An Expert Is…
“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.”
–Niels Bohr (Danish Physicist and, in 1922, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1885-1962)
The Stream of Life
“The same stream of life that runs through the world runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.”
–Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Poet, Playwright, Essayist, Painter and, in 1913, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1861-1941)
Meditation to Overcome Fear
“Meditation is the only way to overcome fear. There is no other way. Why does meditation help us overcome fear? In meditation we identify ourselves with the vast, with the Absolute. When we are afraid of someone or something, it is because we do not feel that particular person or thing is a part of us. When we have established conscious oneness with the Absolute, with the Infinite Vast, the everything there is part of us. And how can we be afraid of ourselves?”
–Sri Chinmoy (a.k.a. Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, Indian Philosopher and Spiritual Teacher, 1931-2007)
The Timeless Self
“The Self doesn’t live forever in time, it lives in the timeless present prior to time, prior to history, change, succession. The Self is present as Pure Presence, not as everlasting duration, a rather horrible notion.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
“Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber” (Ken Wilber)
A Breeze Blowing Through the World
“A breeze is blowing through the human masses; one that draws us all by a sort of living affinity towards the splendid realization of some foreseen unity. Disputed, suspect and often scorned, unitary aspirations in politics, in thought, in mysticism, arise everywhere around us; and because their subject is not what is material and plural but what is spiritual and common to all in each one of us, no force of routine or egoism seems capable of arresting them; irresistibly they infiltrate and gradually dissolve old forms and false barriers.”
–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Jesuit Priest, Mystic, Paleontologist and Author, 1881-1955)
Impulse and Community
“The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.”
–William James (American Psychologist and Philosopher, 1842-1910)
The Mind Builds the Body
“It is the mind that builds up the body strong and shiny or wastes it to skin and bone. Mind has to be developed to savor the good and the godly, not for money and material gains.”
–Sathya Sai Baba (Indian Spiritual Teacher, c.1926-2011)
Living at 100%
“It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%–when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given.”
–Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Italian-born Hungarian American Psychologist and Author, 1934-)
“Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning” (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
Seek the Self
“Look within. Seek the Self. There will bean end of the world and its miseries. The inquiry “Who am I?” is the only method of putting an end to all misery and ushering in supreme Beatitude.”
–Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950)
Surrender to the Stillness
“Those who try to grasp Tao, lose it, declared Lao Tzu. Why? Because they are using willpower, personal willpower, instead of becoming passive and letting the Tao use them, their minds and bodies, as if they were its instruments. This elimination of the self-will is what Jesus meant when he counseled his followers to lose their life in order to find life.”
–Paul Brunton (a.k.a. Raphael Hurst, English Philosopher, Traveler, Spiritual Teacher and Author, 1898-1981)
