Everyone has the fire, but the champions know when to ignite the spark.
Wisdom is a great prophet, faith is a great warrior, knowledge is a great sage, and virtue is a great priest.
Bless the world with your mind, heal the world with your heart, lift the world with your soul; elevate the world with your life.
To encourage people, walk beside them. To inspire people, walk in front of them. To drive people, walk behind them. To lead people, walk with them.
The pathos of the human life teaches one that idolatry of the ego is a sham. Only by living in harmonious accord with the entire world can a person distill happiness that flows from cultivating a state of mindfulness.
My experience of that liberation, what Buddha had called Nirvana, set me off in the path of scientific investigation of that Oneness, the thing people call, meeting with God. And that meeting triggered an unquenchable thirst in me to develop a proper scientific method to understand and further explore that apparently bizarre domain of Universal Consciousness.
Forgiveness is the subjective and fertile ground the acorn falls upon when gifted to ourselves and others.
We are all equally capable of spiritual awakening. It may not seem that way, at times. Some of us are so caught up in the drama of our day-to-day existence that we have lost track of who we really are. But eventually, all of us will make the discovery of our true nature.
Enlightenment is the transformation that brings out the highest human qualities. It is the process that removes the clouds of negativity and brings the colors of peace, compassion and kindness.
The first step towards true enlightenment is to lighten up on yourself.
Wisdom knows the way. Understanding sees the way. Passion feels the way. Love goes all the way.
One who is wise is rich, one who is virtuous is wealthy, one who is happy is affluent, and one who is loving is prosperous.
Help when you can. Give what you have. Do what you must. Be who you ought to be.
Knowledge, teach. Wisdom, acquire. Understanding, share. Love, spread.
Pray for faith, hope for peace, strive for unity, and persevere for harmony.
Love is black. Love is white. Love is brown. Love is humanity.
Truth is straight like a line. Virtue is firm like a wall. Wisdom is tall like a mountain. Love is wide like an ocean.
Your knowledge can stir the world, your intellect can move it, your wisdom can shake it, but only your love can truly change it.
Knowledge offers you strength. Wisdom promises you influence. Understanding assures you wealth. Love guarantees you power.
To achieve peace let go of: guilt, anger, and bitterness. To achieve happiness embrace: virtue, faith, and love.
Wisdom paints a rainbow in your mind, joy paints a rainbow in your heart, and love paints a rainbow in your soul.
Love hopes. Love helps. Love heals. Love hears.
Pleasure awakens the body, wisdom awakens the mind, joy awakens the heart, and love awakens the soul.
Love has never been conquered, not even by the greatest army.
The loudest preacher in the world is your conscience, the cleverest is wisdom, the rowdiest is passion, the surest is truth, the purest is love, and the highest is God.
The most valuable real estate in the universe is inside your soul.
There is no gem like virtue, no wealth like happiness, no treasure like faith, and no jewel like love.
The universe offers you three things that money cannot buy: joy, love, and life.
Embrace all. Help some. Trust few. Harm none.
To live a little, love a little. To live a lot, love a lot.
As the sun lives on when it sets in the warmth it has given to others, you too will live on in the hearts of those whose lives you have touched.
Be like the sun; bear with those in the dark, but keep shining your light.
If all you have is money, you are among the poorest people in the world.
Love treats its enemies better than hate treats its friends.
Knowing what to say is sense, when to say it is intelligence, how to say it is wisdom, why and how to say it is enlightenment.
Esteem intelligence, cherish knowledge, and value understanding, but trust wisdom.
Be humble as you learn, confident as you teach, and modest when you have mastered both.
Knowledge is the eldest daughter of wisdom.
Teach the ignorant. Study the wise. Avoid the foolish. Embrace the enlightened.
Your mind shines brightest when you enlighten others; your heart, when you encourage others; your soul, when you elevate others; and your life, when you empower others.
You may be poor, but important; uneducated, but wise; lowly, but noble; simple, but insightful; and ordinary, but great.
Knowledge gives you the world, intelligence gives you the sky, understanding gives you the stars, but wisdom gives you the universe.
