divinity to God.
Lovers do not themselves seek and yearn. In all the world there is no one seeking but He!
Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.
Father Pedro Arrupe (1907 – 1991)
A man’s gift is called an upright life. It is that gift that makes room for him and makes him worthy of the fullness of God. It is that very thing which is called the “throne” of the holy powers.
Fear is the parent of cruelty.