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Archive/September 1998

 

 


September 1, 1998

It is as important to cultivate your silence power
As it is your word power.

~ William James

 

September 2, 1998

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change
And to preserve change amid order.


~ Alfred North Whitehead

 

September 3, 1998

Hell is alienation from the true self,
which is of God.

~ Thomas Merton

 

September 4, 1998

If you have a particular faith or religion,
that is good.
But you can survive without it
if you have a love, compassion, and tolerance.
The clear proof of a person’s love of God is
if that person genuinely shows love to fellow human beings.

~ The Dalai Lama

 

September 5, 1998

The world is no more than the Beloved’s single face;
In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist.
Each place, each moment, sings its particular song of not-being and being.
Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom and madness.
Those who claim knowledge are wrong;
Prayer just leads to trance;
Appearance and faith are mere lees in the Unknowing Wine.
Wherever the Footprint is found,
That handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds.
This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love,
That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.

~ Ghalib

 

September 6, 1998

Lord, my mind is not noisy with desires
and my heart has satisfied its longing.
I do not care about religion
or anything that is not you.
I have soothed and quieted my soul,
like a child at its mother’s breast.
My soul is as peaceful as a child
Sleeping in its mothers arms.

~ Psalm 131

 

September 7, 1998

Because work addiction keeps us busy,
we stay estranged from our essential selves.
An aspect of that estrangement is
that we cease asking ourselves if we are doing our right work.
Are we actually doing our true work,
performing tasks or pursuing vocations that are good
for us, for our families, for the universe?

~  Diane Fassel

 

September 8, 1998

What we call mystical experience occurs
when there is a sense of oneness or harmony
between the energy or power of our bodies, minds and spirits
and the energy of other beings
and the universe itself.
 
~ John Mack
Harvard College Dept. of Psychiatry
 
 
 

September 9, 1998

 
My heart was split,
and a flower appeared;
and grace sprang up;
and it bore fruit for my God.
You split me,
tore my heart open,
filled me with love.
You poured your spirit into me;
I knew you as I know myself.
Speaking waters touched me
from your fountain, the source of life.
I swallowed them and was drunk
with the water that never dies.
And my drunkeness was insight,
intimacy with your spirit.
And you have made all things new;
you have showed me all things shining.
You have granted me perfect ease;
I have become like Paradise,
a garden whose fruit is joy;
and you are the sun upon me.
My eyes are radiant with your spirit;
my nostrils fill with your fragrance.
My ears delight in your music,
and my face is covered with your dew.
Blessed are the men and women
who are planted on your earth,
in your garden,
who grow as your trees and flowers,
who transform their darkness to light.
Their roots plunge into darkness;
their faces turn toward the light.
All those who love are beautiful;
they overflow with your presence
so they can do nothing but good.
There is infinite space in your garden;
all men, all women are welcome here;
all they need do is enter.
 
~ The odes of Solomon
 
 

September 10, 1998

Be a lamp into yourself.
Work out your liberation with dilligence.

~ The Buddha

 

September 11, 1998

We are here on earth to do good for others.
What the others are here for, I don't know.

~ W. H. Auden

 

September 12, 1998

You are a dynamic being of light
That at each moment informs
The energy that flows through you.
You do this with each thought,
With each intention.

~ Gary Zukav

 

September 13, 1998

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived.

~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

 

September 14, 1998

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand,
nor the kindly smile,
nor the joy of companionship;
it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one
when you discover that someone else believes in you
and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

~  Ralph Waldo Emerson, adapted

 

September 15, 1998

Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time
One must begin by sacrificing suffering.

~ Gurdjieff

 

September 16, 1998

EIGHT

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent.
In action, be aware of the time and the season.
No fight: No blame.

~ Lao Tzu

 

September 17, 1998

Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all of the barriers
within yourself that you have built against it.

~ A Course in Miracles

 

September 18, 1998

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise;

seek what they sought.

~ Basho

 

September 19, 1998

The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know.

~ Pascal

 

September 20, 1998

Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with the truth.

~  Thich Nhat Hanh

 

September 21, 1998

If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary,
you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.

~ Lin-chi

 

September 22, 1998


Black Elk’s Vision

I was standing on the highest mountain of them all,
and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world.
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit,
and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle,
wide as daylight and as starlight,
and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree
to shelter all children of one mother and one father.
And I saw that it was holy….


You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle,
and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles,
and everything tries to be round.
In the old days when we were a strong and happy people,
all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation,
and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished.
The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop,
and the circle of the four quarters nourished it.
The east gave peace and light,
the south gave warmth,
the west gave rain,
and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance.
This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion.
Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.
The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars.
The wind, in its greatest power, whirls.
Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.
The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle.
The moon does the same, and both are round.
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing,
and always come back again to where they were.
The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood,
and so it is in everything where power moves.
Our teepees were round like the nests of birds,
and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop,
a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.

~ Black Elk

 

September 23, 1998

The doctrine and discipline which I have imparted to you
Will be your leader when I am gone.
Try hard to reach the goal.

~ The Buddha’s last words

 

September 24, 1998

One cannot but be in awe when [one] contemplates
the mysteries of eternity, of life,
of the marvelous structure of reality.
It is enough if one tries to merely comprehend
a little of this mystery each day.
Never lose a holy curiosity.

~ Albert Einstein

 

September 25, 1998

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage.
He lives by make-believe.

~ W. Somerset Maugham
   The Summing Up, 1938

 


September 26, 1998

Yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision ...
But today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

~ from the Sanskrit

 


September 27, 1998


Who will tell whether one happy moment of love
or the joy of breathing
or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air,
is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies...

~ Erich Fromm


September 28, 1998

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.
We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

~ Albert Schweitzer


September 29, 1998

People are like stained-glass windows.
They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in,
their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

~ Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

 

 

September 30, 1998

We are kept from our experience of Spirit
because our inner world is cluttered with past traumas…
As we begin to clear away this clutter,
The energy of divine light
Begins to flow through our beings.

~ Fr. Thomas Keating

 

 

Spiritwalk Thought for Today Archive Files

 

  1998

March 1998 April 1998 May 1998 June 1998 July 1998
August 1998 September 1998 October 1998 November 1998 December 1998

 

1999

Jan 1999 Feb 1999 Mar 1999 Apr 1999 May 1999 Jun 1999
Jul 1999 Aug 1999 Sep 1999 Oct 1999 Nov 1999 Dec 1999

 

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