In helping yourself, you prove you are strong; in helping others, you prove you are compassionate; in helping many, you prove you are generous; if helping everyone, you prove you are enlightened.
Teach yourself. Help yourself. Improve yourself. Enrich yourself.
The sun is intelligent because it never rises too early, and wise because it never sets too late.
If there is wisdom in your mind, prove it; joy in your heart, share it; love in your soul, show it; good in your life, impart it.
Faith moves mountains, intelligence goes over them, wisdom goes around them, but love levels them.
The most beautiful people are those who bring out the beauty in others.
Your clock cannot buy you more time, your bed cannot get you more sleep, your titles cannot acquire you more influence, your fame cannot gain you more honor, and your money cannot earn you more happiness.
If you have the power to think, you have the power to change your world.
Knowledge is the path, understanding is the way, wisdom is the highway, and enlightenment is the destination.
The cleanest feet in the universe are positive thoughts walking through your mind.
The most difficult door to open is the entrance to an ignorant mind.
If you have power, be just; wealth, be generous; knowledge, be wise; titles, be humble; and life, be grateful.
When perplexed, God appears to you in the form of wisdom; when troubled, in the form of peace; when sad, in the form of joy; when heartbroken, in the form of love.
The ignorant learn from none, the simple learn from some, the intelligent learn from many, but the enlightened learn from all.
If you guide others out of the dark, you are a star, even if no one knows your name.
Ignorance is your opponent, fear is your enemy, vice is your adversary, virtue is your friend, and wisdom is your helper.
Words let you know what is in someone’s mind, deeds let you know what is in someone’s heart, and character lets you know what is in someone’s soul.
To help yourself, help others; to help others, help yourself.
If you have a house but no home, you are homeless; knowledge but no wisdom, you are imprudent; acquaintances but no friends, you are lonely; money but no happiness, you are poor; and life but no joy, you are lifeless.
You are a gift to the universe, but a package is only valuable if it allows itself to be unwrapped.
Your strength lies in knowledge, your power lies in wisdom, your treasure lies in understanding, and your wealth lies in life.
If you want to shine, sit before a lamp; if you want to shine brighter, sit before a fire; but if you want to shine the brightest, sit before a sage.
To be happy: the simple pursue pleasure, the common pursue riches, the uncommon pursue knowledge, and the exceptional pursue wisdom.
Helping yourself is common sense, helping others is virtue, helping yourself and others is enlightenment.
An inch of light can conquer a mile of darkness.
Learn what you can, teach what you know, live how you ought.
You are as the sun; the world is your stage; even without an audience, shine.
Darkness is a prison from which only light escapes.
To be knowledgeable, sit before scholars; to be wise, sit before life.
Enlightenment – whether defined as spiritual awakening, liberation, or other form of illumination and attentiveness – requires inner transformation brokered by study of our limitations and application of a welcoming spirit of conscious appreciation. Self-knowledge commences by looking for the sacred light of awareness essential to spawn profound change in a person’s character.
The tangible and factual components of reality along with the intangible strands of memory and imagination constitute the framework that houses our vital life force. A person is likewise composed of contradictory and complementary forces of pain and pleasure, darkness and lightness, and clashing and harmonizing bands of thoughts and feelings. The web and root of all persons consists of both the expressible and the unsayable. Who has not held imaginary conversations with gods, devils, and spirits? Persons whom enthusiastically cultivate an inner life, ardently experience the quick of nature, and willingly immerse themselves in all aspects of everyday living will experience renewal. Analogous to the heat source of fire, we need the spark of desire to fuel our hearts and the spirit of the breeze to spread our heart songs.
Every day is an opportunity to stand in awe when witnessing the overpowering presence of nature, an apt time to pay reverence for the inestimable beauty of life. I must remain mindful to live in an ethical manner by paying attention to the threat of injustice towards other people and resist capitulating to the absurdity of being a finite body born into infinite space and time. I am part of the world, a spar in a sacred composition, a body of energy suspended in the cosmos. I seek to create a poetic personal testament to life. When I pivot and turn away from fixating upon the cruel artifices of my encysted orbit to face and outwardly embrace the cleansing swirl of heaven’s windmill, I feel gusting in the shank of my marrow the thump of onrushing primordial truths, the electric flush of those ineffable couplets of life that one may not utter.
