“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our inner most being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Joseph Campbell, The Power Of Myth, via Sunbeams (Page 82)
“‘Letting go’ is only possible for short periods. We need some discipline to bring us to ‘letting be.’ We must walk a spiritual path. Ego must wear itself out like an old shoe, journeying from suffering to liberation.”
Chögyam Trungpa, via Sunbeams (Page 82)
“The first step… shall be to lose the way.”
Galway Kinnell, via Sunbeams (Page 82)
“Invest in the ‘process’ rather than the product. Process living neutralizes the depleting and impoverishing effects of chronically living in anticipation. Even when impossible goals occasionally are reached, satisfactions derived from them are invariably disappointing unless the process has given ample satisfaction along the way.”
Theodore Rubin, via Sunbeams (Page 79)
“You may study with the highest teachers, but you will find no one but yourself teaching you. You may travel the world over, yet find nothing but yourself, reflected the world over. So if you now find yourself in a cell, take heart that out of all the teachers in the world, out of all the places in the world, you still have with you the only ingredient of your journey: yourself.”
Bo Lozoff, via Sunbeams (Page 79)
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
Henry Miller, via Sunbeams (Page 78)
“Remember: one lie does not cost you one truth but the truth.”
Friedrich Hebbel, via Sunbeams (Page 78)
“The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice, but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility. And if the sheer force of his own self-confidence communicates itself to other people and gives them the impression that he really is a saint, such a man can wreck a whole city or a religious order or even a nation. The world is covered with scars that have been left in its flesh by visionaries like these.”
Thomas Merton, via Sunbeams (Page 77)
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”
Harry S. Truman, via Sunbeams (Page 76)
“The truth is more important than the facts.”
Frank Lloyd Wright, via Sunbeams (Page 76)
“It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.”
Bernard de Fontenelle, via Sunbeams (Page 76)
“When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: ‘It is the trade entering his body.’ Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.”
Simone Weil, Waiting For God, via Sunbeams (Page 75)
“I do not like work—no man does—but I like what is in work: the chance to find yourself.”
Joseph Conrad, The Heart Of Darkness, via Sunbeams (Page 75)
“Millions of persons long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy afternoon.”
Susan Ertz, via Sunbeams (Page 75)
“History is merely a list of surprises… It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., via Sunbeams (Page 75)
“…we die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”
T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party, via Sunbeams (Page 74)
“As you think, you travel. As you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. You cannot escape the result of your thoughts; but you can endure and learn, accept and be glad. You will realize the vision of your heart, not the idle wish. You will gravitate toward that which you secretly most love. Into your hands will be placed the exact result of your thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your vision—your ideal.”
Unknown, via Sunbeams (Page 74)
“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. That is what makes a marriage last—more than passion or even sex.”
Simone Signoret, via Sunbeams (Page 73)
“To marry a woman with any success a man must have a total experience of her, he must come to see her and accept her in time as well as in space. Besides coming to love what she is now, he must also come to realize and love equally the baby and the child she once was, and the middle-aged woman and the old crone she will eventually become.”
James Keyes, Only Two Can Play This Game, via Sunbeams (Page 73)
“If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.”
Anton Chekhov, via Sunbeams (Page 73)