You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has, you’ve got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting. Your problem is you’re afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You’re too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You’d rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and I look and I see your beauty, even if you don’t.
Saintliness is not dumbness. Divine perceptions are not incapacitating. The active expression of virtue gives rise to the keenest intelligence.
In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.
. . . as long as Christ knew I wasn’t a sissy, I had nothing to fear.
A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people’s; but he meets his accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear and the like cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existence. If such security is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from God?
Love is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love.
The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seed into God.
It is within my power either to serve God, or not to serve Him. Serving Him I add to my own good and the good of the whole world. Not serving Him, I forfeit my own good and deprive the world of that good, which was in my power to create.
The mind wanders. A million Summers, night air still and the rocks Warm. Sky over endless mountains. All the junk that goes with being human Drops away, hard rock wavers Even the heavy present seems to fail This bubble of a heart. Words and books Like a small creek off a high ledge Gone in the dry air.
“Lightly, my darling, lightly. Even when it comes to dying. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self-conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Goethe or Little Nell. And, of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the Clear Light. So throw away all your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly . . .”
“The Light,” came the hoarse whisper, “the Clear Light. It’s here — along with the pain, in spite of the pain.”
“Where are you?”
“Over there, in the corner. I can see myself there. And she can see my body on the bed.”
“Brighter,” came the barely audible whisper, “brighter.” And a smile of happiness intense almost to the point of elation transfigured her face.
Through his tears Dr. Robert smiled back at her. “So now you can let go, my darling.” He stroked her gray hair. “Now you can let go. Let go,” he insisted. “Let go of this poor old body. You don’t need it anymore. Let it fall away from you. Leave it lying there like a pile of worn-out clothes . . . Go on, go on into the Light, into the peace, into the living peace of the Clear Light.”
I thought a lot about dying But I said Fuck it.
Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass; give me plain glass.
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone.
Don’t goof off.
To feel life is meaningless unless “I” can be permanent, is like having desperately having fallen in love with an inch.
Love is all fire; and so heaven and hell are the same place.
What came to me vaguely is now clear, As if released by a spirit, Or agency outside me. Unprayed-for, And final.