Enlightenment is making friendship with the whole existence.
There are twenty one mystical dimensions of consciousness. Enlightenment is abiding in the highest three dimensions of consciousness.
Enlightenment is blossoming the thousand petaled lotus flower on the top of the head.
Enlightenment isn't a vast field of open opportunities that will change your life, actually it is but first it will destruct anything in its path unattached to the version of you that is awake. That's the part no one prepares for, it will break you to the core but the break will make you something greater then you ever thought imagineable.
Enlightenment is not about attaining an ultimate level of intelligence or intellect. It is regained by shedding all the ideas, illusion and binds thrust on you and that you then so readily accrue.
Enlightenment is making every cell, gene and DNA as the radiator of peace and harmony.
It is ultimately the ebony of our pain, our blackest monuments, which lead us to seek an enlightened way of living. We are unable to hear the voice leading to our own salvation until we fall into the depths of an abbess manufactured by living a heedless life. From this state of floundering in the gloomy lagoon, we can awaken to find the light bearing the seeds of truth that will redeem us. Looking inward, we overcome stubborn resistance, and we revivify long lost and forgotten powers. The experience of soul-searching perspicacity transfigures us. We might even feel as if we died a spiritual death and then we were reborn. From our dark pit, a shaft of light emerges.
The strong overcome their opponents, the mighty crush them, the shrewd outwit them, the cowardly hide from them, but the enlightened transcend them.
Seeds are proof that God puts within you what is supposed to enrich the world around you.
If the light within you is greater than the darkness around you, you are a star.
Dissimilar from acquiring riches and fame, which are largely products of providence, we self-manufacture our own lot of goodness. If we ground everything we do upon a moral principle and especially love, affection, and compassion, we might not accomplish all the goals that we hoped to achieve, but we will not be hampered with unyielding regret or remorse for the effort expended. If we approach each stage in life with true passion, then each step along a broken or straight path is at least honest. If we honor the commitments that we make to ourselves and act to honor all our personal obligations with other people by devoting our entire intelligence, drive, and vital life force, and do not waste our effort on greedy, wanton, or wasteful activities, we shall grow stronger. Judicious deployment of personal resources ensures that we shall experience a sense of renewal at each important milepost along the way. If we maintain our vow of faith and love people freely, an internal lightness will guide us in our time of uncertainly.
The mind speaks, though it does not have lips.The heart moves, though it does not have feet.The soul rises, though it does not have wings.
The mind is a temple of knowledge, the heart is a temple of understanding, and the soul is a temple of wisdom; together they are a temple of enlightenment.
It is impossible for light to bow before darkness.
Light travels halfway around the world while darkness is still putting its shoes on.
Light travels half away around the world while darkness is still putting its shoes on.
Noble leaders choose: wisdom over wealth, knowledge over fame, understanding over honor, virtue over titles, and people over power.
Water has no mouth, but swallows many. Light has no hands, but touches many. Wind has no feet, but carries many. Darkness has no teeth, but devours many.
It is not the size of the candle that matters, but the size of its light.
There are many paths leading to One. These herbs carry within their fragile essence a secret of Life, Universe, Creation, and the secrets of Enlightenment. We all carry the Truth within, and every drop of water, every flower, every man intuitively knows it, no matter what the path we choose to follow is.
Be like stars; when darkness tries to stop you from shining, shine all the more.
Light cannot hide its beauty, not even in darkness.
Wisdom at the mountain-foot sees farther than intelligence at the mountaintop.
Intelligence is the icing, but wisdom is the cake.
A few hours spent reading a book is better than a lifetime of ignorance.
Fall from ignorance, and you will rise to reason.
Be like the sun; warm to everyone, even your enemies.
If you point to paradise, all the shortsighted will see is your finger.
The lowest wisdom of the wise is greater than the highest wisdom of fools.
Education costs an arm and a leg, but ignorance costs you your mind and your soul.
Light cannot enter a dark room without illumining it.
Roses do not bloom the same time as daisies.
