β
I know you're tired but come, this is the way.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
β
β
Anglican clergyman
β
To conquer frustration, one must remain intensely focused on the outcome, not the obstacles.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Head up, heart open. To better days!
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.
β
β
Anthon St. Maarten (Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny)
β
The sky is not my limit...I am.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
She remembered who she was
and the game changed.
β
β
Lalah Delia
β
Donβt spoil me with your lies, love me with your truth.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls.
β
β
Aberjhani (Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love)
β
When God takes out the trash, don't go digging back through it. Trust Him.
β
β
Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Heart Crush)
β
Manipulation, fueled with good intent, can be a blessing. But when used wickedly, it is the beginning of a magician's karmic calamity.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech. We should be better Christians if we were more alone, waiting upon God, and gathering through meditation on His Word spiritual strength for labour in his service. We ought to muse upon the things of God, because we thus get the real nutriment out of them. . . . Why is it that some Christians, although they hear many sermons, make but slow advances in the divine life? Because they neglect their closets, and do not thoughtfully meditate on God's Word. They love the wheat, but they do not grind it; they would have the corn, but they will not go forth into the fields to gather it; the fruit hangs upon the tree, but they will not pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they will not stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, O Lord. . . .
β
β
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
β
I call it "Higher Power" not to exclude any cultures/religions, as I feel everyone is pointing in the same direction, with different names, from different perspectives.
β
β
San Mateo (San Mateo: Proof of The Divine)
β
And when your soul, the flame, the spark, meets with the divine fuel that is so pure and so strong, it results in immense enlightenment: the enlightenment of God. Light upon light, Noorun Alaa Noor.
β
β
Zain Hashmi (A Blessed Olive Tree: A Spiritual Journey in Twenty Short Stories)
β
The Creator lives all joy and pain.
β
β
Matthew Edward Hall (San Mateo: Proof of The Divine)
β
If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.
β
β
Karen Armstrong (The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness)
β
Evangelicalism has taken the Extrovert Ideal to its logical extreme...If you don't love Jesus out loud, then it must not be real love. It's not enough to forge your own spiritual connection to the divine; it must be displayed publicly.
β
β
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
β
To disassociate darkness from evil.
β
β
Matthew Edward Hall (San Mateo: Proof of The Divine)
β
Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine, renouncing attachment and looking upon success and failure with an equal eye. Spirituality implies equanimity.
[Trans. Purohit Swami]
β
β
Anonymous (The Bhagavad Gita)
β
I was there and I thought my faith was strong. Authoritarianism is lack of faith = Lack of faith is authoritarianism.
β
β
Matthew Edward Hall (San Mateo: Proof of The Divine)
β
Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
β
β
Martin Luther
β
Each moment of worry, anxiety or stress represents lack of faith in miracles, for they never cease.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Elevate your inside game. A negative attitude is below the horizon...a place for lonesome hearts.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this.
β
β
Victor Hugo (Les MisΓ©rables)
β
True recognition resonates...
Within continuous...
Any self elaborated recognition...
Is frivolous...
To know the particular...
Requires a soul ocular...
Into the deepest darkness...
For unveiling its sparkness...
Submerged in depths of conscious...
Immensely intense intimate precious...
Where glimpses of those sightings...
Revealed only through the writings...
β
β
β
β
Hugh Shergill (Maya Leela: The Divine Play Of illusion)
β
Betrayal and dishonor is usually an inside job. Keep it 'sucka-free', loved one!
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
β
β
Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
β
Om is not just a sound or vibration. It is not just a symbol. It is the entire cosmos, whatever we can see, touch, hear and feel. Moreover, it is all that is within our perception and all that is beyond our perception. It is the core of our very existence. If you think of Om only as a sound, a technique or a symbol of the Divine, you will miss it altogether. Om is the mysterious cosmic energy that is the substratum of all the things and all the beings of the entire universe. It is an eternal song of the Divine. It is continuously resounding in silence on the background of everything that exists.
β
β
Amit Ray (Om Chanting and Meditation)
β
Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.
