Day by day
The central message of philosophy to the modern era is that man is not isolated but supported by a friendly power, not left in the dark but surrounded by helping hands.
9.13.1.33Listen 1 Nov 2011He who attains even a little power to help others cannot measure where that help will stop. If it gives a lift to one man whom he knows, that man may in his turn give a lift to another person, and so on indefinitely in ever-widening ripples.
3.2.8.154Listen 2 Nov 2011... On the long path you must deal with the urges of interference arising from the lower self and the negativity which enters from the surrounding environment. But the efforts on the long path will at last invoke the grace, which opens the perspective of the short path…
15.23.5.2, ExcerptListen 3 Nov 2011The Intermediate Path is a transition from the Long to the Short one. It consists in identifying oneself mentally with the higher self. This is immeasurably farther than identification with the ego but it is still tainted with a kind of self-centeredness. That is revealed when the pilgrim travels to the Short Path, where he seeks no identification of any sort whatsoever, bestows no more attention upon the ”I,” but thinks only of the higher self as it is in itself and not about its relationship with him.
15.23.4.96Listen 4 Nov 2011It is needful to bring oneself to abstain from all actions for a short time daily, and to let thinking and feeling slip little by little into complete repose. As the movements of the body are suspended and the workings of the mind are reduced, the rest afforded both of them opens a way for the presence of intuition to be detected, recognized, and connected with. The ego begins to get out of the way, giving what is behind it a chance to reveal itself and be heard.
3.3.3.39Listen 5 Nov 2011Now an extraordinary and helpful fact is that by making Mind the object of our attention, not only does the serenity which is its nature begin to well up of its own accord but its steady unchanging character itself helps spontaneously to repel all disturbing thoughts.
15.23.7.10Listen 6 Nov 2011... Stick to this quest with the iron determination not to stop until you have realized the truth. Don't worry about the remoteness of the goal; leave all the results to fate and do the best you can. With proper guidance, the goal can be brought infinitely nearer than it seems…
8.12.2.63, ExcerptListen 7 Nov 2011What is the reality behind all our experiences? Since they are thoughts, and since thoughts are made possible by Consciousness, it must be the Consciousness. This remains true even when the ”I” is unaware and unconscious, because limited and little, being only a thought itself, an object known like other objects; the Real is still there but hidden.
13.21.5.175Listen 8 Nov 2011... Thus the very search upon which he has embarked, the studies he is making, and the meditations he is practising are all inspired by the Overself from the beginning and sustained by it to the end. The Overself is already at work even before he begins to seek it. Indeed he has taken to the quest in unconscious obedience to the divine prompting. And that prompting is the first movement of Grace. Even when he believes that he is doing these things for himself, it is really Grace that is opening the heart and enlightening the mind from behind the scenes…
3.2.9.67, ExcerptListen 9 Nov 2011There is great profit in the coinage of spiritual self-growth waiting to be picked up at every turn. The method is a simple one. Consider every person who makes an impact on your life as a messenger from the Overself, every happening which leaves its mark as a divinely-sent teacher.
3.2.5.97Listen 10 Nov 2011The mental images which make up the universe of our experience repeat themselves innumerable times in a single minute. They give an impression of continuity and permanency and stability only because of this, in the same way that a cinema picture does. If we could efface them and yet keep our consciousness undiminished, we would know for the first time their source, the reality behind their appearances…
13.21.5.206, ExcerptListen 11 Nov 2011His earthly business will not suffer in the end but he himself will gain much profit if he detaches himself from it once or twice a day to turn his attention toward celestial business for which he was really put on earth.
3.3.1.126Listen 12 Nov 2011The ego, the personal limited self, cannot lift itself into the Higher Self, and if the student at times has felt dismally powerless to make progress by self-effort, he will have learned the priceless lesson of the need of Grace.
12.18.5.118Listen 13 Nov 2011... When the personal mind is stripped of its memories and anticipations, when all sense-impressions and thoughts entirely drop away from it, then it enters the realm of empty unnameable Nothingness. It is really a kind of self-contemplation. But this self is not finite and individual, it is cosmic and infinite.
15.23.8.8, ExcerptListen 14 Nov 2011When Prospero says, in Shakespeare's play, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” he implies the existence of some greater Mind in which we are the dreams.
