Awareness and Simplicity
“And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather, look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.”
–Kahlil Gibran (Lebanese Poet and Philosopher, 1883-1931)
Symbols
“Symbols, images, and archetypes…are the key regulators and main ‘switches’ of human consciousness and of one’s inner life.
It is through them that all alterations, focusing, and expansion of human consciousness take place, for they are the regulators, accumulators, and transformers of human consciousness.
They enable a person to connect himself (and his field of consciousness) temporarily and to identify with something greater and larger than he is and, thus, slowly to transcend himself and actualize his latent energies, faculties, and potentialities.”
–Peter Roche de Coppens (American Writer and Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Psychotherapy at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania)
Divine Light and Fire, Experiencing Esoteric Christianity
The One
“We are always around The One. If we were not, we would dissolve and cease to exist.
Yet our gaze does not remain fixed upon The One. When we look at it, we then attain the end of our desires and find rest.
Then it is that, all discord past, we dance an inspired dance around it.”
–Plotinus (Egyptian-born Roman Philosopher and Founder of Neo-Platonism, A.D.205-270)
‘The Good or The One’ The Essential Plotinus Translated by Elmer O’Brien, S.J.
Your Special Moment
“Each person has his special moment of life when he unfolded himself to the fullest, felt to the deepest, and expressed himself to the utmost, to himself and to others.”
–Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Russian Writer and, in 1970, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1918-2008)
An Organ of Minor Importance
“The seat of the soul and the control of voluntary movement-in fact, of nervous functions in general, are to be sought in the heart. The brain is an organ of minor importance.”
–Aristotle (Greek Scientist and Philosopher, 384-322 B.C.)
Transcendence and Creativity
“There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse.”
–Eric Hoffer (American Longshoreman, Writer and Philosopher, 1902-1983)
The Silent Pulse
“At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm, a complex of wave forms and resonances, which is absolutely individual and unique, and yet connects us to everything in the universe. The act of getting in touch with this pulse can transform our personal experience and in some way alter the world around us.”
–George Leonard (American Aikidoist, President Emeritus of the Esalen Institute and Writer, 1923-2010)
Stepping Onto A Higher Plane
“The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.”
–Deepak Chopra (Indian-born American Physician, Writer and Teacher, 1946-)
The Frontiers of Prayer
One of the signs that people have developed from religion to spirituality, is that their attitude toward prayer changes. Worship and requests tends to evolve into silence and listening.
“When your intellect in its great longing for God gradually withdraws from the flesh and turns away from all thoughts that have their source in your sense-perception, memory or soul-body temperament, and when it becomes full of reverence and joy, then you may conclude that you are close to the frontiers of prayer.”
–Evagrios the Solitary (a.k.a. Evagrius Ponticus, Pontus-born Christian Mystic, Writer and “Desert Father,” c.346-399)
{On Prayer: “Philokalia Vol. 1”, pp. 62-63, text 62}
Causality
“A vacuum cannot exist in nature. An empty space is immediately filled by something else. And this law is effective on all levels. If what you give is luminous, radiant, beneficial, in return you will receive elements of the same quality, with the same luminous, radiant quintessence. But if you emanate something filthy, you will at once be filled with filth.”
–Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (Bulgarian Spiritual Master, 1900-1986)
