Weekly Gems Quote of the Week Archive |
May/June 2005 |
June 2005: Week of 6/27/05: You were born an original. Don't die a copy. -John Mason Week of 6/20/05: It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. -Ralph Waldo Emerson from Self-Reliance 1841 Week of 6/13/05: We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone - our parents, teachers, analysts - hypnotizes us to "see" the world and construe it in the "right" way. These others label the world, attach names and give voices to the beings and events in it, so that thereafter, we cannot read the world in any other language or hear it saying other things to us. The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meanings in the new book of our existence. Be careful in your choice of hypnotists. -Sidney Jourard Week of 6/6/05: I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper, and for this reason: What is inside me, I don't let out: What is outside me, I don't let in. If someone comes in, he goes right out again. He has nothing to do with me at all. I am a Doorkeeper of the Heart, not a lump of wet clay. -Rabi'a Al-'Adawiyya from Doorkeeper of the Heart: Versions of Rabia, Translated by Charles Upton May 2005: Week of 5/30/05: The window is the absence of the wall, and it gives air and light because it is empty. Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in. -Nisargadatta Maharaj Week of 5/23/05: We are disturbed not by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens. -Epictetus Week of 5/16/05: True love has no object. Many speak of their unconditional love for another. Unconditional love is the experience of being; there is no "I" and "other," and anyone or anything it touches is experienced in love. You cannot unconditionally love someone. You can only be unconditional love. It is not a dualistic emotion. It is a sense of oneness with all that is. The experience of love arises when we surrender our separateness into the universal. It is a feeling of unity. You don't love another, you are another. -Stephen Levine from Who Dies? Week of 5/9/05: The society teaches you, "Choose the convenient, the comfortable; choose the well-trodden path where your forefathers and their forefathers and their forefathers, since Adam and Eve, have been walking. Choose the well-trodden path. That is a proof-- so many millions of people have passed on it, you cannot go wrong." But remember one thing: The crowd has never had the experience of truth. Truth has only happened to individuals. Whenever there are alternatives, beware: Don't choose the convenient, the comfortable, the respectable, the socially acceptable, the honorable. Choose something that rings a bell in your heart. Choose something that you would like to do in spite of any consequences. -Osho from Your Answers Questioned Week of 5/2/05: A One-Grain Ant An ant trembles along with its one grain of wheat, afraid it might lose that, not knowing how wide and covered with grain the threshing-floor is. Likewise, you are so devoted to your wheat-grain body. That's not all you are! There's much more. Look around with your other Eye. Look at Saturn. Look at Solomon! Whatever a human being truly sees, he or she becomes. That's the nature of this existence. When a jar opens into the Ocean, it can drown a mountain range. Muhammed opened his language, and you know what came through! One way of seeing sees only the road. Another sees a home. It's always Home. The former is dualistic, gauging who's ahead and who's behind. The latter sees everything at once, and reversed, so that last is winning, and dying is living, as well as dying. You have to experience this Truth to know what it is. -Rumi from Delicious Laughter Versions by Coleman Barks |