Bitter wisdom is better than sweet folly.
The soul's rainbow has more colors than the sky's stars.
A vessel's beauty does not determine how much water it carries.
Light poured out multiplies light poured in.
Each of us is impermanent wave of energy folded into the infinite cosmic order. Acknowledgement of the fundamental impermanence of ourselves unchains us from the strictures of living a terrestrial life stuck like a needle vacillating between the magnetic pull of endless desire and the terror of death. Once we achieve freedom from any craving and all desires and we are relieved of all titanic fears, we release ourselves from living in perpetual distress. Once we rid ourselves from any impulse to exist, we discover our true place in the universal order. The composition of our life filament is exactly right when we accept the notion of living and dying with equal stoicism.
It's tough to get out of one's inherited imbecilic culture, and a thus inherited or endowed lunatic belief system. A freethinker must overcome every deadened system. Especially one's own.
Undergoing personal change is a difficult but necessary process of maturing into the ultimate manifestation of a desirable self. True personal transformation requires a person honestly to assess their inner spirituality and adopt a clear vision of who they want to be. An earnest person experiencing inner transformation of their values and belief system is apt to feel conflicted, confused, and disorientated. Change of self is displacement, disarticulation, and loss of self. Alteration of our self-image results in disrupting, dislocating, and modifying a person’s perspective of what is significant.
We each possess the ability creatively to respond to the ontological mystery of our existence.
We unthinkingly build the pilings of our lives upon whatever comes along. Like it or not, we play the hand that fate deals us. If fate is kind, some people credit their fortuitous circumstances to their ingenuity and resoluteness. If fate is cruel, some people curse God. The truth is that an unenlightened person resists suffering, they continually wish for a world different than it is, whereas an enlightened person learns how to suffer heroically.
Seeing Oneam undone!Enemy norlo! friend-sans One-is none.That! is "am"One-o-One!
The mind is its thoughts, the heart is its desires, and the soul is its experiences.
Light in your soul kindles the light in your world.
Only in duality consciousness we witness this-that thing. In reality, a unity consciousness runs as the very soul of every little thing.
Love's light conquers hate's darkness.
A step towards love is a leap towards the divine.
Love pouring out of you is evidence of God pouring into you.
When you feel angry or frustrated at a brother for using a particular defense -- being controlling or whatever it is -- you are failing to forgive yourself for the very same attempt; you still believe that the defense has a reality. You are seeing it out there but when you start to pull it back to your mind, you start to see the control in yourself. The guilt from transferring it from one seeming person/body to another seeming person/body is enormous. Instead of blaming your brother, the blame gets turned onto your own seeming body, but it is still the same error. We have to see that I am mind; this identity that I took off of my brother but still saw in myself is also just a construct in my mind. Otherwise, what good is the transfer?
Every road leads to sorrow. All aspects that make life beautiful – friendship, love, art, and truth – will end. All aspects that make life hideous – pain, poverty, illness, betrayal, hate, crime, war – will also end. The fact that human life is a mere blip on a cosmic scale is no reason for personal angst as we came from nothingness and will return to the great void that birthed us.
If we recognize that Spirit is all powerful, and cannot be hurt, and that only Spirit exists, then nothing that happens here matters. And we see everyone and everything from the point of wholeness. Even the ‘deceitful’ thing that happened is probably to teach us a lesson not to value anything of this world, including the body. Miracles bring conviction for they demonstrate what you have just written – the valuelessness of the body and world and the value of the Spirit, which is unchanging.
The act of writing is a contemplative vision quest, a somber expedition of discovery that requires the writer to subordinate their ego in order to travel in soulful solitude towards a desirable personal haven of rejuvenating enlightenment. Writing for personal growth entails unconditionally surrendering oneself to the struggle of tearing their sense of self apart. It demands the solemn willpower to dissect and analyze the fissures of a self-absorbent soul one layer at a time.
Enlightenment is to replace your own self with the self of the universe!
