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For life is eternal and love is immortal and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. ~ Anonymous writer of another age. This passage is sometimes read at the end of a funeral service.
"Spiritual evolution occurs as the result of removing obstacles and not actually acquiring anything new. Devotion enables surrenders of the mind's vanities and cherished illusions so that it progressively becomes more free and more open to the light of Truth."
Allah(God) is the greatest friend.
Only God can fill the emptiness of mystics' heart.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
The guarantee will be inner. It will be a commitment from the heart, it will be a silent communion. If you enjoy being with somebody, you would like to enjoy it more and more. If you enjoy the intimacy, you would like to explore the intimacy more and more.
And there are a few flowers of love which bloom only after long intimacies. There are seasonal flowers too: within six weeks they are there in the sun, but within six weeks again they are gone forever. There are flowers which take years to come. The longer it takes, the deeper it goes.
But it has to be a commitment from one heart to another heart. It has not even to be verbalized, because to verbalize it is to profane it. It has to be a silent commitment: eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. It has to be understood, not said.
It is so ugly seeing people going to the church or the court to get married. It is so ugly, so inhuman. It simply shows they can't trust themselves, they trust the policeman more that they trust their own inner voice. It shows they can't trust their love, they trust the law.
What may be the significance of so many forms of "spirituality" on this planet that are antagonistic to "life" -- and Christianity at the head of that list, with its "calumny" against life, its faith that just because nothing in life is eternal therefore life itself contains no value, nothing that makes it worth living, investing our souls in, committing our consciences to?
The way of the Buddha involves a metaphysical stoicism, a way of overcoming the power that worldliness has over oneself: the world rules us through our suffering no less than through our desires and appetites and hopes; all of this is Maya, the universe of delusorily desirable and despicable goods. The primal insight of Buddha is not that the suffering of the world must first be mitigated but rather that we must learn to recognize that our DESIRES are no less a form of SUFFERING than are our AILMENTS. This is what qualifies Buddhism as an authentic form of spirituality, its transcendence over the finite and merely psychological domain.
Bear in mind that everything that traditionally passed as "religion" would modernly be interpreted as a form of sadism or masochism, i.e. humans deliberately spoiling their own and others' this-worldly happiness by taking a more cosmic or eternalist perspective on things; and the same holds true with the illusion- and delusion-bursting iconoclastics of philosophy, education, culture, etc. Insofar as no kind of higher culture takes root and grows except by rupturing the lower "certainties" (dogmatics, faith, visceral tribalisms, etc.) that necessarily militate against such insights, all spirituality and rationality seem like forms of self-immiseration to idiotes.
"We change the world not by what we say or do but as a consequence of what we have become. Thus, every spiritual aspirant serves the world." - David R Hawkins
But for the Jews this moral-spiritual issue raises the same societal problem it does for the Greeks: how can a man have the "right" to make himself spiritually or rationally destitute or retarded when this corrupts the whole quality of the culture that we all together need and depend on? If anyone wants a cloistered and closed-minded life, an anti-aristic life, let him either go off and live among the wolves--or else join the community of like-minded idiots that (alas) compose and define the basic terms of modern society.
Ideas come as you walk, Nietzsche said.
Walking dissipates thoughts, Shankara taught.
Yatha dipo nivatastho nengate sopama smrta
Yogino yatachittasya yunjato yogamatmanah
Bhagwad Gita 6:19
(As a lamp in a windless place does not flicker, such is the disciplined mind of a Yogi practicing meditation on self).
You have to grow from inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
Know the self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect the charioteer, and the mind the reins. The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads. When he (the Highest Self) is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer.
Katha Upanishad, Third Valli
Prakrteh kriyamanani gunaih karmani sarvashah
Ahankar-vimurdhatma kartaham iti manyate
Bhagvad Gita 3:27
(Under the influence of false ego one thinks himself to be the doer of activities, while in reality all the activities are carried out by nature as natural process)
Insomuch as you can be simple and humble, and you can want nothing more than to know and serve God, you can rise to the heights of spiriitual life.
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound
source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of
light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy,
beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of
elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions
in the the presence of great art or music or literature, or of acts of
exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin
Luther King, Jr.
The notion that science and spirituality are mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is
the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and
science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer
wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.
To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is
something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity
reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and
in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.
The longer one takes to define the Rules of one's Path, the faster the Window to Enlightenment may close.
Seeking is good, but Giving is better!
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
Paradox is an idea making fun of itself.
There will never be continuing peace on earth until a transformation is wrought by LOVE in the heart of man
Natura Deo Est!
Sacred Commerce reverses the common assumption that business and spirituality are mutually opposed, and instead looks at business as a path of destiny. The notion of capitalism infused with the sacred expands the notion of profit with the concept and the reality of the fourth bottom line: spirituality.
Heal the soul first; then healing of the mind and body will follow.
Death can be a rewarding experience spiritually. You are given many peices of your personal puzzle and many questions raised on your life journey are answered.
Everything spiritual is mundane, and everything mundane is spiritual.
The truth is, you already are, it is finished.
It is absolutely and totally possible, and freely available, to step out of this limitation of the Self and rest as your true nature right now.
