Quotes about Enlightenment

Just as we care for our bodies with good food and rest, so we must also care for our spiritual selves, that part of us that is connected to God. If we are spiritually ill, our bodies and minds also become sick. This is why regular prayer and times of silent contemplation are necessary parts of our daily lives. Periodically, we must also take extra measures of self-examination and learning, that we might be ever-perfected in the grace of the infinite and perfect God.

Search your hearts and minds for the spiritual wounds of unforgiveness and fear, which are atheistic and unchristian, and repent of them so that you might be healed by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Your Father in Christ,
Bishop JOSEPHhttp://www.antiochianladiocese.org/

"At the beginning of the call to the spiritual life,the Lord visits a person with His grace and various consolations,but afterwards He withdraws them and casts him into the fire of diverse temptations and sorrows,so that our self-loving and glory-loving disposition would be commpletely reduced to ashes by the fire of temptation,and would not trust in itself and its works but in the mercy and love of God.Humility is a great blessing."

From Living without Hypocrisy: Spiritual Council from the  Elders of Optina http://www.skete.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=1483

Die – you will have to die. But die gracefully. I am not saying die like a stoic, I am not saying die like a very controlled man. No, I'm saying die gracefully, beautifully, as if a friend is coming, knocks at your door, and you are happy. And you embrace the friend and invite him in, and you have been waiting for him so long....

If you can love death you become deathless; if you can understand non-being then your being becomes the very ground of being-hood, the very ground of God. If you can love non-being then nothing can destroy you, you have transcended time and space. Then you have become one with the total, and this is what holiness is – to become whole is to be holy.

Nothing has to be changed, because all is beautiful -- that is enlightenment. All is as it should be, everything is perfect. This is the most perfect world, this moment lacks nothing -- the experience of this is what enlightenment is.

Those who go on telling you to amend your nature and improve upon yourself are very dangerous people. They are one of the basic causes for your not being enlightened. Nature cannot be amended; it has to be accepted. There is no way to be otherwise. Whosoever you are, whatsoever you are, that's how you are -- that's what you are. It is a great acceptance.

How can one become enlightened in one single moment? One can, because one is enlightened -- one just has to recognize the fact. It is not something that happens from the outside, it is something that arises from the inside. It has always been there but you were clouded, you were full of thoughts.

Enlightenment is finding that there is nothing to find. Enlightenment is to come to know that there is nowhere to go. Enlightenment is the understanding that this is all, that this is perfect, that this is it. Enlightenment is not an achievement, it is an understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to go. You are already there -- you have never been away. You cannot be away from there. God has never been missed. Maybe you have forgotten, that's all. Maybe you have fallen asleep, that's all.

If we are unwilling to admit the specific sins in our lives, those that bring us suffering and turmoil, we cannot be freed from them by God's mercy. It is easy for us to admit in a general way that we are sinners, but are we ready to admit every situation where we have done wrong? This is hard work, and we must overcome a great deal of fear by trusting in our Lord.

We sometimes hear people say, 'I'm only human.' We hear it in songs, in conversation, perhaps in confession. It sounds like an excuse in our fallen condition not to change. Therefore, let us challenge ourselves and others to be 'truly human' rather than 'only human.' To be truly human we must commit ourselves to rise above the bodiless powers with the Theotokos { The Virgin Mary } who is more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim in pursuit of the likeness of God.

Your Father in Christ,
Bishop JOSEPH
http://www.antiochianladiocese.org/

"Boast not of tomorrow, for you know not what any day may bring forth" (Proverbs 27:1).

