Quote of the Week 395 - The Experience of God

Quote of the Week 395 - The Experience of God

This experience of God is the experience of my profound Self, the paradoxical experience that we are most intimately our own and at the same time superior to ourselves. The necessary condition is to have a pure heart.

The experience of God thus consists in touching the totality of Being with the totality of our own being; to feel in our body, our intellect and our spirit the whole of reality both within us and outside us. And paradoxically, it is the experience of contingency: we merely touch the infinite at a point.

The experience of God is the experience of the Mystery that governs our lives from both within and without.

--Raimon Panikkar, The Experience of God; Icons of the Mystery

Quote of the Week 394 - The Battle

Quote of the Week 394 - The Battle

Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

--Anonymous

Quote of the Week 393 - The Meaning of "Adonai Hineni"

Quote of the Week 393 - The Meaning of “Adonai Hineni”

To love each other in the name of God! Now, here is the greatest challenge of all, for who is loving whom? Are we really separate from each other, or are we just exemplars of the unity of God? The mind can conjure up all sorts of splendid ideas, but it is only the heart that can truly understand. We are asked to polish the mirror of the heart. We do this by knocking at the door of the heart, remembering that the door is opened up from the inside. We ourselves cannot open it. So who opens it? Only when we can say, “It is Thou [Adonai],” in answer to his question, “Who is knocking at my door?” that the door can be opened. [Only when we can say, “Hineni/I am here at your service,” in answer to his question, “Where are you/Who is there?” that the door can be opened].

Only in complete humility can we approach the door of the heart. We approach the door of the heart when there is nothing else to do. When we knock properly, it shall be opened unto us. That is the promise that we were given, and are given, from the beginning of time. We are veiled by endless masquerades, until the right time comes for the veils to be lifted, and we can see him face to face, and truly say, “Oh Thou!”

--Adapted by Steven J. Gold from Steps to Freedom by Reshad Feild, with editorial notes in [brackets]