Corners on the Curving Sky

Our earth is round, and, among other things,
that means that you and I can hold
completely different points of view and both be right.
The difference of our positions will show stars
in you window I cannot even imagine.
Your sky may burn with light,
while mine, at the same moment,
spread beautiful to darkness.
Still, we must choose how to separately corner
the circling universe of our experience.
Once chosen, our cornering will determine
the message of any star and darkness we encounter.
-June Jordan

Open Your Door to Truth

Contemplate the workings of this world,
listen to the words of the wise,
and take all that is good as your own.
With this as your base, open your own door to truth.
Do not overlook the truth that is right before you.
Study how water flows in a valley stream,
smoothly and freely between the rocks.
Also learn from holy books and wise people.
Everything - even mountains, rivers, plants and trees -
should be your teacher.
-Morihei Ueshiba

The Deepest Secrets

First, study the obvious, the physical nature of things.
The second step is to study the interiority of things, to go inward.
The third step is to study the relationship between the two.
By drawing on the first three steps,
you can come close to knowing the deepest secrets of the universe.
-Tenzin Gyatso, Dalai Lama

Be Still

"Nothing is ever found by rushing round a circle.
Be still. Find ways to become still.
Then listen, at the centre, to the questions of your heart.
For it is these many questions which will lead you to the few;
and it is these few, strong, vital questions which will lead you to your Spirit.
Trust the Questions.
They are all that you need.
Do not be contented with the many answers the world will offer.
Listen to the Questions and follow them; they are your open sesame to the Quest.
Be still, listen, your Spirit is asking for you."
-William Corlett & John Moore

Questions Not Meant to the Answered

There are questions that are not meant to be answered.
They are only meant to be asked.

If we attempt to answer these types of questions,
we invariably do so using the process of thinking,
and thereby we only receive answers as mental concepts.
If we settle for mental concepts,
it means we are satisfied with information, not knowledge.
Information is thought-form that has only a mental component to it.
Knowledge, on the other hand, contains an integrated
physical, mental, and emotional component to it.

When we do not answer a question mentally,
but instead choose to sit within the resonance of the question,
the answer unfolds organically within our life
as an integrated physical, mental and emotional experience.
-Michael Brown

A Basin in the Mind

There is a basin in the mind
where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight.
Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words,
and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.
-Zora Neale Hurston

The Still Point

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
-T. S. Eliot

A Journey Up a Spiral Staircase

Life is a journey up a spiral staircase,
and as we grow older we cover the ground
we have covered before, only higher up;
as we look down the winding stair below us
we measure our progress
by the number of places where we were but no longer are.
The journey is both repetitious and progressive;
we go both round and upwards.
-William Butler Yeats

Dynamic Integration

Life is a whole spectrum of multicolored,
infinitely diversified experiences.
Our goal is to maintain a balance,
to integrate, to organize this range of experiences
into a whole, into a system, into an organized structure,
which is a wonderful achievement.
Only when we achieve this dynamic integration
can we attain equanimity and serenity.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

A Tapestry Weaver

Creation might be likened to the tapestry weaver
who KNOWS the one idea as a whole,
then THINKS it into parts,
then RECORDS those parts by interweaving
their colors into the many forms which, together,
manifest the whole idea.
-Walter Russell

Song of the Loom

See, sense and feel yourself at your loom
weaving the pattern of your life as you wish it to be.
Select your threads from the myriad ones available to you.
See your hands as sky and earth blending this tapestry
as you hear the song the loom sings to your eternity.
-Gerald Epstein

A Theater

This whole creation is essentially subjective,
and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once
scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience and critic.
-Carl Jung

A House of Consciousness

I live in the house of consciousness,
the home of my thoughts and feelings
and therefore, my experiences...
As I am the only thinker in my mind,
I am host in my house of consciousness.
I choose with care the guests
I entertain at my table and fireside.
-Carleton Whitehead

The Illusion of You

Every time a thought is born, you are born.
When the thought is gone, you are gone.
But the "you" does not let the thought go,
and what gives continuity to this "you" is thinking.
Actually there is no permanent entity in you,
no totality of all your thoughts and experiences.
You think there is "somebody"who is feeling your feelings -
that's the illusion.
I can say it is an illusion but it is not an illusion to you.
-U. G. Krishnamurti

Who Am I?