β
β
Sivananda Saraswati (Bliss Divine: A Book of Spiritual Essays on the Lofty Purpose of Human Life)
β
Most Religions Debunked, Memory Loss.
β
β
Matthew Edward Hall (San Mateo: Proof of The Divine)
β
Spiritual growth involves giving up the stories of your past so the universe can write a new one.
β
β
Marianne Williamson (The Law of Divine Compensation: On Work, Money, and Miracles (The Marianne Williamson Series))
β
True recognition resonates...
Within continuous...
Any self elaborated recognition...
Is frivolous...
To know the particular...
Requires a soul ocular...
Into the deepest darkness...
For unveiling its sparkness...
Submerged in depths of conscious...
Immensely intense intimate precious...
Where glimpses of those sightings...
Revealed only through the writings...
β
β
Hugh Shergill (Maya Leela: The Divine Play Of illusion)
β
Solitude is the house of peace.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
The path of peace is not a passive journey. It takes incredible strength not to open a can of 'whoop-ass', justifiably, when ones button is pushed.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Don't wish...DO! Don't try...BE! Don't think...KNOW! And above all: Bless a stranger with a small, yet powerful, random act of kindness. You feel me?
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
A life without love is of no account. Don't ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, eastern or westernβ¦divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! The universe turns differently when fire loves water.
β
β
Shams Tabrizi
β
Bravado may stir the crowd, but courage needs no audience.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
The singing Sun the signing moon the singing stars and the singing galaxies are the direct expression of the divine word AUM.
β
β
Amit Ray (Om Chanting & Meditation)
β
The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.
β
β
Joseph Campbell (The Hero With a Thousand Faces)
β
Nothing that happens on the surface of the sea can alter the calm of its depths
β
β
Andrew Harvey (The Direct Path: Creating a Personal Journey to the Divine Using the World's Spiritual Traditions)
β
Hating skin color is contempt for God's divine creative imagination. Honoring it is appreciation for conscious, beautiful-love-inspired diversity.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
The ego lusts for satisfaction. It has a prideful ferocious appetite for its version of "truth". It is the most challenging aspect to conquer; the cause for most spiritual turmoil.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Love spiritually, not strategically.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
One of the greatest gifts from God is the eternal perspective. It is a level of fearlessness, a level of understanding where one can experience even emotional harmony with God.
β
β
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
β
To witness miracles unfold in your experience, count your blessings and be thankful. Perceived small blessings accumulate to be the most powerful.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Tough love may be tough to give, but it is a necessity of life and assurance of positive growth.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Never let haters 'still' your flow. They can only do so with your permission.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Seeds of past karma cannot germinate if they are roasted in the fires of divine wisdom.
β
β
Paramahansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi)
β
Ed Sanders chuckled. βThe ivy-covered walls at Columbia University have limited the depth of your insight, Professor Gilmore. The rehearsal flight is a ploy cooked up in the White House to take advantage of Cindy Divineβs immense popularity.
β
β
Shafter Bailey (Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings)
β
I believe that the greatest truths of the universe don't lie outside, in the study of the stars and the planets. They lie deep within us, in the magnificence of our heart, mind, and soul. Until we understand what is within, we can't understand what is without.
β
β
Anita Moorjani (Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing)
β
What you do teaches faster, and has a lasting impression, far beyond what you say.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
The first law of nature is self-preservation. Cut off that which may harm you. But if it is worth preserving, and is meaningful, nourish it and have no regrets. Ultimately, this is true living and love of self...from within.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you've been taught that you're being judged. Because you've been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open you connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart. The reality is that God's way is love, and you can see this for yourself.
β
β
Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
β
You cannot build a dream on a foundation of sand. To weather the test of storms, it must be cemented in the heart with uncompromising conviction.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Let's not grow with our roots in the ground.
