They [his readers, whom he asks to be his friends] will find that I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of first introducing it into minds which were ignorant of its charms” (Casanova, p.34, Vol 1 Preface).
We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.
There is nothing more enjoyable than being a member of an enlightened group of people that meets in complete darkness in complete secrecy. I have no idea why the other members joined, when they joined, how they joined, or if, in fact, there are any other members.
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
Even an expert has room to improve, grow and learn a little more. All the great masters teach this. For this reason, never allow an expert’s ‘opinion’ to limit you in any way, whether it is with your intellect, accomplishments or illness and disease
For most of us enlightenment is not a destination or graduation into a permanent higher state of consciousness, but a moment-by-moment experience constantly fluctuating between degrees of wholeness and limited consciousness. I like to call this “enlightening-ment.
Remember meditation is an active, deep remembrance, and that is discernment. Wherever you go, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, remember to utilize discernment so that you can hear and sense and feel the vibration of love rather than the vibration of illusion.
Consistent with the liberal views of the Enlightenment, Leibniz was an optimist with respect to human reasoning and scientific progress. Although he was a great reader and admirer of Spinoza, Leibniz, being a confirmed deist, rejected emphatically Spinoza's pantheism.
The very way that you think is a crucial component to your overall health and well being. Living towards the negative will only foster conflict and a sense of lack, while living towards the positive will create more opportunity for you to experience harmony and abundance.
True freedom is when all the stories, all the insights, all the realizations, concepts, beliefs and positions dissolve. What remains is what you are; a vast, conscious, luminous space simply resting in itself, not knowing a thing, at the point where all things are possible.
Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.
To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.
It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death.
You see, unlearning is a very important process towards becoming enlightened, because in this life you will have learned wrong ways and those wrong ways that you have learned are barriers blocking you from becoming who you really are, therefore it is vital that they are unlearned.
Our Christian faith - and correlatively, our account of apologetics - is tainted by modernism when we fail to appreciate the effects of sin on reason. When this is ignored, we adopt an Enlightenment optimism about the role of a supposedly neutral reason in the recognition of truth.
