Here, you can find the most inspiring thoughts or quotes I find in the net
We can plant the seeds, even lovingly water them with the rains of love, but ultimately it is truly up to the plant to do the growing.
Trying to force the plant to grow only causes pain for the one trying to the forcing (unhealthy energy connection). We need to be detached from the outcome because ultimately it is not up to us. But we can love our loved ones unconditionally and pray for their wellness and highest good and then step aside to let God/Divinity take over.
"Let Go and Let God" is not just a clever bumper sticker ... it is a good reminder and lesson to follow.
Vicky
When you educate a boy,
you educate an individual,
but when you
educate a girl,
you educate a community.
-African proverb-
(my
comment- a great one, but i'd really like to see more freedom for African women
meanwhile.)
REALITY
While the Master seemed to relish life and live it to the
full, he was also
known to take great risks, as when he condemned the
tyranny of the
government, thereby courting arrest and death; and when he
led a group of
his disciples to serve a plague-stricken village.
"The
wise have no fear of death," he would say.
"Why would a man risk his life
so easily?" he was once asked.
"Why would a person care so little about a
candle being extinguished when
day has dawned?"
Anthony de Mello,
SJ
Two thousand years ago, a
Roman Senator suggested that all slaves wear white armbands to better identify
them.
"No," said a wiser Senator. "If they see how many of them there
are, they may revolt."
CONTEMPLATION
The Master would often say that Silence alone brought
transformation.
But no one could get him to define what Silence was. When
asked he would
laugh, then hold his forefinger up against his tightened lips
? which only
increased the bewilderment of his disciples.
One day
there was a breakthrough when someone asked, "And how is one to
arrive at
this Silence that you speak of?"
The Master said something so simple that
his disciples studied his face for
a sign that he might be joking. He
wasn't. He said, "Wherever you may be,
look when there is apparently nothing
to see; listen when all is seemingly
quiet."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL: Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner
space or awareness in which the words on this page are being perceived and
become thoughts. Without this awareness, there would be no perception, no
thoughts, no world. You are that awareness disguised as a
person.
--Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks
OPPOSITION
To a pioneering spirit who was discouraged by frequent
criticism the Master
said, "Listen to the words of the critic. He reveals
what your friends hide
from you."
But he also said, "Do not be
weighed down by what the critic says. No
statue was ever erected to honor a
critic. Statues are for the criticized."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
Happiness does not depend on outward things,
but on the way
we see them.
--Leo Tolstoy
MORSEL:
He who knows Self as the enjoyer of
The honey from the flowers of the
senses,
Ever present within, ruler of time,
Goes beyond fear. For this
Self is Supreme!
-- Upanishads (c. B.C. 800)
HigherAwareness.com
"The key is to not resist or rebel against emotions or
to try to get
around them by devising all sorts of tricks; but to accept
them
directly, as they are."
-- Takahisa Kora
Any mysticism that doesn't
grow better potatoes and corn isn't worth
it!
--Native North American proverb
DISTANCE
The owner of Fun Park commented on the irony of the fact that
while the
kids had a great time at his park he himself was habitually
depressed.
"Would you rather own the park or have the fun?" said the
Master.
"I want both."
The Master made no reply.
When
questioned about it later, the Master quoted the words of a tramp to a
wealthy landowner: "You own the property. Others enjoy the
landscape."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
Mystic is one side and magic is the other one. Without mystic (qualitiy - love) you can?t master magic (quantity - power). So be a great myst and it will helps you to master everything you want!
Franz Bardon
�The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul�s power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God.�
Paramahansa Yogananda
SERENITY
"Are there ways for gauging one's spiritual
strength?"
"Many."
"Give us one."
"Find out how often you
become disturbed in the course of a single day."
Anthony de Mello,
SJ
MORSEL:
Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have
accepted the worst.
-- Lin Yutang
DEMONSTRATION
"Does God exist?" said the Master one
day.
"Yes," said the disciples in chorus.
"Wrong," said the
Master.
"No," said the disciples.
"Wrong again," said the
Master.
"What's the answer?" asked the disciples.
"There is no
answer."
"Why ever not?"