A person experiments in life and reflects upon those events in order to discover how to lead a meaningful life. We conduct a quest searching for the source our essential being. What we seek is inside us waiting for us to discover. Until we realize the vital inner source that provides direction for our life, all our efforts are in vain. The ego with its craving and fearful protection strategies is what prevents us from perceiving the transparency of the world in which we belong. When we cease clinging to the past and no longer daydream of the future and unreservedly accept whatever is occurring while sacrificing ourselves in service of other people our sense of self vanishes and we exist only as conscious and nonjudgmental witnesses of reality.
Fate demands that we continue suffering, until we willingly seek out and discover the sacred path of righteousness. Until we surrender to the sameness of life, we are unable to experience the absolute ground zero of reality. Only by surrendering our desires, by readjusting our consciousness to a state undefined, unbound, and unmotivated by passion and desire, will we experience life transformed.
Self-deception and vanity are grievous sin. The ego is the cause of all human suffering. We suffer from life only when we fail to examine the cause of our sorrow. Letting go of destructive illusions and freeing oneself from egotism of self-pity enables a person to sense the rich intertexture of their inner world, which is the only facet of reality that we exercise exclusive dominion and control.
The dimension of space and time, represented by what is transpiring in the here and now, is all that we will ever know. Unlike the continuum of perpetual time and infinite space, everything that we know will experience disruption, dissolution, disintegration, dismemberment, and death. The inevitability of our ending represents the tragic comedy of life. Much of our needless suffering emanates from resisting our impermanence rather than embracing our fate. Only through acceptance of the events and situations that occur in a person’s life including suffering, and by releasing our attachments, will a person ever experience enlightenment.
There exists a universal order that we each play a distinct role in carrying out. Light always struggles to emerge from darkness. Each of us is the bearer of our own lantern. We find ourselves when we realize our place in an interconnected world. The struggle to pierce the darkness that shrouds us from realizing a state of perceptive awareness is the biggest part of both our individual story and our communal storyline.
Understanding what it means to die, to sever oneself of the foolish hope for immortality, is what allows human beings the capability to appreciate simple pleasures and endure whatever hardships living a full life requires. Eternity is beautiful whereas time is unredeemable and problematic. Our faith, our hopes, and our love exist only in points of time. We discover eternity by avoiding the snares of prejudice and mental delusion, using the memory of whole civilizations to understand the past, and employing human consciousness to transcend fluctuations in time.
The mysteries of life include the external and the internal conundrums that each person encounters in a world composed of competing ideologies and agents of change. Conflicting ideas include political, social, legal, and ethical concepts. Agents of change include environmental factors, social pressure to conform, aging, and the forces inside us that made us into whom we are as well as the forces compelling us to be a different type of person.
Enlightenment is the transforming process that makes one kind, happy, and compassionate to the world. Enlightenment is bringing greatness in our ordinary life. Enlightenment is bringing beauty in our words, actions, breath and thoughts. Enlightenment is unfolding our true divinity. Enlightenment is bringing sweetness in our relationships. Enlightenment is making friendship with the whole existence. Enlightenment is making the whole existence as the center of our heart.
It is my sincere desire that my research and hard work will help create a world where we all learn to walk this Earth, safe, enlightened and free from the perils of cruelty, ignorance, and all the other dark and sinister forces, which make assholes possible.
Suddenly you realize that you are the mother of the Universe, eager to protect, transform and care every soul of the world.
All personal god, yours or mine, are false. Unto existence nothing but an infinite oneness walks.
Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live and a good day to die. Every day is also an apt time to learn and express joy and love for the entire natural world. Each day is an apt time to make contact with other people and express empathy for the entire world. Each day is perfect to accept with indifference all aspects of being.
The goal of any spiritual person is to strive towards attaining self-realization by living spontaneously in the present moment of physical reality, free from anxiety and distress, unencumbered by frivolous affections, and liberated from specious attachments.
Only the shallowest person believes that they can attain true happiness by maximizing their wealth at any cost. In absence of morality, ethics, and a sustainable philosophy to guide us in an ethical search for happiness, we will always perceive life’s random countervailing forces of adversity and unpleasantness as inflicting a great personal injustice upon us. Through application of a deeply embedded personal philosophy, we can push back against the negative implications of a life of suffering. We can use a philosophical stance to gain the perspective needed to say 'yes' to all of life, both its rosy path of ineffable joys and a blackened trail of tears. We must learn to accept life as it truly is and not waste precious time in wistfulness.
