Quotes about Search

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience.  You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.

The problem of money dogs our steps throughout the whole of our lives, exerting a pressure that, in its way, is as powerful and insistent as any other problem of human existence.  And it haunts the spiritual search as well.

Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names.  At some point the search becomes futile - there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago.  All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks.  What will it be?  A photograph?  A will?  A fragment of a letter?  The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for.

No one knows where they belong
The search just goes on and on and on
For every day that ends up wrong
Another one's right
Call it chance or call it fate
Either one is cause to celebrate

Where the search for the truth is conducted with a wink and a nod
And where power and position are equated with the grace of God
These times are famine for the soul while for the senses it's a feast
From the edge of my country, as far as you see, looking east

Some people do not have to search -
they find their niche early in life and rest there, seemingly contented and resigned.
They do not seem to ask much of life,
sometimes they do not seem to take it seriously.
At times I envy them,
but usually I do not understand them -
seldom do they understand me.

I am one of the searchers.
There are, I believe, millions of us.
We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life,
hoping to uncover its ultimate secret.
We continue to explore ourselves,
hoping to understand.

We like to walk along the beach -
we are drawn by the ocean,
taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty.
We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well.

Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter.
To share our sadness with the one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know -
unless it is to share our laughter.

We searchers are ambitious only for life itself,
for everything beautiful it can provide.
Most of all we want to love and be loved.
We want to live in a relationship that will not impede
our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls.

We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.
We are wanderers, dreamers and lovers,
lonely souls who dare ask of life everything good and
beautiful.

- - James Kavanaugh

The search ends with the realization that there is no such thing as enlightenment. By searching, you want to be free from the self, but whatever you are doing to free yourself from the self is the self. How can I make you understand this simple thing? There is no 'how'. If I tell you that, it will only add more momentum to that (search), strengthen that momentum. That is the question of all questions: "How, how, how?"

The questioner has to come to an end. It is the questioner that creates the answer; and the questioner comes into being from the answer, otherwise there is no questioner.

You know, this dialogue is only helpful when we come, both of us, to a point and realize that no dialogue is possible, that no dialogue is necessary. When I say 'understanding', 'seeing', they mean something different to me. Understanding is a state of being where the question isn't there any more; there is nothing there that says "now I understand!" -- that's the basic difficulty between us. By understanding what I am saying, you are not going to get anywhere.

I searched and waited and when
no enlightenment happened,
I knew I was That.
~ Darina Stoyanova ~

O you who've gone on pilgrimage -
              where are you, where, oh where?
Here, here is the Beloved!
              Oh come now, come, oh come!
Your friend, he is your neighbor,
             he is next to your wall -
You, erring in the desert -
              what air of love is this?
If you'd see the Beloved's
              form without any form -
You are the house, the master,
              You are the Kaaba, you! . . .
Where is a bunch of roses,
              if you would be this garden?
Where, one soul's pearly essence
              when you're the Sea of God?
That's true - and yet your troubles
              may turn to treasures rich -
How sad that you yourself veil
              the treasure that is yours!

Rumi 'I Am Wind, You are Fire'
Translation by Annemarie Schimmel

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.

wherever I go, there I am...

Is there a new experience in meditation? The desire for experience, the higher experience which is beyond and above the daily or the commonplace, is what keeps the well-spring empty. The craving for more experience, for visions, for higher perception, for some realization or other, makes the mind look outward, which is no different from its dependence on environment and people. The curious part of meditation is that an event is not made into an experience. It is there, like a new star in the heavens, without memory taking it over and holding it, without the habitual process of recognition and response in terms of like and dislike. Our search is always outgoing; the mind seeking any experience is outgoing. Inward-going is not a search at all; it is perceiving. Response is always repetitive, for it comes always from the same bank of memory.

“Continue in the direction of the Pyramids”, said the alchemist. “And continue to pay heed to the omens. Your heart is still capable of showing you where the treasure is.”

“Is that the one thing I still need to know?”

“No”, the alchemist answered. “What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’

“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”

No matter what you got, somebody's looking for it.

The search for truth, is more like a crusade in a swamp, then a walk in the park.

Think the unthinkable,
Imagine the impossible
Pursue the imaginations limits.

- from Allan`s friend Christopher`s diary

It is time to get back to basics, time to go back to nature and ourselves.
~ Darina Stoyanova ~

“Behind most healthy people, there are a lot of unhealthy times.”
~ Darina Stoyanova ~

“Before healing come searching, trying and believing.”
~ Darina Stoyanova ~

In time, you might see the difference between,
Love and love.
One of these we do not need,
but it isn't the one we do not seek.

I felt that on a basis of a "search for the miraculous" it would be possible to unite together a very large number of people who were no longer able to swallow the customary forms of lying and living in lying.