"Because there is no question," said the
Master.
Later he explained: "If you cannot say anything about Him who is
beyond
thoughts and words, how can you ask anything about
Him?"
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
A person desperately searching for God is like a
fish
desperately searching for water.
PRECEDENCE
The Master welcomed the advances of technology, but was
keenly aware
of its limitations.
When an industrialist asked him what
his occupation was, he replied,
"I'm in the people industry."
"And
what, pray, would that be?" said the industrialist.
"Take yourself," said
the Master. "Your efforts produce better things;
mine, better
people."
To his disciples he later said, "The aim of life is the
flowering of
persons. Nowadays people seem concerned mostly with the
perfectioning
of things."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
--Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
INSINUATION
The Master claimed he had a book that contained everything
one could
conceivably know about God.
No one had ever seen the book
till a visiting scholar, by dint of
persistent entreaty, wrested it from the
Master. He took it home and
eagerly opened it? only to find that every one
of its pages was blank.
"But the book says nothing," wailed the
scholar.
"I know," said the Master contentedly. "But see how much it
indicates!"
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
Listen in the silence.
Listen and you shall hear God
speak.
The chamber of silence is man's divine self.
It is there that man
meets man?s God.
--Frater Achad
MORSEL:
The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years,
that minute he begins to be old.
-- William James
DESTRUCTION
For all his holiness, The Master seemed
vaguely
opposed to religion. This never
ceased to puzzle the disciples who,
unlike the Master, equated religion
with spirituality.
"Religion
as practiced today deals in
punishments and rewards. In other words,
it
breeds fear and greed -- the two things
most destructive of spirituality.
"
Later he added ruefully, "It is like
tackling a flood with water;
or a
burning barn with fire."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
If people are good only because they fear punishment,
and hope
for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
--Albert Einstein
INFLEXIBILITY
"Heavens, how you've aged!" exclaimed the Master after
speaking with a
boyhood friend.
"One cannot help growing old, can
one?" said the friend.
"No, one cannot," agreed the Master, "but one must
avoid becoming aged."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his
years,
that minute he begins to be old.
-- William James
FRUSTRATION
The disciples could not understand the seemingly arbitrary
manner in which
some people were accepted for discipleship and others were
rejected.
They got a clue one day when they heard the Master say, "Don't
attempt to
teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time -- and irritates the
pig."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their
dirty feet.
--Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
DEFINITIONS
The Master had a childlike fascination for modern
inventions. He could not
get over his amazement at the pocket calculator
when he saw one.
Later he said, good-naturedly, "A lot of people seem to
have those little
pocket calculators, but nothing in their pockets worth
calculating! "
Weeks later, when a visitor asked him what he taught his
disciples, he
said, "To get their priorities right: Better have the money
than calculate
it; better have the experience than define
it."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
Ours is a society that has perfected its means yet neglected
its meaning.
--Albert Einstein
INFINITY
It was impossible to get the Master to speak of God or of
things divine.
"About God," he said, "we can only know that what we know is
nothing."
One day he told of a man who deliberated long and anxiously
before
embarking on discipleship. "He came to study under me, with the
result that
he learned nothing."
Only a few of the disciples
understood: What the Master had to teach could
not be learned. Nor taught.
So all one could really learn from him was nothing.
Anthony de Mello,
SJ
MORSEL:
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole
world belongs to you.
--Tao Te Ching
ENLIGHTENMENT
The Master was an advocate both of learning and of
Wisdom.
"Learning," he said when asked, "is gotten by reading books or
listening to
lectures."
"And Wisdom?"
"By reading the book
that is you."
He added as an afterthought: "Not an easy task at all, for
every minute of
the day brings a new edition of the book!"
Anthony de
Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
Your vision will become clear only when You can look into
your
own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
--Carl Jung
GREATNESS
"The trouble with the world," said the Master with a
sigh, "is that human
beings refuse to grow up."
"When can a person be
said to have grown up?" asked a disciple.
"On the day he does not need to
be lied to about anything."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything
seems to be in his way.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -1882)
AT--ONE--MENT
When a man whose marriage was in trouble sought his
advice, the Master
said, "You must learn to listen to your wife."
