Renunciation

In enjoyment there is fear of disease; in social position, the fear of falling off; in wealth, the fear of (hostile) kings; in honour, the fear of humiliation; in power, the fear of foe men; in beauty, the fear of old age; in scriptural erudition, the fear of opponents; in virtue, the fear of traducers; in body, the fear of death. All the things of this world pertaining to human beings are attended with fear; renunciation alone stands for fearlessness. - Vairagya Sakatam of Bhartrihari

Renunciation is not only for the monks and nuns. Whoever is seeking liberation or enlightenment needs renunciation of the senses. The meaning of renouncing the world is that we have less craving for and grasping at sense objects. Renouncing sensory pleasure doesn’t mean throwing nice things away. Even if you do, it doesn’t mean you have renounced them. Renunciation is a totally inner experience.

Food For Thought

There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that I have complete control. - Leo Buscaglia

We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion. - Max De Pree

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live. - Aristotle

Drink Driving

              A Highway Patrolman waited outside a popular bar, hoping for a bust. At closing time everyone came out and he spotted his potential quarry. The man was so obviously inebriated that he could barely walk. He stumbled around the parking lot for a few minutes, looking for his car. 

              After trying his keys on five other cars, he finally found his own vehicle. He sat in the car a good ten minutes, as the other patrons left. He turned his lights on, then off, wipers on, then off. He started to pull forward into the grass, then stopped. 

              Finally, when he was the last car, he pulled out onto the road and started to drive away. 

              The patrolman, waiting for this, turned on his lights and pulled the man over. He administered the breathalyser test, and to his great surprise, the man blew a zero. There was no alcohol in his breath at all.

              The patrolman was dumbfounded. “This equipment must be broken?” He exclaimed. 

              “I doubt it,” said the man. “Tonight I am the designated decoy!”

Life

Isn’t it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it? - Richard Dawkins

Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had? - Henry James 

The giving up of personality traits, well-established patterns of behaviour, ideologies, and even whole life styles... these are major forms of giving up that are required if one is to travel very far on the journey of life. - M. Scott Peck 

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from. - Dr. Elizabeth Kebler-Ross 

Each man has to seek out his own special aptitude for a higher life in the midst of the humble and inevitable reality of daily existence. Than this, there can be no nobler aim in life. - Count Maurice Maeterlinck

I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom. - Les Brown

I think a good life is a ratio of one good moment against a thousand boring ones, one good picture out of a roll of film, one good friend against a dozen let-downs. - Ravi Veloo

Common Sense - Quotes

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it – unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. - Unknown

Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it; it will counsel you best. - Philip Dormer Stanhope

Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense dancing. - William James

Common Sense and Education: The more you think you have of one, the less you think you need of the other. - Tom Heehler

Common sense and good nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult. - William Somerset Maugham

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Common sense is a flower that doesn’t grow in everyone’s garden. - Unknown

Common sense is a phrase employed to denote that degree of intelligence, sagacity, and prudence which is common to all men. - William Fleming 

Common sense is as rare as genius. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Common sense is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life. - Henri Frederic Amiel

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education. - Victor Hugo

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius. - Josh Billings

Common sense is not so common. - Voltaire

Common sense is not something rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself, enriching itself with scientific ideas and with philosophical opinions which have entered ordinary life. - Antonio Gramsci

Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature. - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be. - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Common sense is so just an understanding that it rises almost to a virtue; in truth, it involves virtues and their participation in judgment. For sound sense implies all powers uniting; none too prominent, so as to tyrannize; none too small, so as to be overborne. - James Vila Blake

Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for everyone thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. - René Descartes

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done. - Josh Billings

Common sense is, of all kinds, the most uncommon. It implies good judgment, sound discretion, and true and practical wisdom applied to common life. - Tryon Edwards

Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they would not know what to believe without their common sense. - Unknown

Common sense may be compared to a young plant: it needs careful training and perpetual airing, to keep it in good health and cause it to blossom and bear fruit. - Mrs. S. Wesley

