Get Motivated by Your Creativity
“Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.”
–Edward de Bono (Maltese-born British Physician and Discoverer of Lateral Thinking, 1933-)
“Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas” (Edward De Bono)
Truths About Trouble
“Wise are they who have learned these truths:
Trouble is temporary.
Time is tonic.
Tribulation is a Test Tube.”
–William Arthur Ward (American Writer, Pastor and Teacher, 1921-1997)
Necessary Steps on the Path
“When the aspirant can grow to love his neighbors for their struggles and faults, and utterly abstain from any critical feeling, then ‘will all things be added unto him.’ There will be no barriers to prevent it. Like attracts like, and his own honesty and charity will inevitably draw to him as to a magnet all that is good.”
–Vera Stanley Alder (English Painter and Mystic, 1898-1984)
Readiness to Receive
“The Grace is always there for the asking, always in abundance, but is the seeker capable of receiving it?”
–Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (Indian Spiritual Teacher and Exponent of Jnana Yoga and Advaita Doctrine, 1897-1981)
Good Works
“Paradoxically, it’s most often our smallest, most anonymously done good works that have the greatest spiritual impact in and on this world.”
–Thom Hartmann (American Author, Psychotherapist and Radio Talk Show Host, 1951-)
Loving Acceptance
“A conscious being knows that life always works best when we operate from a loving space that lets us receive and experience other people no matter what they do or say as no different from ourselves.”
–Ken Keyes (American “New Age” Author and Lecturer, 1921-1995)
“Handbook to Higher Consciousness: The Workbook (Keyes, Jr, Ken)” (Jr. Ken Keyes, Penny Keyes)
Intelligence
If I were exiled to a desert island and only allowed to take a dozen books with me, one of them would be the Vivekachudamani or “Crest Jewel of Wisdom” by Adi Shankara.
“The Intelligence, together with the powers of intelligence, makes the intelligence-formed vesture, whose distinguishing character is actorship; it is the cause of man’s circle of birth and death.The power which is a reflected beam of pure Consciousness, called the understanding, is a mode of abstract Nature; it possesses wisdom and creative power; it thereby focuses the idea of “I” in the body and its powers.”
–Shankara (a.k.a. Adi Shankaracharya, Indian Sage, Spiritual Teacher and Author of the Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, Dates Uncertain, but c.A.D. 686-718 or 788-821)
Various translations are available online, and I particularly like this book version. (Yes, I know, it’s made of paper, but sometimes I prefer that to bouncing photons):
“Shankara’s Crest Jewel of Discrimination” (Swami Prabhavananda, Christopher Isherwood)
Your Spiritual Journey
“The spiritual journey is one of continuous learning and purification. When you know this, you become humble.”
–Sogyal Rinpoche (Tibetan-born Buddhist Teacher, Dzogchen Master of the Nyingma Tradition and Founder of the Rigpa Network, c.1950-)
Helping Others to Help Yourself
“If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off her debt: it is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics.”
–George Gurdjieff (Armenian-born Adept, Teacher and Writer, c.1873-1949)
Reflecting the Source
“All life down to its smallest element, can, if rightly approached, be seen as a reflection of the infinite source of holiness, which is God.”
–Huston Smith (Chinese-born American Religious Studies Scholar and Emeritus Professor at Syracuse University, 1919-)