β
β
Criss Jami (Venus in Arms)
β
64oz is 1.89L (64: Kamala 1:won 89: Taylor Swift endorsement)
β
β
Matthew Edward Hall (San Mateo: Proof of The Divine)
β
Having beef with someone is unnecessary and avoidable. Whatever the issue, if not positive, it is an opportunity to cut the excess fat from an unhealthy dietary network. Simply excuse yourself from the table of negativity and lean forward in peace.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
One who will not accept solitude, stillness and quiet recurring moments...is caught up in the wilderness of addictions; far removed from an original state of being and awareness. This is 'dis-ease.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
Fully inhale your dream and completely exhale manifestation of it.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
We are not supposed to all be the same, feel the same, think the same, and believe the same. The key to continued expansion of our Universe lies in diversity, not in conformity and coercion. Conventionality is the death of creation.
β
β
Anthon St. Maarten (Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny)
β
He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret.
β
β
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine)
β
You know how it goes:
at some point in your life,
you fell in love with someone
and had a glimpse of God.
Then you abandoned life and lover
and started celebrating
your love for God.
β
β
Kamand Kojouri
β
Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth.
β
β
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine)
β
We take spiritual initiation when we become conscious of the Divine within us, and thereby contact the Divine without us.
β
β
Dion Fortune (Esoteric Orders and Their Work and The Training and Work of the Initiate)
β
For those who choose the worldly way, tantra works wonders... It helps us transform our desires into divine experiences. Imagine sexuality as the gateway to moksha rather than a hindrance
β
β
Merlin Franco (Saint Richard Parker)
β
Looking into her eyes, I see the emptiness of my mind reflected in the vibration of my heartβlove without the presence of 'Me.
β
β
Raz Mihal (Just Love Her)
β
Ben and Freda were happy for Cindy. She had recovered from the horrible abuses she had suffered the previous year. Her last bad dream was over five months behind her. Her schoolwork was excellent, and her home and farm chores were done promptly without any supervision. Her face without a smile was a rare sight. Ben and Freda exchanged glances. Tears had slipped glistening over their eyes.
β
β
Shafter Bailey (Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings)
β
Both friend and enemy reside within us. One lives by the rule of compassion, the other by the rule of hard knocks. Though potential influence of either extreme is inevitable, our actions bear witness to the one we embrace.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
The artistβs artistic brush stroke
of colour...
Fractionally exists within
the art canvas cover...
Unaware of its existence
in the artβs totality...
Absolute devoid of the artβs
true reality...
Experiencing within the art
is mere illusionβ¦
Truth of the art lies
in the depth of the visionβ¦
For the visionary truth
to become experience...
Requires that certain
conscious distanceβ¦
Detaching from the
perceived abode...
Deviating from the miscode
to decode...
Maya illusionary stage
manifests for the playβ¦
As the actor enacts the
illusionary Leela play...
Viewing the play is must
from an audience eye...
Where all the illusionary play
theatrics lieβ¦
Observing the art
as the non intruder...
Is the liberating clarity
for the art observerβ¦
β
β
Hugh Shergill (Maya Leela: The Divine Play Of illusion)
β
What you are, and who you are should provide greater clarity about where you have been and where you are headed. Although one distinguishes spiritual from physical nature, the ultimate unification of the two is the consequence of the struggle for internal, external and eternal β peace.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
You donβt have to act crazy anymoreβ
We all know you were good at that,
Now retire, my dear,
From all that hard work you do
Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart.
Look in a clear mountain mirror
See the beautiful ancient warrior
And the divine elements
You always carry inside
That infused this universe with sacred life
So long ago
β
β
I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy
β
There are two paths of which one may choose in the walk of life; one we are born with, and the one we consciously blaze. One is naturally true, while the other is a perceptive illusion. Choose wisely at each fork in the road.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
When the world goes to sleep, God is the One who is awake with you. God sees the tears you hide with smiles and He embraces the pain you think no one would understand. βNot even an atomβs weight in the heavens or the earth remains hidden from Himβ (34:3).