Common sense will nearly always stand you in better stead than a slavish adherence to the conventions. - M. M. Kaye

Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education. - Victor Hugo

Common Sense – that genius of mankind, which, when properly directed is the one attribute that will carry man and his kind successfully through the perplexities of life. - Yoritomo Tashi

Common-sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Emotion makes the world go round, but common sense keeps it from going too fast. - Unknown

Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of readier change. - Alexander Pope

If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense, too, he is not far from genius. - Henry ward Beecher 

If a man has common sense, he has all the sense there is. - Sam Rayburn

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. - Robert Ingersoll

It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense. - E. A. Bucchianeri

Knowledge counts but common sense matters. - Louanne Johnson

 

Just because something is common sense doesn't mean it's common practice. - Unknown

Not all of us have to possess earthshaking talent. Just common sense and love will do. - Myrtle Auvil

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has. - Rene Descartes

One pound of learning requires ten pounds of common sense to apply it. - Persian Proverb

Remember. Just because you went to college doesn’t make you smarter than anyone else. Common sense doesn’t come with a degree. - Unknown

The essence of common sense is to stay in close contact with life as it is lived. - Scott P. Segrest

The free-thinking of one age is the common sense of the next. - Matthew Arnold

The mind is very persuasive and it helps us make the best and worst decisions based on individual circumstances. Common sense is the counter-balance. - Keith Ambersley

The mind of man has no defence to equal plain, old common sense. This homely virtue don't despise, if you would be happy as well as wise. - Unknown

The most uncommon form of intelligence is common sense. - Evan Esar

The one thing you cannot teach a person is common sense. - Unknown

The only thing a person can never have too much of is common sense. - Kathryn Smith

There's only one kind of common sense but a thousand varieties of stupidity. - Evan Esar

To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything. - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense. - Roland Barthes

We live in a world changing so rapidly that what we mean frequently by common sense is doing the thing that would have been right last year. - Edwin H. Land

When you stop to think about it, common sense is really special – not common. - Unknown

Whenever a man boasts much about (his common sense), you may be pretty sure that he has very little sense, either common or uncommon. - Henry Thomas Buckle

Quote Worthy

Make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes. - Sara Teasdale

To gain what is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else. - Bernadette Devlin

The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement. - Edgar Watson Howe

If you don’t know where you are going, you can never get lost. - Herb Cohen

The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion. - Stanley Baldwin

What is reasonable is true and what is true is reasonable. - Georg Wilhelm Hegel

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. - Albert Camus

The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway. - Henry Boye

Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention. -Sharon Salzberg

You can't lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself. - Gene Mauch

Lesson From The Porcupines

              It was the coldest winter ever. Many animals died because of the cold. The porcupines, realizing the situation, decided to group together to keep warm. This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions. After awhile, they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen. 

              So, they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth. Wisely, they decided to go back to being together. They learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companions in order to receive the heat that came from the others. This way they were able to survive. 

              The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but when each individual learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person's good qualities.

              The moral of the story is … Just learn to live with the pricks in your life.

Food For Thought

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it. - Walter Bagehot 

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Jokes

              There was an Indian, a caveman, and a cowboy. One day they ran out of food and decided to go hunting. The Indian went out and got a bear. The caveman and the cowboy asked, “How did you get that?” 

              The Indian said, “Me find tracks, me follow tracks, me get bear.”

              The next day, the cowboy went out and he got a deer. The caveman asked, “How did you get that?” 

              The cowboy said, “Me find tracks, me follow tracks, me get deer.” 

              So, the next day, when the caveman got back from his hunt all bloody, and disfigured, the Indian and cowboy asked, “How did that happen?”

              The caveman replied, "Me find tracks, me follow tracks, me get hit by train!”