Look at yourself in the mirror.
Look into your eyes and penetrate into the core of your being.
Go into the black pit of your pupils,
into the depths of your soul,
and ask yourself the question "who am I?"
Don't just ask it mentally, ask it with all your heart.
Ask it as if your life depended on knowing the answer.
Ask it again and again.
Now close your eyes and listen to the answer
in the silence of your own mind.
-Steven Sadleir

The Genuine

What is genuine has no models or rules.
It's spontaneous, self-generating, free.
Nothing can stand against it.
It doesn't depend on motivation
and isn't concerned with effect.
It just wants to be itself, to express itself,
to give itself utterly away.
It's nature is kindness.
-Stephen Mitchell

The Right Growth of I

The right growth of the I is the cardinal factor of human life.
On it depends man's right relation
to the world, to himself, and to the Transcendental.
-Karlfried Graf von Durckheim

The Evolution of Man

The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness,
and 'consciousness' cannot evolve unconsciously.
The evolution of man is the evolution of his will,
and 'will' cannot  evolve involuntarily.
The evolution of man is the evolution of his power of doing,
and 'doing' cannot be the result of things which 'happen.'
-George Gurdjieff

Above the Storm

The greatest and most important problems in life
are all in a certain sense insoluble.
They must be so because they express the necessary polarity
inherent in every self-regulating system.
They can never be solved, but only outgrown...
This "outgrowing"...on further experience
was seen to consist of a new level of consciousness.
Some higher or wider interest arose on a person's horizon,
and through this widening of his view
the insoluble problem lost its urgency...
What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest conflicts
and to panicky outburst of emotion,
viewed from a higher level of the personality,
now seemed like a storm in the valley
seen from a high mountain-top.
This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its vitality,
but instead of being in it one is now above it.
-Carl Jung

Boundaries

Boundaries are actually the main factor in space;
just as the present, another boundary,
is the main factor in time.
-Eduardo Chillida

Permeable Boundaries

Where do our selves begin and end?
Many of the boundaries we imagine are cultural;
some are biological ; some are psychological.
But each boundary can be transcended
or, perhaps, more appropriately,
can be permeable to an exchange of being
that turns it from a barrier into part of the architecture
of a greater incarnation, a greater uniqueness.
-David Spangler

No Boundaries

The ultimate metaphysical secret,
if we dare to state it so simply,
is that there are no boundaries in the universe.
Boundaries are illusions,
products not of reality
but of the way we map and edit reality.
And while it is fine to map out the territory,
it is fatal to confuse the two.
-Ken Wilber

If Thoughts Were Laws

If the whole universe
were run by the same principles as my own little notions,
would the world still be sufficient
to meet the needs of the vast order which it maintains;
if my little whim were elevated to the vast dignity of a divine reality,
would it serve all men;
if my thoughts were laws,
would there by justice in creation?
-Immanuel Kant

What If?