Brethren, let us not boast of that which is not in our power. The Lord has placed the times and the years under His power and He disposes of them. Only God Himself alone knows whether tomorrow's day will number us among the living or the dead. Some have died on the eve of their marriage; again, others have descended into the grave on the eve of their coronation with a royal diadem. Therefore, let no one say that tomorrow will be for me the happiest day of my life; tomorrow, I enter into marriage! Or, tomorrow I will be crowned with a royal diadem! Or, tomorrow I am going to a great feast! Or, tomorrow a great gain is coming to me! O, let no one speak of the happiness of tomorrow's day. Behold, yet this night your soul may depart your body and tomorrow you will find yourself surrounded by black demons in the tollhouses [Mitarstvo]! And yet, even this night, a man can be separated from his relatives and friends, from wealth and honor, from the sun and the stars and find himself in a totally unknown company, in an unseen place and at an unexpected judgment.

Instead of boasting of tomorrow's day, it would be better to pray to God to "Give us this day our daily bread." Perhaps today's day may be our last day on earth. That is why it is better to spend this day in repentance for all our past days on earth rather than vainly fantasizing about tomorrow's day, about the day which perhaps will not dawn for us. Vain fantasizing about tomorrow's day cannot bring us any good, but repentance for one day with tears can save us from eternal fire.

O righteous Lord, burn up the insane vanity that is in us.

+To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.+

From Prologue of Ohrid by St. Nicolai Vilimirovich

Beware of despair.  You do not serve a tyrant, but your service is to a kind Lord, Who, taking nothing from you, He has given you all.  And when you did not exist at all, He fashioned you so that you would be in that [ state ] in which you now are.  Who is sufficient to render Him thanks for the fact that He has brought us into existence?  O the immeasurable grace!  Who can sufficiently honor Him with hymns?  For He has given us knowledge of all things.  And not only those which are manifest, but also of the hidden things.  For we know that if there is anything we do not know, it is necessary for us only to ask this [ knowledge ] from Him.

Do not fear, neither let your heart lose courage; our Christ invisibly helps you with a hidden hand; He tests you in order to give you His grace.  As much as the earth of the heart is cultivated, and as deep as the farmer pushes the plow, so much more will the field give fruit in its time.  Even so does the great Farmer, God, do with our souls.  He allows trials, afflictions, suffering and distress to come to us and enter deeply into the heart, and many times we find ourselves at an impass, not knowing how to manage this or that trial, and we suffer and feel great pain.  But for those who love God, He works together with them that these things turn out for the good.

Only if you see yourself as zero and being full of passions can you see God.  If you can not see that you are nothing, then you cannot see God.  God lives only in the humble person.

Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed. It is irritating to be woken up. That’s the reason the wise guru will not attempt to wake people up. I hope I’m going to be wise here and make no attempt whatsoever to wake you up if you are asleep. It is really none of my business, even though I say to you at times, "Wake up!" My business is to do my thing, to dance my dance. If you profit from it fine; if you don’t, too bad! As the Arabs say, "The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.

Spirituality means waking up.  Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep.  They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up.  They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

The most intimate question we can ask, and the one that has the most spiritual power, is this: What or who am I?

Enlightenment is, in the end, nothing more than the natural state of being.

Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.

So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.

As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.

You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God.

You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present.

To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.

Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do

So there's only transcendence in the moment. Nobody can be transcended forever. That's why I say, "Who cares if you're enlightened forever?"

If I say, if I talk about, 'I want to be enlightened...' it implies a future. And there isn't any.

The end of suffering happens in this very moment, whether you're watching a terrorist attack or doing the dishes. And compassion begins at home. Because I don't believe my thoughts, sadness can't exist. That's how I can go to the depths of anyone's suffering, if they invite me, and take them by the hand and walk them out of it into the sunlight of reality.

I've taken that walk myself.

The only time we suffer  is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.

So, how do you get back to heaven? To begin with, just notice the thoughts that take you away from it. You don't have to believe everything your thoughts tell you. Just become familiar with the particular thoughts you use to deprive yourself of happiness. It may seem strange at first to get to know yourself in this way, but becoming familiar with your stressful thoughts will show you the way home to everything you need.

The mind's job is to validate what it thinks.