16.27.3.9Listen 15 Nov 2011In the moment that there dawns on his understanding the fact of Mind's beginninglessness and deathlessness, he gains the second illumination, the first being that of the ego's illusoriness and transiency.
16.28.2.106Listen 16 Nov 2011Consciousness, with all its wonderful attributes and capacities, is a faculty shared with the World-Mind, however shrunken it may be in man.
13.21.3.78Listen 17 Nov 2011... The aspirant who is really earnest about the quest should develop the attitude that his personal misfortunes, troubles, and disappointments must be traced back to his own weaknesses, defects, faults, deficiencies, and indisciplines. Let him not blame them on other persons or on fate. In this way he will make the quickest progress whereas by self-defending or self-justifying or self-pitying apportionment of blame to causes outside himself, he will delay or prevent it. For the one means clinging to the ego, the other means giving it up…
7.11.2.19, ExcerptListen 18 Nov 2011Just as a man who has escaped from the inside of a burning house and finds himself in the cool outdoors understands that he has attained safety, so the man who has escaped from greed, lust, anger, illusion, selfishness, and ignorance into exalted peace and immediate insight, understands that he has attained heaven.
15.24.4.150Listen 19 Nov 2011We may deplore our foolish behaviour in life, our stupid errors or our fleshly weaknesses, but in those moments of dying we have the chance to die in wisdom and in peace. Yes, it is a chance given to us, but we have to take it by keeping our sight fixed on the highest that we know.
6.9.1.120Listen 20 Nov 2011... If humanity is to travel upward and fulfil its higher destiny, it can do so only by enlarging its area of interest and extending its field of consciousness. It must, in short, seek to realize the Overself on the one hand, to feel its oneness on the other…
12.17.7.3, ExcerptListen 21 Nov 2011Only at a well-advanced stage does the disciple begin to comprehend that his true work is not to develop qualities or achieve tasks, to evolve character or attain goals but to get rid of hindrances and pull aside veils. He has to desert the false self and uncover the true self.
3.2.9.6Listen 22 Nov 2011The right creative use of faith and will, exercise and effort can work wonders in leading us out of the enslavement, the blindness, and the ignorance of the lower nature back to the enlightenment, the freedom, and the wisdom of the higher self.
3.2.6.31Listen 23 Nov 2011So long as a man identifies himself with the physical body, so long will he perforce have to identify himself with its desires and passions. Only when he transfers this self-identification to the infinite mental being can he completely detach himself from them.
5.6.4.49Listen 24 Nov 2011We have not come from oblivion. All our past is present in our characters, capacities, and tendencies; therefore we shall not go into oblivion. There is no death--only a change of state.
16.26.4.247Listen 25 Nov 2011”Be still and know that I am God” is the key to the enigma of truth, for it sums up the whole of the Short Path. Paradox is the final revelation. For this is “non-doing.” Rather is it a “letting-be,” a non-interference by your egoistic will, a silencing of all the mental agitation and effort.
15.23.5.202Listen 26 Nov 2011... Whatever is called for to bring on enlightenment exists within himself already, but it is latent and undeveloped. By study, exercise, and practice the aspirant can be his own teacher. Sooner or later he will have to take this work into his own hands. The notion that someone else can or will do it all for him is delusory…
2.1.6.722, ExcerptListen 27 Nov 2011Amid all the perplexities and oscillations of life, the witnessing and understanding Overself waits with infinite patience. No one is ever left out. This is the only God we can hope to know, the true Teacher for all. Those who yearn to unite with it should plead persistently for its Grace.
14.22.3.60Listen 28 Nov 2011The Overself is drawing him ever inward to Itself, but the ego's earthly nature is drawing him back to all those things or activities which keep him outwardly busy. On the issue of this tension depends the result of his meditation. If he can bring such devotion to the Overself that out of it he can find enough strength to put aside everything else that he may be doing or thinking and give himself up for a while to dwelling solely in it, this is the same as denying himself and his activities. Once his little self gets out of the way, success in reaching the Overself is near.
4.4.2.277Listen 29 Nov 2011Once you have caught this inner note in your experience of your own self-existence, try to adhere firmly to the listening attitude which catches it.
15.23.6.228Listen 30 Nov 2011
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