What if our religion was each other,
if our practice was our life,
if prayer our words?
What if the temple was the earth,
if forests were our church,
if holy waters - the rivers, lakes and oceans.
What if meditation was our relationships,
if the teacher was life,
if wisdom was self-knowledge,
if love was the center of our being?
-Ganga White

Karma

The only decree of Karma, an eternal and immutable decree,
is absolute Harmony in the world of Matter, as in the world of Spirit.
It is not therefore, karma that rewards and punishes,
but it is we who reward and punish ourselves,
according as we work with, through and along with nature,
abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or breaking them.
-Helena P. Blavatsky

What is Mind

What is mind?
No matter.
What is matter?
Never mind.
What is the soul?
It is immaterial.
-Edwin Paxton Hood

There is NothingThat is Unchanging

When you ride in a boat and watch the shore,
you might assume that the shore is moving.
But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat,
you can see that the boat moves.
Similarly, if you examine many things with a confused mind,
you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent.
But when you practice intimately and return to where you are,
it will be clear that there is nothing that has unchanging self.
-Dogen

The Realm of Reflection

This realm of reflection we encounter
consists of mind, earth, wind, water,
arranging and rearranging with increasing complexity.
The principle of subtle energy evolves naturally into tangibility,
blossoming as billions of worlds.
A single sun reflects in countless water-bearing vessels.
As these earthenware worlds are broken, one by one,
the sunlight of primal awareness remains the same.
-Ramprasad

Body, Soul and Spirit

The body is the thought-form
through which the individuality finds expression
on our present limited plane;
the soul is man's consciousness of himself
as apart from all the rest of existence,
and even from God;
the spirit is the true being
thus limited and expressed -
it is the deathless Divine within us.
-R. J. Campbell

Spirit and Energy

Water and fire are yin and yang,
yin and yang are essence and life,
essence and life are body and mind,
body and mind are spirit and energy.
-The Secret of the Golden Flower

Forget and Remember

The more a man can forget,
the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo;
the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.
-Soren Kierkegaard

A Certain Point

Everything tends to make us believe
that there exists a certain point of the mind
at which life and death, the real and imagined, past and future,
the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low,
cease to be perceived as contradiction.
-Andre Breton

Higher Attributes

What are the manifest attributes of a higher center of awareness?
Above and beyond excitement and depression is serenity.
Above and beyond blind optimism and fearful pessimism
is a clear vision of reality.
Not doubt or dogmatism but spiritual understanding.
Not license or repression, but uplifting energy.
The higher center is that love which is steady, calm and buoyant.
-James Davis

Every Moment

No one imagines that a symphony
is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along,
or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale.
The point of music is discovered
in every moment of playing and listening to it.
It is the same I feel, with the greater part of our lives...
-Alan Watts

Follow Your Bliss

If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while, waiting for you,
and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss,
and they open doors to you.
I say follow your bliss and don't be afraid and doors will open
where you didn't know they were going to be.
-Joseph Campbell

Loving the Web of Life

Man has the capacity to love, not just his own species,
but life in all its shapes and forms.
This empathy with the interknit web of life
is the highest spiritual expression I know of.
-Loren Eisley

Ecstasy

Ecstasy is the intoxicant
that relieves humdrum existence of its tedium,
transfigures the ego into its quintessence, pure spirit,
and makes people stir and throb and dance into life.

Freedom from precarious mental constructions of banal understanding
is such ecstasy!

Ecstasy flourishes in the love for all beings.

Ecstasy is a communion with all beings
made possible through the loss of the notion of the self.

...a still subtler source of ecstasy;
it consists in touching upon the force that sets the universe in motion.
When one realizes that one partakes of this force,
incorporates this force, delegates this force,
that one is the very expression of this force,
one comes upon the very foundation of one's being:
the will behind one's will.
This is the ecstasy of the dervish:
to feel the power of God operating in one's very flesh!
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Universal Mind

There is one mind common to all individual men.
Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.
He that is once admitted to the right of reason
is make a freeman of the whole estate.
What Plato has thought, he may think;
what a saint has felt, he may feel;
what at any time has befallen any man,
he can understand.
Who hath access to this universal mind
is a party to all that is or can be done,
for this is the only and sovereign agent.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Model of the Universe

Each person has to recreate the whole System intellectually
for himself and in himself.
This is the scaffolding of his new creation.
Nobody else can do it for him, and what he finds is his own.

