Quote of the Week 253 - The Self and the Universe

If you try to understand the universe without first understanding yourself, you will not succeed. If you first understand yourself, then you will understand the universe…A drop of water is qualitatively the same as an ocean, but they are not quantitatively the same.

--Swami Rama, from a lecture on Sri Vidya

Quote of the Week 252 - The Stained Glass of Eternity

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,

Stains the white radiance of eternity.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

Quote of the Week 251 - The Spontaneous Stillness of the Mind and the Joy of Living

Have you ever sat very quietly without any movement? You try it, sit really still, with your back straight, and observe what your mind is doing. Don’t try to control it, don’t say it should not jump from one thought to another, but just be aware of how your mind is jumping. Don’t do anything about it, but watch it as from the banks of a river you watch the river flow by. In the flowing river there are so many things – fishes, leaves, dead animals – but it is always living, moving, and your mind is like that. It is everlastingly restless, flitting from one thing to another like a butterfly…just watch your mind. It is great fun. If you try it as fun, as an amusing thing, you will find that the mind begins to settle down without any effort on your part to control it. There is then no censor, no judge, no evaluator; and when the mind is thus very quiet of itself, spontaneously still, you will discover what it is to be gay. Do you know that gaiety is? It is just to laugh, to take delight in anything or nothing, to know the joy of living, smiling, looking straight into the face of another without any sense of fear.

--from Think on These Things by J. Krishnamurti

Quote of the Week 250 - The Creation of the World

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.

--Samuel Beckett

Quote of the Week 249 - New Years Resolution for Added Perspective - Remember the Earth

Once a day remember that you live on a globe largely covered with blue water, slowly rotating.

--Sparrow, “Fifteen Ways to Survive the Coming Collapse of Civilization”, The Sun magazine, December 2012, Issue 444

Writings of the Dawn Now Available at Online Retailers, Including Amazon and Barnes and Noble

My newest book, Writings of the Dawn - The Spiritual Adventures of a Baby-Boomer, is now available at online retailers, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble, in addition to the publisher, Lulu.

Quote of the Week 248 - How Will The World End?

How will the world end? The world will end in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter, because it is a place of tears. When there is laughter, who can longer weep? In blessing it departs; it will not end as it began.

--A Course in Miracles

Quote of the Week 247 - It Takes Some Diving

Men are not free when they are doing just what they like…Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes. And there is getting down to the deepest self! It takes some diving.

--D.H. Lawrence

Quote of the Week 246 - Prayers That Don't Work, Prayers That Work

We can’t pray that He make our lives free of problems; this won’t happen, and it is probably just as well. We can’t ask Him to make us and those we love immune to disease, because He can’t do that. We can’t ask Him to weave a magic spell around us so that bad things will only happen to other people, and never to us. People who pray for miracles usually don’t get miracles, any more than children who pray for bicycles, good grades, or boyfriends get them as a result of praying. But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayer answered. They discover that they have more strength, more courage than they ever knew themselves to have. Where did they get it? I would like to think that their prayers helped them find that strength. Their prayers helped them tap hidden reserves of faith and courage which were not available to them before.

--from When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

Quote of the Week 245 - Falling Into the Cup of Wisdom

It seems as though I had not drunk from the cup of wisdom, but had fallen into it.

--Soren Kierkegaard