The Library
Is this a world of exile from our spiritual home or is it a world of education for our spiritual home? If it is the first then all experience gained in it is worthless and useless. But if it is the second then every experience has meaning and is related to this universal purpose.
9.13.2.1Listen No man has any choice as to whether or not he should seek the kingdom of heaven, his higher Spiritual Self. Every man is seeking it, knowingly or unwittingly, and is preordained to do so…
9.13.2.5,Listen Most people live upon the mere surface of their consciousness, knowing nothing of the great Power and intelligence which support it.
9.13.2.88Listen If industrial civilization has enriched our outer life it has also impoverished the inner life. It need not have done so if we had brought about a proper equilibrium between the two and if we had done so under the light of the guiding principle of what we are here on earth for.
9.13.2.140Listen To work effectively in this world of everyday without repudiating or forgetting the world of the Spirit—this is his duty.
9.13.2.159Listen Wang Yang-ming maintained that wisdom and virtue could not be gained by meditation alone. He asserted that the daily experience of dealing with ordinary matters was also needed, providing that experience was sincerely reflected upon by conscience, reason, and intuition.
9.13.2.166Listen Living in the world as we are, having to submit to demands which the world makes upon us, we must learn how to deal with them in a correct way. By correct I mean in harmony with our inner goal.
9.13.2.168Listen What is wrong if we claim some happiness from this world, provided we keep our balance, the heart anchored to an allegiance higher than the world, the mind always remembering for what it is really here?
9.13.2.174Listen … if he does not forget the final purpose of all this worldly activity, that through the body’s life and the mind’s existence he may seek and find his true self, the Overself, the inner failure and superficiality of so many lives will be avoided.
9.13.2.182,Listen This earthly life is the ”narrow gate” which opens onto the kingdom.
9.13.2.185Listen It is here, in the ordinary and uneventful tasks of the day, that he may find just as much opportunity to practise nonattachment, to suppress egoism, and to express wisdom.
9.13.2.188Listen It is of immense importance, whether in the internal spiritual life or the external worldly career, to cultivate the art of detecting, recognizing, and accepting opportunity... To miss those chances through ignorance or the blindness of unpreparedness, through logic's limitation or the dismissing of intuition, is to miss portions of success or happiness that could easily have been ours.
9.13.2.194,Listen If he accepts the hand of opportunity when it is offered him, the effects will be favourable in every direction. If he feels the premonition that he is on the verge of a new cycle, and makes decisions or acts accordingly, the way into it will open out for him.
9.13.2.199Listen What most people count as great misfortunes sometimes open the door to new opportunities, ideas, or courses of action leading to advantages that would not otherwise have come. It is wiser to defer an appraisal of such events until they have shown their results as a whole to a final view.
9.13.2.201Listen How little do we know that some small act, some minor move, may lead to consequences that open up an entirely new phase of experience.
9.13.2.202Listen The need to guide his personal life more intuitively comes home to him after every major mistake has been committed and its effects felt. He sees then that it is not enough to calculate by intellect, nor feel by impulse, nor act on emotion, for these have led him to sufferings that could have been prevented, or caused other people sufferings that bring him regrets. He learns that it is necessary to listen inwardly, to wait in mental quiet for intuitive feeling to arise and guide him.
9.13.2.212Listen If a situation is fraught with anxiety and is also either unavoidable or unalterable, the first procedure is to organize all your forces to meet it calmly. The second is to call on the higher power for help by turning to it in relaxation and meditation.
9.13.2.214Listen However harassing a problem may seem to us, if we can give up our egoistic attitude towards it, if we can keep the lower emotions away from it, the best possible solution under the circumstances will develop of its own accord. There is veritable magic in such a change of thinking and feeling. It opens the gate to higher forces and enables them to come to our help.
9.13.2.219Listen Each problem is to be solved by the simple method of turning it over to the Overself and then dismissing it from mind. The ego is faulty and blind; what it cannot solve or manage, the Overself can. But this method requires time and patience.
9.13.2.220Listen Take your peril to the Overself, identify your real being with the Overself and not with the vanishing ego. Then you will be at the standpoint which perceives that you are as secure and safe as the Overself is. Hold your position as the final and highest one. Reject the very thought of being in danger. There is none in the Overself.
9.13.2.222Listen The problem which the ego has created for you but which the ego cannot solve for you will dissolve under the impact of the Overself’s light.