Life

When on life's journey it becomes our lot to travel with criticism of skeptics, the hate of some, the rejection of others, the impatience of many, or a friend's betrayal. - Angel Abrea

Do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. - Robert Louis Stevenson

We choose how we shall live. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed. - Joseph Epstein

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. - Confucius

Life is about trusting our feelings and taking chances, losing and finding happiness, appreciating the memories and learning from the past. - Unknown

Existing in life is just the reverse of living. Existing means you are doing things just enough to be alive. Living is to explore talents or choices that contribute to greater happiness. - Unknown

We cannot escape changes and losses in this world, but we can adjust ourselves to them. Freedom and happiness are discovered in the flexibility with which we move through life. - Unknown

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that’s why you must sing, and dance and suffer and understand, for all that is life. - Unknown

On Friendship

Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition. In the moment of friendship, two souls suddenly recognize each other. It could be a meeting on the street, or at a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is the flash of recognition and the embers of kinship grow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing. - John O'Donohue

The real test of friendship is: Can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy together those moments of life that are utterly simple? They are the moments people look back on at the end of life and number as their most sacred experiences. - Eugene Kennedy

Among the privileges of friendship is the opportunity to share some of the deeper feelings of human life – the joys and sorrows. Whatever happens to us a friend must know. We do not trust ourselves to read an event correctly unless his eyes read and interpret with us. Pain is lessened when shared with a friend who cushions the blow. Joys are double when shared with a friend. Then two hearts are happy. Two people laugh and sing. - Unknown

Do not mistake friendship for a license to tell the truth. More pain has been inflicted by indiscriminate truth telling than by lies. Honesty too often means being hurtful and wounding someone. As long as you keep true counsel with yourself, it does not hurt if you dissemble with a friend. - Unknown

Communication - Quotes

Communicate. Even when it’s uncomfortable or uneasy. One of the best ways to heal is simply getting everything out. - Unknown

Communication sometimes is not what you first hear, listen not just to the words, but listen for the reason. - Catherine Pulsifer

Don’t make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. - Don Miguel Ruiz

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true. - Charles Dickens

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement. - Aldous Huxley

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

If you just communicate, you can get by. But if you skilfully communicate, you can work miracles. - John Rohn

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. - Stephen R. Covey

Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. - Hermann Hesse

Leaders who make it a practice to draw out the thoughts and ideas of their subordinates and who are receptive even to bad news will be properly informed. Communicate downward to subordinates with at least the same care and attention as you communicate upward to superiors. - L. B. Belker

Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much. - Robert Greenleaf

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language. - Walt Disney

People don't get along because they fear each other. People fear each other because they don't know each other. They don't know each other because they have not properly communicated with each other. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act. - James Thurber

Regardless of the changes in technology, the market for well-crafted messages will always have an audience. - Steve Burnett

Take full responsibility for success in the communication process. As a listener, take full responsibility for hearing what the others are trying to say. As a talker, take full responsibility for being certain they understand what you are saying. - Denis Waitley

The best way to communicate may be just to sit without saying anything.  - Unknown

The issue of whether we are communicating does not arise at all. We are communicating all the time – verbally and non-verbally. The only question is if it is good or bad communication. - Unknown

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. - Stephen King

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said. - Peter Drucker

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversations is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than about what others are saying, and we never listen when we are eager to speak. - Francois La Rochefoucauld

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. - George Bernard Shaw

The vacuum created by a failure to communicate will quickly be filled with rumour, misrepresentation, drivel, and poison. - Unknown

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. - William Butler Yeats

To communicate, put your thoughts in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. - William Saffire

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. - Tony Robbins

True communications depends upon our being straightforward with one another. - Unknown

We all benefit from honest communication, but especially when it is mixed with a little tact. - Leo Buscaglia

We take communication for granted because we do it so frequently, but it’s actually a complex process. - Joseph Sommerville

When you are always trying for a topper, you are killing conversation. You are not really listening. It ruins communication. - Unknown

You can talk with someone for years, every day, and still, it won’t mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever… connections are made with the heart, not the tongue. - C. JoyBell C.

