Day by day
I wish no organized institution to be founded upon my name and writing. It is not the logical outcome of all my work.
8.12.4.97Listen 1 Aug 2019The Long Path gives many benefits and bestows many virtues but it does not give the vision of truth, the realization of the Overself, nor does it bestow Grace. For these things we must turn to the Short Path.
15.23.2.156Listen 2 Aug 2019He touches the Permanent, feels that his true self is part of eternity and this other self is a foolish thing he is glad to be rid of.
14.22.6.171Listen 3 Aug 2019It may be easy to get the worldly, the practical message of particular experiences, but it is not so easy to get the higher, the spiritual message they contain. This is because we habitually look at them from the ego's standpoint, especially when personal feelings are strongly involved…
4.4.4.131, ExcerptListen 4 Aug 2019In the mind's stillness it is possible to find either nothing at all or clear understanding. It depends on the man's preparation for it, on his knowledge, character, and experience.
15.23.7.289Listen 5 Aug 2019Karma does not wholly cancel freedom but limits it. If the present results of old causes set walls around him, through a better character and an improved intelligence new causes may be initiated and other results be attained.
6.9.3.531Listen 6 Aug 2019Had his choice between roads been made differently, his life would certainly have been very different, too. But was his power of choice really as free as it seemed to be?
7.9.3.541Listen 7 Aug 2019The first value of prayer is that it is a confession of personal inadequacy and, by consequence, an aspiration to personal upliftment. It is a self-humbling of the ego and the beginning of a detachment from it. It is a first step in obedience to Jesus' paradoxical proclamation, ”He that loseth his life shall find it.”
12.18.2.20Listen 8 Aug 2019It is ”the sacred spirit dwelling within us, observer and guardian of all our evil and our good” of Seneca.
14.22.3.287Listen 9 Aug 2019Before we can cultivate the best in us, we must crucify the worst in us. The ego must be hung and nailed by degrees if the Overself is to be resurrected in our consciousness. This is why it is so important to cleanse our emotions and correct our thoughts. The desires and the negatives must be overcome to make a way for the truth, the beauty, and goodness.
6.8.4.220Listen 10 Aug 2019Merely to enjoy such a glimpse is not enough. It must be turned to use, made into a standard for thought and living, applied to every situation in which he finds himself. He must let its beneficent memory shed peace, goodwill, and kindliness on all around.
14.22.7.216Listen 11 Aug 2019Wang Yang-ming: ”Our original nature is purely good. It is not possible to add anything to this original state. The knowledge of the superior man merely serves to clear away the obscuration, and thus to show forth the shining virtue.” And again, ”The mind of man is heaven but because of the obscurations caused by selfishness, that state is not manifested. When all of them are cleared away, the original nature is restored.”
15.23.1.18Listen 12 Aug 2019… Life is a struggle for all; only the wise struggle ego-lessly, but they struggle all the same. They have to because the adverse element in Nature is forever at war, tearing down where they build, stimulating strife where they give peace, and enslaving minds where they lead to freedom.
12.18.4.34, ExcerptListen 13 Aug 2019It is when a man breaks down and finally admits that he cannot go on, that both he and his life must change--it is at such a moment that he is close to the guidance and help of the Overself, if only he can recognize them and is willing to accept them.
12.18.4.7Listen 14 Aug 2019Saint Paul on vegetarianism: ”I will eat no flesh for evermore, that I make not my brother to stumble.” (1 Cor. 8:13)
4.5.3.123Listen 15 Aug 2019In spite of itself the ego is drawn more and more to the spiritual grandeur revealed by these glimpses. Its ties to selfishness, animality, and materiality are loosened. Finally it comes to see that it is standing in its own way and light and then lets itself be effaced.
14.22.8.55Listen 16 Aug 2019If he can transcend himself, can rise to independence from the ego's attachments and desires and emotions, utter peace awaits him.
15.24.3.104Listen 17 Aug 2019Since it is not from the animal but from the human state that the Essence of Being can be realized (because the animal does not possess the necessary faculties), the processes of rebirth must fill the gap between lowest animal to highest human.
6.9.2.136Listen 18 Aug 2019Job carried the answer to his own question, ”Oh that I knew where I might find Him,” within himself all the time, but he did not know it.
15.23.1.29Listen 19 Aug 2019Through humiliation and despair, failure and mistakes, the ego may be crushed to the ground. But the aftermath of this apparently hopeless situation may be the end of the Long Path, with the subsequent transfer to the Short Path, with its new hope, pardon, and peace.
15.23.4.130Listen 20 Aug 2019We travel from one body to another, with suitable and necessary rest-periods in between them…
1.9.0.26, ExcerptListen 21 Aug 2019He should develop the sense of self-criticism to a high and even painful degree. He cannot any longer afford to protect his ego, as he did in the past, or to seek excuses for its sorry frailties and foolishnesses.
4.4.4.121Listen 22 Aug 2019Would you have your friend live a better life? Picture only that better life in your thoughts of him.
15.23.6.63Listen 23 Aug 2019… The novice's statement that he commits his life into God's hands is not enough, for obviously if he continues to repeat the same foolish judgements and the same guilty conduct as before this commitment, his life still remains in the personal ego's hands. If his commitment is to be effective, it must be accompanied by the duty of self-improvement. Surrender to a higher power does not relieve him of this duty; on the contrary, it compels him more than ever before to its carrying out…
12.18.4.39, ExcerptListen 24 Aug 2019In the earlier history of Christianity, the place given to meditation was quite important and prominent.
4.4.1.99Listen 25 Aug 2019The Overself is present with man, and life is nothing more, in the end, than a searching for this presence. He engages in this activity quite unconsciously in the belief that he is looking for happiness.
15.24.1.99Listen 26 Aug 2019It is a fundamental lesson of my world-wide observation that Heraclitus was completely right when he wrote: ”Man's character is his fate.”
6.9.3.407Listen 27 Aug 2019Time continues itself, and the time-bound consciousness with it. The Long Path does not liberate a man from it but only improves him, at the best, prepares him. For what? For the Short Path, which alone offers freedom.
15.23.2.141Listen 28 Aug 2019He will then see that the ego is not his true self, that the evil and error which it spawns are the avoidable causes of avoidable distresses.
6.9.3.159Listen 29 Aug 2019There comes a time when out of the silence within himself there comes the spiritual guidance which he needs for his further course. It comes sometimes as a delicate feeling, sometimes as a strong one, sometimes in a clear formulated message, and sometimes out of the circumstances and happenings themselves…
15.24.4.146, ExcerptListen 30 Aug 2019The wheel of life does not stop for long--soon it will turn again and pass from the point of death to the point of life.
6.9.2.1Listen 31 Aug 2019
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