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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 body is a device to calculate
the astronomy of the spirit.
Look through that astrolabe
and become oceanic.
Finally, the mind of man is so constructed that it is taken far more with disguises than with realities.
The Earth and myself are of one mind.
Learn the value of a man’s words and expressions and you know him. Each man has a measure of his own for everything; this he offers you inadvertently in his words.
Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
with them forgive yourself.
He who diligently attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers, and ceases when he has no more to say, is in possession of some of the best requirements of conversation.
Let other people labor at debates and difficulties and arguments.
The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.
It is useless for the “self” to try to “purify itself,” or for the “self” to “make a place in itself” for God.
Whoever knows himself knows God.
We can only be as free as we’re willing to be truthful about ourself.
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper,
and for this reason:
What is inside me, I don’t let out:
What is outside me, I don’t let in.
If someone comes in, he goes right out again —
He has nothing to do with me at all.
I am a Doorkeeper of the Heart, not a lump of wet clay.
If you want your judgement to be accepted, express it coolly and without passion. All violence has its origin in the will, and so, if your judgement is expressed with vehemence, people will consider it an effort of will, and not the outcome of knowledge, which is in its nature calm and unemotional.
Kindness is to use one’s will to guard one’s speech and conduct so as not to injure anyone.
The saints are the living ones, and the living ones are the saints.
The “man of the way” is a familiar concept in all religions. The elect are “called to be saint.” The Buddhist marga, the “path of liberation,” once entered will be followed to the attainment of perfected being. The man of the way in Sufism is the salik or seeker of the truth.
Man does not know himself and does not know how to use the energies hidden in him, nor does he know that he carries the stars hidden in himself and that he is the microcosm, and thus carries within him the whole firmament with all its influence.
Know thyself.
Water flows continually into the ocean
But the ocean is never disturbed.
Desire flows into the mind of the seer
But he is never disturbed.
The seer knows peace.