Are You Rational or Sensual?
“We can receive some indication of whether we are rational or sensual from our own life: not as it appears but from the inner quality that shows itself in out actions.”
–Emanuel Swedenborg (Swedish Scientist, Mystic and Philosopher, 1688-1772)
Awakening Through Adversity
“Trials, difficulties, and challenges bring us to our senses about our lives. They can serve as vehicles of realization, helping us to understand why we are here and how necessary the spiritual journey is for us.
They awaken us to the serious purpose of life and inspire us not to waste this opportunity on a halfhearted existence.”
–Wayne Teasdale (American Catholic Monk and Proponent of Interfaith Dialogue, 1945-2004)
The Mystic Hours, A Daybook of Inspirational Wisdom & Devotion
Thinking in Wholes
“If we think of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how our minds will tend to operate, but if we can include everything, coherently and harmoniously in one overall whole that is undivided, unbroken….then our minds will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.”
–David Bohm (American-born Theoretical Physicist and Philosopher, 1917-1992)
“RC Series Bundle: Wholeness and the Implicate Order” (David Bohm)
What Does The World Owe Us?
I was hearing yet another person tell me that they thought that the world “Owed” them. It reminded of this lovely quip:
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
–Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer, 1835-1910)
Harmony
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet, Playwright and Philosopher, 1749-1832)
Yielding
The first and last lesson of t’ai chi ch’uan is to yield and yield again. And in the West:
“Oaks may fall when reeds stand the storm.”
–Thomas Fuller, M.D. (English Physician, Intellectual and Preacher, 1654-1734)
Many Worlds of Consciousness
“The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the present world of our consciousness is only one of many worlds of consciousness that exist.”
–William James (American Psychologist and Philosopher, 1842-1910)
Science and Religion
“How could science be an enemy of religion when God commanded man to be a scientist the day He told him to rule the earth and subject it?”
–Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (American Roman Catholic Clergyman and Broadcaster, 1895-1979)
Love and Live the Questions
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke (Austro-German Poet, 1875-1926)
Knowing Yourself
“There are… things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.”
–Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russian Writer, 1821-1881 )
“Notes from the Underground (Dover Thrift Editions)” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
