T.N.G. SIGNS OF THE TIMES - N.M. November 15, 2001 (#101)
Greetings from Russell's Remnant: www.oocities.org/dkone_us
Dr. Russell Whitesell once gave one of his favorite disciples a book containing some quotations from several famous mystics including St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa, and Meister Eckhart. Russell pointedly suggested that the disciple study Eckhart’s work. This is part of that study.
Meister Eckhart: from Whom God Hid Nothing – edited by David O’Neal
The great mystics spend their lives on what all of us, in our best moments, long for.
The heart of all ritual is stillness; the heart of all teaching is silence. The mystics of every tradition know this and keep telling us that “those who speak do not know, and those who know do not speak.
The language of mystics explodes ordinary language – after that what is left is silence.
The eye with which I see God is the very eye with which God sees me.”
Man’s best chance of finding God is to look in the place where he left him.
We are the cause of all our obstacles.
Meister Eckhart represents the spiritual being of Europe at its highest tension.
Eckhart was a man of one idea – one very great idea, to whom nothing else mattered much. That idea was the unity of the divine and the human.
Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep to the truth and let God go.
There never was a struggle or battle which required greater valor than that in which a man forgets or denies himself.
Indeed, I tell you the truth, any object you have on your mind, however good, will be a barrier between you and the inner most truth.
He who is always alone is worthy of God.
I never ask God to give himself to me. I beg him to purify, to empty me. If I am empty, God of his very nature is obliged to give himself to me to fill me.
The beloved of God have three things: the riddance of possessions, friends and self.
The quieter the mind, the more powerful, the worthier, the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is. To the quiet mind all things are possible.
If we give our whole mind to God, then it is he, in fact, who is doing all our works.
No one can disturb the man who minds nothing, seeks nothing, relishes nothing but God.
He who must always go and fetch God from outside is easily distracted – he is hindered not merely by bad company but also good.
God does not disappear unless we turn our back on him of our own accord.
Once a man escapes for good from his possessions, he is surrounded with God, and creatures cannot touch him without first encountering God.
The good God often lets friends fall sick so that every prop they lean on may give way.
If you want to be comforted, forget those who are better off and always think of those who are in a worse state.
When God’s will comes to pass, we complain.
Since all that is good or consoling or temporal is given to man as a loan, what has he to complain of when he, who has lent it, will take it back? He ought to thank God that he has lent it to him for so long.
If someone has lent me his garment, his fur, and his coat, and took back his coat but left me his garment and fur in the frost, I should rightly thank him and be glad.
The very best and utmost of attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak in you.
A man must abscond from his senses, invert his faculties, and lapse into oblivion of things and of himself. Withdraw from the restlessness of external activities. Flee away and hide from the turmoil of outward occupations and inward thoughts, for they create nothing but discord.
Lord, take from me my spirit and give me instead thy spirit.
He who is at all aware of his own mind knows and conceives nothing of God’s.
The moment you get one of your own ideas, God fades out and the Godhead too. It is when the idea is gone that God gets in. God desires urgently that you, the creature, get out of his way.
God is more silence than speech.
We cannot rightly speak of God at all. Anything we say of him is bound to be stammering.
Our Lord says in John 12:32 “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”
Pear seeds grow into pear trees. Nut seeds grow into nut trees. God seeds grow into Gods.
To find God a man must be one.
I find that pure detachment stands above all things. I praise detachment more than love because love forces me to suffer all things for the sake of God, but detachment makes me receptive of nothing but God.
If anyone wishes to be this or that, he wants to be something, but detachment wishes to be nothing.
What is the prayer of the detached heart? I answer that detachment and purity cannot pray. For if anyone prays, he asks God that something may be given him, or asks that God may take something away from him – but the detached heart does not ask for anything at all, nor has it anything at all that it would like to be rid of. Therefore it is free from all prayer.
The swiftest animal that bears you to perfection is suffering.
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