We cradle in our nucleus emotional ingots gathered through studied immersion of the incongruities of life. In an elusive quest to disinter meaning out of life, we must cull joy from our daily rituals while conscientiously striving to nourish the nucleus of our buried innate essence. By discovering inner peace blossoming amongst the rubble of daily life, while determinedly searching out the cytoplasm our innate essence, a person’s reveals their inspirational tranquility.
Raise your thoughts, not your fists.
You become strong by lifting others up, not pulling them down.
It is not the fault of the stars that they shine brightly, but the fault of our eyes that they cannot handle light.
Ruthless destruction of an ego is a rather simple matter. Preserving the host deprived of an ego is a more delicate affair. How does a person engage in momentous battle with the self while simultaneously struggling to maintain their cerebral, emotive, and spiritual equilibrium in the thin air of consciousness? How assiduously does an agitated mind need to work in order to achieve the elusive degree of emotional and mental quietness that I seek?
Be the sun in someone’s dark sky.
A person only experiences the fathomlessly beautiful and mysterious particulars that constitute reality by giving up the distorting spectacles of our egotistical appetites and repulsive pretensions, shedding artificial attachments, living without grand illusions, and free of deceptive delusions.
The Enlightenment, finally, invented progressive 'history' as an inner-worldly purgatory in order to develop the conditions of possibility of a perfected 'society'. This provided the required setting for the aggressive social theology of the Modern Age to drive out the political theology of the imperial eras. What was the Enlightenment in its deep structure if not an attempt to translate the ancient rhyme on learning and suffering - mathein pathein - into a collective and species-wide phenomenon? Was its aim not to persuade the many to expose themselves to transitional ordeals that would precede the great optimization of all things?
The greatest challenge in life is to be our own person and accept that being different is a blessing and not a curse. A person who knows who they are lives a simple life by eliminating from their orbit anything that does not align with his or her overriding purpose and values. A person must be selective with their time and energy because both elements of life are limited.
A person desires to leave a mark of goodness on earth before death arrives. All artists are creators in the face of death. All of life a person seeks to salvage something worthwhile and enduring from living a tragic life. We must eventually dance with death. A person begins on a road leading to personal enlightenment by giving up false beliefs, quelling destructive desires, overcoming fearfulness, and by seeking truth. In order to lead an evocative life full of truth, I must stop living a false life, conquer my fearfulness, and begin expressing love, wonder, and gratitude for all the beauty and splendor of the world.
I have spent much of my adult life trying to figure out how to experience holiness, and now I know that the struggle to figure things out is antithetical to the experience. You simply relax into holiness the way you would a warm bath.
She shook her head. "It sounds suspiciously like Nirvana." "What's wrong with that?" "Pure Spirit, one hundred percent proof—that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work." "This is better," Will insisted. "You mean, it's more delicious. That's why it's such an enormous temptation. The only temptation that God could succumb to. The fruit of the ignorance of good and evil. What heavenly lusciousness, what a supermango! God had been stuffing Himself with it for billions of years. Then all of a sudden, up comes Homo sapiens, out pops the knowledge of good and evil. God had to switch to a much less palatable brand of fruit. You've just eaten a slice of the original supermango, so you can sympathize with Him." A chair creaked, there was a rustle of skirts, then a series of small busy sounds that he was unable to interpret. What was she doing? He could have answered that question by simply opening his eyes. But who cared, after all, what she might be doing? Nothing was of any importance except this blazing uprush of bliss and understanding. "Supermango to fruit of knowledge — I'm going to wean you," she said, "by easy stages.
The evil components of our shadow are the part of us that we deplore, the part of us that we prefer not to admit. One must set themselves free from all inhibitions in order to initiate close encounters with their innermost monster. By standing toe-to-toe with the part of ourselves that we most detest, a person is in a position to slay their fiendish sense of self and, by doing so, undergo a soulful transformation.
By lighting another’s candle you brighten your own.