You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life. - Zig Ziglar

Your ability to communicate is an important tool in your pursuit of your goals, whether it is with your family, your co-workers or your clients and customers. - Les Brown

Quote Worthy

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. - John Kenneth Galbraith

The fishermen know the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore. - Vincent van Gogh 

That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not. - James K. Feibleman

Unless each day can be looked back upon by an individual as one in which he has had some fun, some joy, some real satisfaction, that day is a loss. - Dwight Eisenhower

If you want to know how rich you really are, find out what would be left of you tomorrow if you should lose every dollar you own tonight? - William J. H. Boetcker

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for. - Epicurus

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never hold anyone by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue. - Lord Chesterfield

Mystical Life

I am in the process of transferring this 'Label' to my other blog - 'Spiritual, not Religious'.

https://netizenv.blogspot.sg/

Mysticism . . .is a path of incarnation, not of escape. - Unknown

        This is the mystical life; the living of a practical and useful life in the world, ever seeking greater knowledge and understanding; helping others when the need arises, with a mind and heart uplifted and illuminated by the light of the Divine Consciousness within us.

          &nbsp As you attuned yourself with the Inner self, you will receive inspiration and enlightenment on how you may best utilize your abilities for the good of others. - Anon 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

          We can never know how greatly an individual may have changed the course of his life. We cannot know the extent of his suffering, struggling, and battling against odds that we might consider insurmountable. We can never know what he may be sacrificing. We cannot know what the Cosmic is directing him to do. 

              Let each of us make sure that he is doing what the Master Within has pointed out for him to do. Let each live according to his own Light, doing what he feels the divine urge to do even thought it be menial or casual work, seemingly unimportant and unrelated. There will be no time to note whether others are living the life as we think they should. - Anon

Food For Thought

When we fail to be kind to all man, we destroy our own peace of mind. The jewelled pivot on which our lives must turn is the realization that every person we meet throughout the day is a dignified essential personality of the human family. - K. Sri Dhammananda 

A branch that grows crooked, or that is crooked from the beginning, will never straighten out. If you don’t learn right from wrong early on, or if you don’t learn manners when you are young, you will never learn them later. - Bethania Maria

We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it. - John Newton

Artists At Work

Brilliant and talented artists.

Click on the link to watch the videos.

http://www.wimp.com/seenartist/

http://www.wimp.com/paintingwater/

Community - Quotes

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. - Henrik Ibsen

A community is only a theory existing in the minds of men; it is not a fact, as some would have us believe, for such things as common rights and common privileges do not exist. - G. J. Holyoake

Community [is] a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to "rejoice together, mourn together," and to "delight in each other, make others' conditions our own." - M. Scott Peck

Community is a word that alters in different contexts in an almost chameleon-like fashion. - Sharon MacDonald

Community is an expression of fragmentation of society and is forever in tension with it but at the same time cannot exist without it. - Gerard Delanty

Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we want them to be. - Jean Vanier

One of the marvellous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing. - Jean Vanier

The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place. - Dee Hock

To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination. - Bell Hooks

We are not our brother's keeper we are our brother and we are our sister. We must look past complexion and see community. - Maya Angelou

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community. - Dorothy Day

We live in a community of people not so that we can suppress and dominate each other or make each other miserable but so that we can better and more reliably satisfy all life's healthy needs. - Wilhelm Reich

Friends

Crossing the uplands of time, Skirting the borders of night, Scaling the face of the peak of dreams, We enter the region of light, And hastening on with eager intent, Arrive at the rainbow's end, And here uncover the pot of gold Buried deep in the heart of a friend. - Grace Goodhue Coolidge

A poor man may be said to be rich in the midst of his poverty, so long as he enjoys the interior sunshine of a devoted friend. The wealthiest of men, on the contrary, is poor and miserable, if he has no friend to whom he can disclose the secrets of his heart. - James Gibbons

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain? - Kahlil Gibran

A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities. - William Arthur Ward

Companions - Quotes

A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn. - William Hazlitt

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. - Henry David Thoreau

It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions in misery. - Publilius Syrus

Let honesty and industry be thy constant companions, and spend one penny less than thy clear gains; then shall thy pocket begin to thrive; creditors will not insult, nor want oppress, nor hungerness bite, nor nakedness freeze thee. - Benjamin Franklin