β
β
A. Helwa (Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam)
β
I detach myself from preconceived outcomes and trust that all is well. Being myself allows the wholeness of my unique magnificience to draw me in those directions most beneficial to me and to all others. This is really the only thing I have to do. And within that framework, everything that is truly mine comes into my life effortlessly, in the most magical and unexpected ways imaginable, demonstrating every day the power and love of who I truly am.
β
β
Anita Moorjani (Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing)
β
The past is one part of the movie, and the future reveals how the film will continue... You can't change fate. Life and surroundings you can't change. You just have the impression that you can do something about it.
β
β
Raz Mihal (Just Love Her)
β
We are not here to match and homogenize and agree on every point. One size of spirituality does not fit all. We are here to be our divine selves, boldly, passionately, respectfully, to the absolute best of our ability β and this, this is more than enough.
β
β
sera break
β
It is Satan's constant effort to misrepresent the character of God, the nature of sin, and the real issues at stake in the great controversy. His sophistry lessens the obligation of the divine law and gives men license to sin. At the same time he causes them to cherish false conceptions of God so that they regard Him with fear and hate rather than with love. The cruelty inherent in his own character is attributed to the Creator; it is embodied in systems of religion and expressed in modes of worship.
β
β
Ellen Gould White (The Great Controversy: Annotated)
β
Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must, even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet. For consider how narrow its true path is. Is must not become what the people call a "mutual admiration society"; yet if it is not full of mutual admiration, of Appreciative love, it is not Friendship at all.
β
β
C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
β
The crucial point is: by changing ourselves, we change the world. As we become more loving on the inside, healing occurs on the outside. Much like the rising of the sea level lifts all ships, so the radiance of unconditional love within a human heart lifts all of life.
β
β
David R. Hawkins (Letting Go: The Pathway To Surrender)
β
Don't ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western.
Divisions only lead to more divisions.
Love has no labels, no definitions.
It is what it is, pure and simple.
Love is the water of life and a lover is a soul of fire!
The universe turns differently when fire loves water.
β
β
Elif Shafak (The Forty Rules of Love)
β
God is both gross and divine. God is both righteous and unrighteous. He is both he and she. He is both pain and pleasure, the good and the bad. God is every aspect of this existence. It is it. Thatβs it. Good and bad are what humans attribute to things, people and events according to their sense of morality.
β
β
Abhaidev (The Meaninglessness of Meaning)
β
Her beauty is not justβor even primarilyβphysical. In her face, I see her wisdom, her compassion, her courage, her eternal glory. This other beauty, this spiritual beautyβwhich is the deepest truth of herβsustains me in times of fear and despair, as other truths might sustain a priest enduring martyrdom at the hands of a tyrant. I see nothing blasphemous in equating her grace with the mercy of God, for the one is a reflection of the other. The selfless love that we give to others to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them, is all the proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest; we carry within us a divine spark, and if we chose to recognize it, our lives have dignity, meaning, hope. In her it is spark is bright, a light that heals rather than wounds me.
β
β
Dean Koontz (Seize the Night (Moonlight Bay, #2))
β
The symbol of Goddess gives us permission. She teaches us to embrace the holiness of every natural, ordinary, sensual dying moment. Patriarchy may try to negate body and flee earth with its constant heartbeat of death, but Goddess forces us back to embrace them, to take our human life in our arms and clasp it for the divine life it is - the nice, sanitary, harmonious moment as well as the painful, dark, splintered ones.
If such a consciousness truly is set loose in the world, nothing will be the same. It will free us to be in a sacred body, on a sacred planet, in sacred communion with all of it. It will infect the universe with holiness. We will discover the Divine deep within the earth and the cells of our bodies, and we will lover her there with all our hearts and all our souls and all our minds.
β
β
Sue Monk Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine)
β
Deep within, there is something profoundly known, not consciously, but subconsciously. A quiet truth, that is not a version of something, but an original knowing. What this, absolute, truth [identity] is may be none of our businessβ¦but it is there, guiding us along the path of greater becoming; a true awareness. It is so self-sustaining that our recognition of it is not required. We are offspringβs of such a powerfully divine force β Creator of all things known and unknown.