The
man took this advice to heart and returned after a month to say that he
had
learned to listen to every word his wife was saying.
Said the Master with
a smile, "Now go home and listen to every word she
isn't
saying."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
A pair of good ears will drink dry a hundred tongues.
--Benjamin Franklin
PERSECUTION
A disciple was one day recalling how Buddha, Jesus, and
Mohammed were
branded as rebels and heretics by their
contemporaries.
Said the Master, "Nobody can be said to have attained the
pinnacle of Truth
until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for
blasphemy."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved
the absolute
rejection of authority.
--Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)
INNOCENCE
When out on a picnic, the Master said, "Do you want to know what the
Enlightened is like? Look at those birds flying over the lake."
While everyone watched, the Master exclaimed:
"They cast a reflection on the water that they have no awareness of ? and
the lake has no attachment to."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL: Life's lessons are not taught in classrooms.
ATTACHMENT
"I have no idea of what tomorrow will bring, so I wish to prepare for it."
"You fear tomorrow -- not realizing that yesterday is just as dangerous."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.
-- Will Rogers
MANIPULATION
The Master sat through the complaints a woman had against
her husband.
Finally he said, "Your marriage would be a happier one, my
dear, if you
were a better wife."
"And how could I be that?"
"By
giving up your efforts to make him a better husband."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
You cannot raise a man up by calling him down.
-- William
Boetcker
PROPORTION
A visitor who was full of expectations was unimpressed by
the commonplace
words the Master addressed to him.
"I came here in
quest of a Master," he said to a disciple. "All I find is a
human being no
different from the others."
Said the disciple, "The Master is a
shoemaker with an infinite supply of
leather. But he does the cutting and
stitching in accordance with the
dimension of your foot."
Anthony de
Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the
limits of the world.
--Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher
PURIFICATION
The Master insisted that what he taught was nothing, what he did was nothing.
His disciples gradually discovered that Wisdom comes to those who learn nothing, unlearn everything.
That transformation is the consequence not of something done but of something dropped.
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.
--Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
BONUS: God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of
subtraction.
--Meister Eckhart
MAYA
This is how the Master once explained the fact that Enlightenment came not
through effort but through understanding:
"Imagine all of you are hypnotized to believe there is a tiger in this
room. In your fear you will try to escape it, to fight it, to protect
yourselves from it, to placate it. But once the spell is broken there is
nothing to be done. And you are all radically changed:
"So understanding breaks the spell, the broken spell brings change, change
leads to inaction, inaction is power: You can do anything on earth, for it
is no longer you who do it."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
To live a single day and hear a good teaching is better than to
live a hundred years without knowing such teaching.
--Buddha (B.C. 568-488)
Thanks to Abbot Street
I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything,
but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do the
something I can do.
Helen Keller (1880-1968)
American Writer
To aim at the best and to remain essentially ourselves is
one and the same thing.
Janet Erskine Stuart
"Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to get leisure."
Benjamin Franklin
"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you
esteem your own reputation for 'tis better to be alone than
in bad company."
George Washington
The young do not know enough to be prudent, and
therefore they attempt the impossible -- and achieve it,
generation after generation.
Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)
American Writer
You can have anything you want -- if you want it badly
enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything
you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with
singleness of purpose.
Abraham Lincoln
Anger is never without a reason but seldom with a good
one
Benjamin Franklin
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which
he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
Epictetus
�The unexamined life is not worth living."
Socrates
He who finds diamonds must grapple in mud and mire
because diamonds are not found in polished stones.
They are made.
Henry B. Wilson
A professional is someone who can do his best work when
he doesn't feel like it.
Alistair Cooke
Patience is a particular requirement. Without it, you can
destroy in an hour what it might take you weeks to repair.
Charlie W. Shedd
Our task is to strike a balance, to find a middle way, to learn
not to overstretch ourselves with extraneous activities and
preoccupations, but to simplify our lives more and more.
The key to finding a happy balance in modern lives is
simplicity.
Sogyal Rinpoche
The direst foe of courage is the fear itself, not the object of
it, and the man who can overcome his own terror is a hero
and more.