At the same time,
the construction of one's own intellectual 'model of the universe'
is only scaffolding.
This is the skeleton.
A new kind of living flesh must grow on it, a new body.
What does this mean?
It means learning to live in the soul and from the soul.
-Rodney Collin

A System of Truth

Is there or could there ever be a philosophical system
in perfect conformity with the truth?
Certainly not.
A system is  prison of thought.
Life is constant expansion.
Formulation in words would be reduction to your own limits
of what has no size.
Only symbol, parable, and hieroglyphic writing can communicate Knowledge,
and whoever receives illumination receives it for himself alone,
and anyone might receive this light.
But the illumined man, prophet or messenger,
can never do more that indicate the way to follow,
and one can only transcribe forever anew what inspired men have taught.
-R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz

Concepts

Time is illusion
Space is relationship
Pattern is equilibrium
Consciousness is reality
Being is expansion
Self is intimacy
Integration is convenience
Manifestation is consistency
-Marc Edmund Jones

Perennial Philosophy

The perennial philosophy is the metaphysic
that recognizes a divine reality
substantial to the world of things and lives and minds;
the psychology that finds in the soul
something similar to, or even identical with, divine reality;
the ethic that places man's final end
in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendental ground of all being -
the thing that is immemorial and universal.
-Aldous Huxley

Spirituality

Spirituality is not a certain knowledge,
spirituality is the expansion of consciousness.
The wider the consciousness expands,
the greater is one's spiritual vision.
And when once the consciousness expands
so much that it embraces the whole universe,
it is what is called divine perfection.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Sacredness

That which is sacred has no attributes.
A stone in a temple, an image in a church, a symbol, is not sacred.
Man calls them sacred,
something holy to be worshipped out of complicated urges, fears and longings.
This "sacredness" is still within the field of thought;
it is built up by thought and in thought there's nothing new or holy.
Thought can put together the intricacies of systems, dogmas, beliefs,
and the images, symbols it projects are no more holy
than the blueprints of a house or the design of a new aeroplane.
All this is within the frontiers of thought
and there is nothing sacred or mystical about all this.
Thought is matter and it can be made into anything, ugly- beautiful.

But there's a sacredness which is no of thought,
nor of a feeling resuscitated by thought.
It is not recognizable by thought nor can it be utilized by thought.
Thought cannot formulate it.
But there's a sacredness, untouched by any symbol or word.
It is not communicable. It is a fact.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Imagine

Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down,
along with all our busy thoughts about earth, sea and air;

if the very world should stop, and the mind cease thinking
about itself, go beyond itself, and be quite still;

if all the fantasies that appear in dreams and imagination
should cease, and there be no speech, no sign:

Imagine if all things that are perishable grew still...

And imagine if that moment were to go on and on,
leaving behind all other sights and sounds
but this one vision which ravishes and absorbs and fixes the beholder in joy...
-Saint Augustine

Truth

There is no greater religion than truth.
When truth no longer is the object of one's seeking,
then truth becomes his being;
and in the light of that Absolute Truth he finds all knowledge.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Surrender to Truth

The greatest challenge is to surrender to Truth.
Of course, if you have an image of what truth is, that is not truth.
No image is separate from Truth,
but Truth remains independent
of any image, any concept, any thought.
The deepest, most profound challenge
is to surrender to what is untouched
by any idea, evaluation, or conclusion, past, present of future.
It is to discover who you are,
closer than any image of yourself, any sense of yourself,
and deeper than any experience
you have ever had or could ever have of yourself.
The challenge is to be true to that,
to be true to the source of all thought,
the source of all sensation, the source of all imagination,
without understanding it, without grasping it,
and without getting it.
-Gangji