β
β
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
β
There is no need for us all to be alike and think the same way, neither do we need a common enemy to force us to come together and reach out to each other. If we allow ourselves and everyone else the freedom to fully individuate as spiritual beings in human form, there will be no need for us to be forced by worldly circumstances to take hands and stand together. Our souls will automatically want to flock together, like moths to the flame of our shared Divinity, yet each with wings covered in the glimmering colors and unique patterns of our individual human expression.
β
β
Anthon St. Maarten
β
In this lifetime we are like Superman who must remain disguised as the nerdy newspaper journalist Clark Kent, or Harry Potter and his friends who are not allowed to do magic while they are on holiday, away from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry... but even Harry Potter and Clark Kent get to tap into their βspecial powersβ once in a while, especially when the going gets tough.
β
β
Anthon St. Maarten (Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny)
β
The true Mason is not creed-bound. He realizes with the divine illumination of his lodge that as Mason his religion must be universal: Christ, Buddha or Mohammed, the name means little, for he recognizes only the light and not the bearer. He worships at every shrine, bows before every altar, whether in temple, mosque or cathedral, realizing with his truer understanding the oneness of all spiritual truth. All true Masons know that they only are heathen who, having great ideals, do not live up to them. They know that all religions are but one story told in divers ways for peoples whose ideals differ but whose great purpose is in harmony with Masonic ideals. North, east, south and west stretch the diversities of human thought, and while the ideals of man apparently differ, when all is said and the crystallization of form with its false concepts is swept away, one basic truth remains: all existing things are Temple Builders, laboring for a single end. No true Mason can be narrow, for his Lodge is the divine expression of all broadness. There is no place for little minds in a great work.
β
β
Manly P. Hall
β
Donβt feel bad about feeling bad. Donβt be frightened of feeling afraid. Donβt be angry about getting angry. There is no need to give up when we are feeling depressed. Nor should we be dismayed at the grief which often accompanies the outgrowing of anything which needs outgrowing. We can be glad that our soul is speaking to us and pushing us onwards. We frequently need to persevere with a period of inner turmoil before the dust can settle and be swept out the door.
β
β
Donna Goddard (The Love of Devotion)
β
Always remember, wherever you are, whether near or far, you had a mother who really, really loved you. The original mother. Once you've found your true inner guru you can never again be divided. Perfect union with the divine, through the grace of your real teacher, transcends time, space, death and all worldly limitations. Your real teacher is the original mother - regardless in which manifest or non-manifest form, or gender, she appears. The one who nurtures you and the one who also, out of wisdom and compassion, corrects you if you are misguided.
β
β
Zeena Schreck
β
There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets `things' with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns `my' and `mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
β
β
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine)
β
Perhaps our dreams are there to be broken, and our plans are there to crumble, and our tomorrows are there to dissolve into todays, and perhaps all of this is all a giant invitation to wake up from the dream of separation, to awaken from the mirage of control, and embrace whole-heartedly what is present. Perhaps it is all a call to compassion, to a deep embrace of this universe in all its bliss and pain and bitter-sweet glory. Perhaps we were never really in control of our lives, and perhaps we are constantly invited to remember this, since we constantly forget it. Perhaps suffering is not the enemy at all, and at its core, there is a first-hand, real-time lesson we must all learn, if we are to be truly human, and truly divine. Perhaps breakdown always contains breakthrough. Perhaps suffering is simply a right of passage, not a test or a punishment, nor a signpost to something in the future or past, but a direct pointer to the mystery of existence itself, here and now. Perhaps life cannot go 'wrong' at all.
β
β
Jeff Foster
β
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilisation, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age β the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night β are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.
β
β
Victor Hugo (Les MisΓ©rables)
β
Your job then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worshipβjust so long as those prayers are sincere.
I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's the history of mankind's search for holiness. If humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.
The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn't become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us. In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite."
But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed ... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while?
That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
Our life of contemplation shall retain the following characteristics:
βmissionary: by going out physically or in spirit in search of souls all over the universe.
