The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.
Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestion of advertising and propaganda. The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis.
Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.
Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.
The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.
If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.
Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.
Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.
It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, now I realize what we all are . If only they [people] could all see themselves as they really are I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusions, a point of pure truth This little point is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everybody.
What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity ... I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can.
Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand.
Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.
Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me...you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love; every moment of existence is a grace.
It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.
Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.
It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.
Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.
Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions.
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