Men as Mountains

Mountains never shake hands.
Their roots may touch;
they may keep together some way up:
but at length they part company,
and rise into individual isolated peaks.
So it is with great men.
As mountains mostly run in chains and clusters,
crossing the plain at wider or narrower intervals,
in like manner are there epochs in history
when great men appear in clusters also.
At first too they grow up together,
seeming to be animated by the same spirit,
to have the same desires and antipathies,
the same purposes and ends.
But after a while the genius of each begins to know itself,
and to follow its own bent;
they separate and diverge more and more;
and those who, when young,
where working in consort, stand alone in their old age.
-Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare

Superman

The Superman is one:
whose self-mastery yields an abundance of the power to create;
who exercises the master privilege of the free spirit
- living experimentally;
who bids farewell to the reverences of youth
and who stands apart from the views and values of the herd;
who reverences enemies as allies;
who knows how to forget and recuperate from the blows of life;
who shakes off with a single shrug the vermin that eat deeply into others;
whose overflowing plenitude and gratitude
cleanse both body and spirit of all guilt and ressentiment;
who perceives that "body" and "spirit"are two names for a single mystery;
who calls humankind to return to love to its true home, the Earth;
whose every muscle quivers with a proud consciousness of truly free will
and a sovereign individuality that 'no longer flows out into a God';
who realizes that creative individuality
is indeed the Earth's goal and humanity's hope;
who without metaphysical consolations,
affirms life not only in its joy but also its horror
and who, thereby, conquers nihilism

This 'anti-nihilist;
this victor over God and nothingness -
he must come one day.'

This Superman is shaped in the school of self-overcoming
whose curriculum requires both courage and discipline,
and above all, the ability to distinguish between
the asceticism that denies life and one that stands in its service.
The school of self-overcoming gives birth the the creative will.
-Philip Novak

The Last Achievement

The last achievement of all thought
is a recognition of the identity of spirit and matter, subject and object;
and this reunion as the marriage of Heaven and Hell,
the reaching out of a contracted universe towards its freedom,
in response to the love of Eternity for the productions of time.
There is then no sacred or profane, spiritual or sensual,
but everything that lives is pure and void.
-Ananada Coomaraswamy

Identification with Spirit

I can identify myself heartily with nothing in me
except the flame of spirit itself.
Therefore the truest picture of my inmost being
would show none of the features of my person,
and nothing of the background of my life.
It would show only the light of understanding that burned within me,
and as far as it could, consumed and purified all the rest.
-George Santayana

At the Centre

There, on a summit more finely pointed than the finest needle,
He who fills all space resides unto himself,
On high in the most rarefied air
Where all freezes into stone,
The supreme and immutable crystal alone subsists.
Up there exposed to the fuel fire of the firmament,
Where all is consumed in flame,
Subsists the perpetual incandescence.
There at the centre of all creation,
Is he who sees each thing accomplished
In its beginning and its end.
-Rene Daumal

The Master Spirit

The universe is, so to speak,
an ocean of vibrations,
and every moment represents a wave.

It is the master spirit
who can rise above the waves
of the enormous ocean of  life.

To be in it,
and to be able to stand above it,
and to walk on it,
is the phenomenon of Christ's walking on water.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Perceive God

Leap free of everything that is physical,
and grow as vast as immeasurable vastness;
step beyond all time and become eternal;
then you will perceive God.
Realize that nothing is impossible for you;
recognize that you too are immortal and
that you can embrace all things in your mind.
find your home in the heart of every living creature;
make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths;
bring all opposites inside yourself and reconcile them;
understand that you are everywhere,
on the land, in the sea, in the sky;
realize that you haven't yet been begotten,
that you are still in the womb,
that you are young, that you are old,
that you are dead, that you are in the world beyond the grace;
hold all this in your mind,
all times and places,
all substances and qualities and magnitudes;
then you can perceive God.
-from Hermetic Writings

One Interior Life

the one interior life...
In which all beings live with god, themselves
Are god, existing in the mighty whole,
As indistinguishable as the cloudless east
At noon is from the cloudless west, when all
The hemisphere is one cerulean blue.
-William Wordsworth