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)
Knowing What We Want
“Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, he wants to reestablish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.”
–Henri-Frédéric Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer and Poet, 1821-1881 )
“Amiel’s Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel” (Henri Frédéric Amiel)
Experiencing and Forgetting
“Next to the hunger to experience a thing, men have no stronger hunger than to forget.”
–Hermann Hesse (German-born Swiss Novelist, Poet and, in 1946, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1877-1962)
Unleashing Your Potential
“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.”
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet, Playwright and Philosopher, 1749-1832)
Freedom From Attachment
“Consciousness means freedom from attachment. You realize that the only thing you have to do it to keep yourself really straight, and then do whatever you do.”
–Ram Dass (a.k.a. Richard Alpert, American Spiritual Teacher, Author and Lecturer, 1931-)
Building Resilience
“It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed…. Great necessities call out great virtues.”
–Abigail Adams (American First Lady, 1744-1818)
Recognizing the World As Sacred
“As the heightening of mental life reveals to the intellect deeper and deeper levels of reality, so with that movement towards enhancement of the life of spirit…. the world assumes not the character of illusion but the character of sacrament; and spirit finds Spirit in the lilies of the field, no less than in the Unknowable Abyss.”
–Evelyn Underhill (English Mystic, Poet, Writer and Spiritual Counselor, 1875-1941)
The World’s Greatest Lie!
“What’s the world’s greatest lie?…. It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
–Paulo Coelho (Brazilian Writer, 1947-)
Knowledge Is Your Power
“Knowledge is your power. The more knowledge, expertise, and connections you have, the easier it is for you to make a profit at the game of your choice.”
–Stuart Wilde (English-born Author, Lecturer and Humorist 1946-)