Never have a companion that casts you in the shade. - Baltasar Gracian

When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death – ourselves. - Eda LeShan

Quote Worthy

An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats. - George Orwell

Unless you are prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is valuable to you in proportion as you have educated yourself to make use of it. - Orison Swett Marden

It is trial that proves one thing weak and another strong. A house built on the sand is in fair weather just as good as if built on a rock. A cobweb is as good as the mightiest cable when there is no strain upon it. - Henry Ward Beecher

Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm. - Charles Colton 

We are prone to magnify weaknesses and to imagine vices in others that do not exist. We chew the cud of slander with satisfaction. Talk about battles yet to be fought! Backbiting and evil speaking head the list! - David McKay

Mystical Attainment

Mystical attainment is an individual accomplishment. Others influence our way of approaching life, but the development of the inner self must be undertaken in solitude. It is by retreating within, facing the real self, and relying on his own resources that the way to mastery of life is achieved. - Unknown

The task, and joy, of a mystic is to listen for the stirrings of the sacred in the world and the presence of soul. What the mystic seeks to hear is not a message or even a sound. It is something more subtle and less glamorous. The hearing of a mystic is not really auditory at all but more a deeply focused yet widely extended attentiveness. - Anon

The divine light residing in each of us awaits recognition and use. Its light will illuminate our mystical endeavours and trigger deeper insights into our daily affairs. - Anon

Once we have seriously embarked upon the mystical path, we begin to look upon the conditions in the world from the higher point of view. - Anon

Reaching the zenith of one mystic mountain of attainment, we find the base of another still nobler and higher to climb. - Anon

The teacher, however great, can never give his knowledge to the pupils …although …he can kindle the light if the oil is in the lamp. - Hazrat Inayat Khan

Food For Thought

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it. - Pablo Casals

I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance’s within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. - Joseph Campbell 

To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind – this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for. - Henry Van Dyke

The Brewery Presidents

              After the Great Britain Beer Festival, in London, all the brewery presidents decided to go out for a beer. The guy from Corona sits down and says, “Hey Senor, I would like the world’s best beer, a Corona.” 

              The bartender dusts off a bottle from the shelf and gives it to him. 

              The guy from Budweiser says, “I’d like the best beer in the world, give me ‘The King Of Beers’, a Budweiser.” 

              The bartender gives him one. 

              The guy from Coors says, “I’d like the only beer made with Rocky Mountain spring water, give me a Coors.” 

              He gets it. 

              The guy from Guinness sits down and says, “Give me a Coke.” 

              The bartender is a little taken aback, but gives him what he ordered. The other brewery presidents look over at him and ask, “Why aren’t you drinking a Guinness?” 

              The Guinness president replies, “Well, I figured if you guys aren’t drinking beer, neither would I.”

Life

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long. - Seneca

Generally most people dislike to see the true facts of life. They like to lull themselves into security by sweet dreaming, imagination and taking the shadow for the substance. - K. Sri Dhammananda

In life, the first thing you must do is decide what you really want. Weigh the costs and the results. Are the results worthy of the costs? Then make up your mind completely and go after your goal with all your might. - Alfred Montapert

The whole of life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed the greatest tragedy in life was the fact that most human beings died before they were fully born. - Erich Fromm

Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience. - Eddie Rickenbacker

Keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men and things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles. - Henry Drummond

Friends

Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them and while their hearts can be thrilled by them. - Henry Ward Beecher

The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity. - Ulysses S. Grant

If you have but a solitary friend who is tried and true, you are among the rich in mind and heart. You have an investment that never loses. You will grow richer each day of your life. Once you have that kind of friendship, give to it all the loyalty that is yours, and what a possession you will then have.- Unknown

Celebrate with your friends when they are excited about something. But do not be there just for the good times. When your friend is upset about something, give them your full attention. Most of the time, what friends really need is a sympathetic ear, someone who understands their feelings. - Unknown