Quotes about Ecstasy

Love

Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love."
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them.
And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the
secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude,
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

"Ecstasy is a Feeling that comes Only When the Heart is tuned to that pitch of Love Which melts it...Which makes it Tender...Which gives it Gentleness... Which makes it Humble"  
Hazat Inayat Kaan - The Sufi Message

'The West seeks the individual consciousness - the enriched mind,
ready perceptions and memories, individual hopes and fears,
ambitions, loves, conquests - the self, the local self, in all its
phases and forms - and sorely doubts whether such a thing as an
universal consciousness exists. The East seeks the universal
consciousness, and in these cases where its quest succeeds,
individual self and life thin away to a mere film and are only the
shadows cast by the glory revealed beyond.

'The individual consciousness takes the form of Thought, which is
fluid and mobile like quicksilver, perpetually in a state of
change and unrest, fraught with pain and effort; the other
consciousness is not in the form of thought. It touches, sees,
hears, and is those things which it perceives, without motion,
without change, without effort, without distinction of subject and
object, but with a vast and incredible joy.

'The individual consciousness is specially related to the body.
The organs of the body are in some degree its organs. But the
whole body is only as one organ of the cosmic consciousness. To
attain this latter one must have the power of knowing one's self
separate from the body - of passing into a state of ecstasy, in
fact. Without this the cosmic consciousness cannot be experienced.
' "

So perhaps if I can learn to really STOP THINKING, I may
experience some glimpses of the cosmic or universal consciousness
to which Edward Carpenter seem to be
referring.

In Light for Life and With Love

Who you are is this "motion of seeing" that is looking through your eyes right now. When you stop at and as this "motion of aliveness" - by consciously refocusing your attention to this seer; by coming to being deeply at rest at and as this one that is the "you" that you can never get away from; by no longer furthering out from this "you" and into the attempt to try and be something that is notyou; you are immediately freed from who you think you are in every given moment of this realization.

True happiness is completely causeless; it is not reliant on a thing; it is its own reward, its own pleasure. It is immutable and immovable even as it is constantly changing and forever increasing in its movement into its own manifestation.

Your true home is in being deeply at rest at and as the heart of existence itself, the "you" that you truly are and have always been.  The heart is totally free of everything even as it contains everything, sustains everything and is flowing through everything - without any paradox or contradiction to any of it.

As you learn to leave alone the activity of unconsciously trying to be the mindbody that you think that you are - the mindbody that this "you" is currently flowing through - and you learn to move as this one that you truly are - this "you" of you; the very heart of existence - steadily, consciously and momentarily, the continuity of the ever deepening of this innermost as it keeps on entering its manifestation, through this mindbody that you find yourself flowing through, allows you to simply bubble in the sheer joy, pleasure, peace, delightfulness and stillness that this "you" of you is.

Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars.

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.

The ecstasy is so short but the forgetting is so long.

The Path to Union

By means of Invocation, the being awakens,
and awakening becomes fullness.

By means of balancing, fullness becomes
internal wholeness.

By virtue of exteriorized attention, internal
wholeness becomes Communion.

By virtue of self-forgetfulness, Communion
becomes Union.

I will put it very simply. In May of 1921 God took me up into a high mountain of inspiration and intense ecstasy. A brilliant flash like lightning severed my bodily sensation from my consciousness and I found myself freed from my body and wholly in the Mind universe of Light, which is God.
And then God said to me, “Behold thou the unity of things in Light of Me, and the seeming separateness of all things in the two lights of my divided thinking. See thou that I, the Undivided, Unchanging One, am within all divided things, centering them, and I am without all changing things, controlling them.”
And the secrets of the universe were unfolded to me in their great simplicity as the doors to the Light opened fully to my consciousness. In less time than it takes to put it into words, I knew all there was to know of the CAUSE of all effect, for there was very little to know. In that hour it was as though the infinity of complexity within the moving kaleidoscope were suddenly taken apart and it was shown to me that the entirety of its illusion was but three mirrors and a few bits of broken glass. Likewise the universal kaleidoscope was but moving mirror waves of dual light extending from their equilibrium in God from Whom all creating things spring in octave electric waves just as ocean’s waves spring from the calm sea.

To meditate is to become one with God. It means to STOP THINKING and thus get out of the awareness of body. One can be aware of his body and of material things only while, and because, one is thinking.
… To concentrate is to think very hard and focus your thoughts to a point. To meditate is just the opposite – it means to expand one’s thoughts into space until one stops thinking and steps into the still Light of KNOWING.
Thinking is sensing, and sensing is vibratory motion. Conversely, meditation is becoming still in order to talk with God. When I say “talk with God” I mean become inspired with His Light of all-knowing. One talks with God in timeless Light. Inspiration comes in flashes of still Light – invisible Light.
If you want to know anything whatsoever, just desire to know it, then stop thinking. Try to get into a state of universal ecstasy or inner joyousness, which is a state of consciousness like unto the God-Mind. Void your mind of thoughts, thought forms and ideas. Become perfectly blank insofar as idea and form are concerned.
In that manner, you become transformed from man as an individual unit of mankind, and become all Soul – the universal Soul. In that manner you make the transition from the state of sensing some things materially to knowing all things cosmically.

Even sorrow or sympathy for the afflicted, or grief for the passing of loved ones, unbalances the body cells and makes one vulnerable to infections or destructive toxins, for such emotions have no relation to love or the inner joyousness of love-inspired man, nor are they within the God-Mind which alone knows unchanging ecstasy.
... Grief is selfish. It is indulged in for self-gratification, not for love. Cosmic man knows the beauty and unreality of death. Sympathy for the afflicted makes a reality of the affliction by its recognition as an infliction, while sorrow for the loss of anything, or for the »unfortunate« condition of anybody, is forgetful of the beauty and abundance of all-giving God and Nature.
The Mind of God knows but one unchanging emotion – ECSTASY – the ecstasy of Love – the ecstasy which has its beginnings in an inner joyousness of one who is far on the road to the discovery of his immortal Self.

Perception without the word, which is without thought, is one of the strangest phenomena. Then the perception is much more acute, not only with the brain, but also with all the senses. Such perception is not the fragmentary perception of the intellect nor the affair of the emotions. It can be called a total perception, and it is part of meditation.

Perception without the perceiver in meditation is to commune with the height and depth of the immense. This perception is entirely different from seeing an object without an observer, because in the perception of meditation there is no object and therefore no experience. can, however, take place when the eyes are open and one is surrounded by objects of every kind. But then these objects have no importance at all. One sees them but there is no process of recognition, which means there is no experiencing.

What meaning has such meditation? There is no meaning; there is no utility. But in that meditation there is a movement of great ecstasy which is not to be confounded with pleasure. It is this ecstasy which gives to the eye, to the brain and to the heart, the quality of innocency. Without seeing life as something totally new, it is a routine, a boredom, a meaningless affair. So meditation is of the greatest importance. It opens the door to the incalculable, to the measureless.

Your reunion in the ecstasy of enlightenment requires a context of separation and suffering to add the necessary contrast to your soul's journey of evolution. Contrast is vital for a good story and God is the ultimate storyteller.

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.

“... the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

Don't try to keep me from asking!
Listen, when I'm this out of control!
But don't put anything breakable in my way!