Opening to Enlightenment
“Enlightenment has already found a home within your heart. You have but to loosen the confines in which it is held and allow the realization of your oneness with God to fly freely to your conscious mind. You must have eyes to see, ears to hear and mind to understand the language of the heart.”
–Meredith L. Young-Sowers (American Writer and Creator of the Stillpoint Model of Integrative Life Healing)
“Agartha: The Essential Guide to Personal Transformation in the New Era” (Meredith Lady Young)
A Daily Prayer
“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.
I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.
I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others.
I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”
–The 14th Dalai Lama (a.k.a. Tenzin Gyatso, Tibetan Religious and Political Leader, 1935-)
Infinite Spirit and Total Enlightenment
“If Spirit has any meaning, it must be omnipresent, or all-pervading and all-encompassing. There can’t be a place where Spirit is not, or it wouldn’t be infinite.
Therefore, Spirit has to be completely present, right here, right now, in your own awareness. That is, your own present awareness, precisely as it is, without changing it or altering it in any way, is perfectly and completely permeated by Spirit.
Furthermore, it is not that Spirit is present but you need to be enlightened in order to see it. It is not that you are one with Spirit but just don’t know it yet. Because that would also imply that there is some place Spirit is not. No, according to Dzogchen, you are always already one with Spirit, and that awareness is always already fully present, right now. You are looking directly at Spirit, with Spirit, in every act of awareness.
There is nowhere Spirit is not. Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means, as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened. You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true enlightenment.
Rather, Spirit, and enlightenment, has to be something that you are fully aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now… We are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don’t recognize it. We have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
“Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber” (Ken Wilber)
Moving From Material to Spiritual
“In proportion as men become enlightened in regard to spiritual things, they attach less value to things material.”
–Allen Kardec (a.k.a. Hippolyte Leon Denizard Rivail, French Professor and Founder of the Doctrine of Spiritism, 1804-1869)
Fear of the Light
“We can forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
–Plato (Athenian Philosopher, 428-348 B.C. )
God Must Be Experienced
“Suppose I give a talk for three hours about blueberry pie. Can you taste it? No. I will be wasting my time. Instead, I have to give you the recipe: One cup of this, a tablespoon of that; put this together, mix, and then put it all in the oven.
But even that is not enough. You can’t just take the recipe book, gold-gilt it, put on an altar, wave incense, and say, “Blueberry pie, blueberry pie”. You have to get the ingredients, cook them, and eat the pie… God is not something that can be talked of. God must be experienced. The day man started talking of God, he created all kinds of religious fights and quarrels.”
–Swami Satchidananda (Indian Spiritual Teacher and, in 1966, Founder of Integral Yoga International, 1914-2002)
Universe Is a Communion and a Community
“It is especially important in this discussion to recognize the unity of the total process, from that first unimaginable moment of cosmic emergence through all its subsequent forms of expression until the present. This unbreakable bond of relatedness that makes of the whole a universe becomes increasingly apparent to scientific observation, although this bond ultimately escapes scientific formulation or understanding. In virtue of this relatedness, everything is intimately present to everything else in the universe. Nothing is completely itself without everything else. This relatedness is both spatial and temporal. However distant in space or time, the bond of unity is functionally there.
The universe is a communion and a community. We ourselves are that communion become conscious of itself.”
–Thomas Berry (American Historian, Catholic Priest and Author, 1914-2009)
Simplify Your Life
“It is impossible for the mental life of man to unfold naturally and normally toward a state of enlightenment unless the physical environment be simplified in every possible way.”
–Manly P. Hall (American Theosophist, Freemason, Writer and Lecturer, 1901-1990)
Your Highest Light
“There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in our heart.”
–Chandogya Upanishad (Ancient Hindu Commentaries on the Vedic Scriptures, Written between 1600 and 700 B.C.)
The Light Remains
“Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.”
–Saint Augustine of Hippo (Numidian-born Theologian, A.D.354-430)