George MacDonald
"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends.
You talk to your enemies."
Moshe Dayan
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about
things that matter."
Martin Luther King Jr.
"A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool
from his friends."
Baltasar Gracian
No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be
strong, gentle and good, without the world being better
for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by
the very existence of that goodness.
Phillips Brooks (1835-1893),American Bishop
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every
experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Eleanor Roosevelt
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
one bit simpler."
Albert Einstein
"Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of
you as they please."
Pythagoras
"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have,
and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful
lest you let other people spend it for you."
Carl Sandburg
"We don't get offered crises, they arrive."
Elizabeth Janeway
The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good
intention.
Duguet
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be
altogether irreclaimably bad.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881),Scottish historian and essayist
There are no secrets to success... It is the result of
preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
"You know the Buddhists believe that sometimes when everything is in turmoil, it's because something wonderful is ready to be born and that thing is distracting you so it can have some privacy during the birthing process." ~Pearl Cleage, from "I Wish I Had a Red Dress"
TRIBULATION
"Calamities can bring growth and Enlightenment, " said the Master.
And he explained it thus:
"Each day a bird would shelter in the
withered branches of a tree that stood
in the middle of a vast deserted plain.
One day a whirlwind uprooted the tree,
forcing the poor bird to fly a hundred
miles in search of shelter -- till it finally
came to a forest of fruit-laden trees."
And he concluded: "If the withered tree had survived, nothing would
have induced the bird to give up its security and fly."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
Life can only be understood backwards.
It must be lived forwards.
--Soren Kierkegaard
EDUCATION
Suspicious as the Master was of knowledge and learning in matters divine,
he never missed a chance to encourage the arts and sciences and every other
form of learning. So it was no surprise that he readily accepted an
invitation to address the university convocation.
He arrived an hour ahead of time to wander about the campus and marvel at
the facilities for learning that were quite nonexistent in his own day.
Typically, his convocation speech lasted less than a minute. He said:
"Laboratories and libraries,
halls and porch and arch
and learned lectures?
all shall be of no avail
if the wise heart
and the seeing eye
are absent."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
It is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. --Mother Teresa
FORMULATIONS
"What is it you seek?" asked the Master of a scholar who came to him for
guidance.
"Life," was the reply.
Said the Master, "If you are to live, words must die."
When asked later what he meant, he said, "You are lost and forlorn because
you dwell in a world of words. You feed on words, you are satisfied with
words when what you need is substance. A menu will not satisfy your
hunger. A formula will not slake your thirst."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL:
There is a tricycle in man.
He knows, he feels and acts.
He has emotion, intellect and will.
He must develop head, heart and hand.
--Sivananda [born 1887]
SHADOW BOXING
To newcomers the Master would say, "Knock and the door will be opened to you."
To some of them he would later say conspiratorially, "How would you expect
the door to be opened when it has never been shut?"
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL: It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the
heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the
heart. --Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
BONUS MORSEL: All Spiritual being is in man. A wise old proverb says, "God
comes to see us without bell," that is, as there is no screen or ceiling
between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in
the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause,
begins. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
DARING
Said a disappointed visitor, "Why has my stay here yielded no fruit?"
"Could it be because you lacked the courage to shake the tree?" said the
Master benignly.
Anthony de Mello, SJ
"Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. . . That's where the fruit is."
INSTRUMENTALITY
When a disciple came to take leave of the Master so that he could return to
his family and business, he asked for something to carry away with him.
Said the Master, "Ponder on these things: It is not the fire that is hot,
but you who feel it so.
It is not the eye that sees, but you.
It is not the compass that makes the circle, but the draftsman."
Anthony de Mello, SJ
Just as a picture is drawn by an artist, surroundings are
created by the activities of the mind.
--Buddha (B.C. 568-488)
Remember that if the opportunities for great deeds should
never come, the opportunities for good deeds are renewed
day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness,
not the glory.
F.W. Faber
I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day
at a time.
Charles Schulz
Fear less, hope more;
Whine less, breathe more;
Talk less, say more;
Hate less, love more;
And all good things are yours."
Swedish Proverb
What we think, we become.
Buddha