βcontemplative: by gathering the whole universe at the very center of our hearts where the Lord of the universe abides, and allowing the pure water of divine grace to flow plentifully and unceasingly from the source itself, on the whole of his creation.
βuniversal: by praying and contemplating with all and for all, especially with and for the spiritually poorest of the poor.
β
β
Mother Teresa (In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and Prayers)
β
As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.
β
β
W.B. Yeats (Rosa Alchemica)
β
Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those things here."
I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the book of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question.
β
β
Rob Bell (Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived)
β
Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness. Take away anything that dulls your edge. No newspapers or magazines. No TV. No candy, cookies, or sweets. No sex. No cuddling. No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet. Reduce working time to a necessary minimum. No movies. No conversation that isn't about truth, love, or the divine.
If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks, as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness, then your life will be stripped of routine distraction. All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine. You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life. You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth, rather than hiding form it.
Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth. Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source. By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex, and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated, and the source remains hidden. Your life becomes structured entirely by your favorite means of sidestepping the suffering you rarely allow yourself to feel. And when you do touch the surface of your suffering, perhaps in the form of boredom, you quickly pick up a magazine or the remote control.
Instead, feel your suffering, rest with it, embrace it, make love with it. Feel your suffering so deeply and thoroughly that you penetrate it, and realize its fearful foundation. Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you are doing, from the moment you are born. Two hours of absorption in a good Super Bowl telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You were born as a sacrifice. And you can either participate in the sacrifice, dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering.
By eliminating the safety net of comforts in your life, you have the opportunity to free fall in this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the unthreatenable openness which is the source of your gifts. The superior man lives as this spontaneous sacrifice of love.
β
β
David Deida (The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire)
β
Men have a great deal of pleasure in human knowledge, in studies of natural things; but this is nothing to that joy which arises from divine light shining into the soul. This spiritual light is the dawning of the light of glory in the heart. There is nothing so powerful as this to support persons in affliction, and to give the mind peace and brightness in this stormy and dark world. This knowledge will wean from the world, and raise the inclination to heavenly things. It will turn the heart to God as the fountain of good, and to choose him for the only portion. This light, and this only, will bring the soul to a saving close with Christ. It conforms the heart to the gospel, mortifies its enmity and opposition against the scheme of salvation therein revealed: it causes the heart to embrace the joyful tidings, and entirely to adhere to, and acquiesce in the revelation of Christ as our Savior.
β
β
Jonathan Edwards
β
I did not know what I was going to do with my life; before anything else I wanted to find an answer, my answer, to the timeless questions, and then after that I would decide what I would become. If I did not begin by discovering what was the grand purpose of life on earth, I said to myself, how would I be able to discover the purpose of my tiny ephemeral life? And if I did not give my life a purpose, how would I be able to engage in action? I was not interested in finding what life's purpose was objectively - this, I divined, was impossible and futile - but simply what purpose I, of my own free will, could give it in accord with my spiritual and intellectual needs. Whether or not this purpose was the true one did not, at that time, have any great significance for me. The important thing was that I should find (should create) a purpose congruent with my own self, and thus, by following it, reel out my particular desires and abilities to the furthest possible limit. For then at last I would be collaborating harmoniously with the totality of the universe.
β
β
Nikos Kazantzakis (Report to Greco)
β
Instead of resisting to changes, surrender. Let life be with you, not against you. If you think βMy life will be upside downβ donβt worry. How do you know down is not better than upside? A good man complains of no one; he does not look to faults. A life without love is of no account. Don't ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, eastern or westernβ¦divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! The universe turns differently when fire loves water. The universe is a complete unique entity. Everything and everyone is bound together with some invisible strings. Do not break anyoneβs heart; do not look down on weaker than you. Oneβs sorrow at the other side of the world can make the entire world suffer; oneβs happiness can make the entire world smile. Most of conflicts and tensions are due to language. Don't pay so much attention to the words. In loveβs country, language doesn't have its place. Love's mute
β
β
Shams Tabrizi