9.13.2.223Listen He should make it an unfailing practice to turn inwards in moments of need for help and in moments of perplexity for direction.
9.13.2.224Listen No other act is so urgent or so important as this, to turn now in thought and remembrance, in love and aspiration, toward the Overself. For if you do not but turn toward that other and worldly act which is so clamant and demanding, you fall into a tension which may lead to error and consequent suffering. But if you do turn toward the Overself first and then act, you rise up to inner calm and consequent wiser judgement.
9.13.2.225Listen He has to ask himself: What is it that the Overself is impelling me to do? The answer will hardly ever be a spontaneous one. He will have to wait patiently for days or weeks or perhaps months before it will be heard sufficiently clearly and definitely.
9.13.2.233Listen Often the guidance does not come till the time when it is needed, the answer to our questioning does not make itself heard until the eleventh hour. Until then we must learn to wait in hopeful patience and in trustful expectation.
9.13.2.238Listen The intuition may be slow in revealing itself but when it does the inner certitude it provides, the strong consciousness of being right, will enable him to act decisively and swiftly.
9.13.2.244Listen If he turns away from his problem and to the Overself, the moment its peace is felt or its message of truth is heard, he may take this as a sign that help in some way will assuredly come to him.
9.13.2.248Listen If, while managing a situation, you are filled with anxiety or taut with tension, take it as a warning sign that you are managing with the unaided ego alone. That is, you have forgotten, or failed, to turn it over to the higher power, to put it in the hands of the Overself.
9.13.2.252To become as a child, in Jesus' sense, means to become permeated with the happiness, with the joy, which a child's freedom from responsibilities and anxieties brings it. All problems being turned over to the higher power, the philosopher enjoys the same inner release.
9.13.2.253Listen While you are thinking about a problem and in search of an answer to it, you cannot get the intuition which is its true and final solution. But when you are no longer doing so, the answer appears. This happens with the genius during the interval between two thoughts but with the ordinary man during sleep.
9.13.2.258Listen If the technique of turning a problem or situation over to the higher power fails to yield favourable results, the fault lies in the person attempting to use it, not in the technique itself. If he is using it as an attempt to escape from coping with the problem or as a refusal to face up to the situation, and thus as an evasion of the lessons involved, it will be better for his own growth to meet with failure. And even among those who claim to have perceived the lessons, they may not have really done so but may have accepted only what suited their egos and rejected the rest. The full meaning of the experience must be taken deeply to heart and applied sincerely to living before the claim to have learned it can be substantiated.
9.13.2.263,Listen With the onset of crisis or stress, trouble or calamity, he turns his mind instantly toward the Higher Power. This can be done easily, effortlessly--but only after long self-training and much practice in thought control.
9.13.2.271Listen The need to make a rapid decision may create panic in an uncertain mind. Here again the best counsel is to go into the calm Silence, push aside the insistent thoughts of pressure, and wait in patience for mental quiet to manifest itself. Then only can intuitive guidance emerge.
9.13.2.279Listen If he feels clearly guided to a mission which seems impossible, he may safely leave to the Overself the means of carrying it out.
9.13.2.291Listen At the very moment that any problem produces thoughts of despondency, turn that problem over to the higher power again, and try to remain inwardly calm.
9.13.2.298Listen The ultimate value of all this activity in business, profession, politics, family, and so on is not in carrying them on successfully, but in using them to carry one’s own mind nearer to enlightenment.
9.13.2.317Listen With conditions in the business world fostering the ego's over-growth as they do, I have often advised young men of exceptional talent engaged in or entering this world to make money quickly with the special purpose of escaping from it. Then they can give adequate time to the study and meditation and retreat they need for their philosophic interests. Thus they use their business career as an expedient, not to satisfy ambition.
9.13.2.329Listen To live with men as one of them, yet not to live within their narrow limitations, is his duty and necessity.
9.13.2.339Listen Let us not betray the good that is in us by a cowardly submission to the bad that is in society.
9.13.2.341Listen Where he knows that other persons will not be sympathetic to these teachings, he will be prudent to remain silent about them. Where his friends know of his own interests and disparage them, he will be wise to avoid futile arguments.
9.13.2.358Listen The belief that a change of city or land may lead to a change of mental condition is not altogether without basis, even though we still take the ego and its thoughts with us wherever we go.
9.13.2.371Listen The indifference toward unalterable or the resignation to unavoidable suffering preached by so many prophets … is admittedly quite hard to accomplish. For it depends in part on a complete concentration upon that which suffering cannot touch—the hidden soul …
9.13.2.404,Listen The situation of the human being, neither animal nor angel but stretched out somewhere between both, is unique.
9.13.2.406Listen ... The man of today lives, moves, and has his being in his personal ego and will continue to do so until he has learned, grasped, thoroughly understood, and completely realized the truth of the illusiveness of the individual self…
9.13.2.410,Listen We must accept the higher fact that beneath the egoic differences there subsists the Overself's unity and it is our sacred duty to realize it inwardly while tolerating difference outwardly.
9.13.2.414Listen It is not necessary for the aspirant to seek frantically any new outward relationships to things or people; these should and will evolve naturally, so to speak, from his own growing spirituality. ”Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you.” By denying the ego and by frequent meditation all things are influenced for him in ways he cannot now realize. As he directs his mind and heart to the Overself, his character, his disposition, even the outer contacts and relationships will become attuned and re-adjusted.
9.13.2.415He will learn to measure the worth of another man or of an experience by the resulting hindrance to, or stimulation of, his own growth into a diviner consciousness.
9.13.2.417Listen Where a wrong is done us by someone generally we may be sure that the experience represents the expiation of a wrong which we have done to someone in a past incarnation. It is useless to cry out against the injustice of the injury when the cause lies deep within our own history. It is best to put aside the natural feeling of resentment and, understanding as well as we may what it is we are expiating, take its lessons to heart.
9.13.2.420Listen However virtuous our intentions, we not infrequently work harm to others. This shows that it is not enough to be good. Wisdom must direct our goodness, must bestow on us the capacity to foresee what is likely to ensue from our actions.
9.13.2.421Listen Every person who is important to him, every relationship that arouses emotion or thought is there for a meaning.
9.13.2.422Listen The more he behaves with kindly qualities towards others, the more will their behaviour towards him reflect back at least some of these qualities. The more he improves his own mental and moral conditions, the more will his human relations bring back some echo of this improvement.
9.13.2.427Listen We do not love our neighbour as ourself for the simple reason that we cannot. He loves himself quite enough anyway and does not need our addition. But, this said, we are ready to serve him amicably.
9.13.2.430Listen There is no reason to feel that love for a marriage partner is at variance with efforts toward self-evolvement. In its best sense, mutual love is an aid for both to progress and develop as individuals.
9.13.2.444Listen The necessity of achieving mental harmony and union of ideals in marriage counsels great caution in selecting one suited to be a life-companion. A wrong decision in this matter may be disastrous in every way, whereas a right one will be helpful in many ways.
9.13.2.446Listen The marriage which is either unsatisfactory to one of the partners or unhappy for both of them may always take a different turn if regarded from a different viewpoint--a higher one.
9.13.2.487Listen Marriage brings about an interfusion of destinies and auras which may have important consequences. If the partner is actively opposed to the ideals and ideas of the quest, the aspirant will find it much more difficult to follow its star, if not be indeed completely halted for a time.
9.13.2.493Listen The thing that really matters in the life of a nation is the quality of its leaders, the character of those who guide its destinies…
9.13.2.504,Listen It is not enough for parents to protect a child--they should also encourage and stimulate it to awaken spiritually.
9.13.2.607Listen ... How many have told me that during the few minutes of a short Glimpse they feel that more worthwhile knowledge came to them than they gained in all their years of formal education in school and college!
9.13.2.615,Listen No system of education can be a complete or an adequate one if it omits to teach young persons how to meditate. This is the one art which can assist them not only to develop self-control and to improve character but also to master all the other arts through mastery of concentration…
9.13.2.622,Listen What is the use of educating so many young people's heads when we leave their intuitive natures absolutely untouched, uncultivated, and unused?
9.13.2.639Listen We are not sufficiently informed about the meaning of life and not sufficiently concerned with the purpose of life. In our ignorance we deify the machine and destroy ourselves. In our indifference we lose all chance of gaining peace of mind.
9.13.2.644Listen Each of us has been endowed with intelligence, determination, and ability, so that we may use these in order to grow spiritually--and to learn how to properly care for ourselves and others.
9.13.2.648Listen The world will change, and change for the better, when we put our schools in order, when we educate our children less in geography and more in unselfishness, less in history and more in high character, less in a dozen other subjects and more in the art of right living.
9.13.2.654Listen
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