Perfection

Perfection is there, always, coexisting with imperfection — perfection and imperfection are coexistent always, and not only simultaneous, but at the same place, I don’t know how to put it. Which means that at any second and whatever the conditions, you can attain perfection: it isn’t something that has to be acquired little by little, through successive progress; perfection is an absolute state that can be attained at any moment. And then, the conclusion is very interesting… When the truth [the other state] manifests, the false vibration disappears; it is annulled as if it had never existed, before the vibration of truth that replaces it. You see, truth is there, falsehood is there perfection is there, imperfection is there; they’re perfectly coexistent, in the same place — the minute you perceive perfection, imperfection disappears, the Illusion disappears. In other words, the capacity to live in and be this true vibration seems to have the power to substitute this vibration for the vibration of falsehood, to the extent that…. For instance, the result of the false vibration should naturally be an accident or a catastrophe, but if, within those vibrations, there is a consciousness that has the power to become aware of the vibration of truth, it can — it must— cancel the other, stop the catastrophe…. the last step must be this — the substitution of the true vibration.

~The Mind Of The Cells

The Shallowness Of The Doctrine Of Beauty

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Freedom

How can you be free? What is freedom anyway? It’s freedom to do what? Freedom to do whatever you want to do? Is that it? What do you want to do? Definition: total freedom is total absence from fear. Because total freedom is total love, or total extension of yourself, in freedom, to include everything else. You see? You cannot be free if you fear, because if you fear you will defend yourself. How can you be free if you must defend yourself?

If you are fearful you must believe that something can hurt you or attack you. If you believe that something can hurt you or attack you. If you believe that something can hurt you or attack you, you can’t be free. You will have to build walls to defend yourself. We attempt to find freedom say, in a dualistic society, in America, by stockpiling bombs. Hopefully we can defend ourselves, and what? Remain free? It will never work. How could it work?

Countries, societies, can never be free until there is individual freedom, until you come to your own freedom.

There is no freedom on earth. There can’t be, because you defend yourself. You and I can get together and defend ourselves in apparent freedom. We’ll be free, we’ll go up to the north woods and we’ll get a beautiful cabin en we’ll be by a stream: we’ll go to Oregon and we’ll be absolutely fee and the hell with everybody else. That will work for a little while. Then what happens? Well, I don’t know, somebody invades you and robs your cabin. You pick up a newspaper and they’ve dropped the big bomb and everything is futile anyway and you are dying.

Be freedom I mean eternal freedom, freedom forever, freedom from all disease, all pain, all hatred, all jealousy, all remorse. By freedom I mean laying the burden down. Lay your burden down and be free. ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll do that, I am going to carry this around with me for a while yet, I need to do that.’ Right above you is freedom. It waits for you – just sits there and waits. You may have it anytime you choose.

~ The return of the heretic

The Son of God is my Identity

My Self is holy beyond all the thoughts of holiness of which I now conceive. Its shimmering and perfect purity is far more brilliant than is any light that I have ever looked upon. Its love is limitless, with an intensity that holds all things within it, in the calm of quiet certainty. Its strength comes not from burning impulses which move the world, but from the boundless Love of God Himself. How far beyond this world my Self must be, and yet how near to me and close to God!

Father, You know my true Identity. Reveal It now to me who am Your Son, that I may waken to the truth in You, and know that Heaven is restored to me.

~ A Course In Miracles

The Divine Presence

All around us, to right and left, in front and behind, above and below, we have only to go a little beyond the frontier of sensible appearances in order to see the divine welling up and showing through. But it is not only close to us, in front of us, that the divine presence has revealed itself. It has sprung up universally, and we find ourselves so surrounded and transfixed by it, that there is no room left to fall down and adore it, even within ourselves.

By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us and moulds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers. In eo vivimus. As Jacob said, awakening from his dream, the world, this palpable world, which we were wont to treat with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association for us, is in truth a holy place, and we did not know it.

~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Soul

The soul gives itself, alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young, and nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called religious, but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become public and human in my regards and actions. So come I to live in thoughts, and act with energies, which are immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that “its beauty is immense,” man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. He will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base and frivolous in his life, and be content with all places and with any service he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being

As I was walking yesterday, I was walking in a sort of atmosphere that was exclusively the divine: one could touch it, feel it, it was inside, outside, everywhere. For three-quarters of an hour, nothing but “that”. Well, I can assure you that at that moment there were no more problems, to be sure! And what a simplicity! No need to think, no need to want anything, no need to “decide”: BEING, being, being! Being, in an infinite diversity of infinite unity: everything was there, but nothing was separate; everything was in motion, and nothing moved.
~The Mind Of The Cells

Teaching A Course In Miracles

It is not true that the difference between pupil and teacher is lasting. They meet in order to abolish the difference. At the beginning, since we are still in time, they come together on the basis of inequality of ability and experience. The aim of the teacher is to give them more of what is temporarily his. The teacher (or miracle worker) gives more to those who have less, bringing them closer to equality with him, at the same time gaining for himself.
The confusion here is only because they do not gain the same things, because they do not need the same things. If they did, their respective, though temporary, roles would not be conductive to mutual profit. Freedom from fear can be achieved by both teacher and pupil ONLY if they do not compare either their needs or their positions in regard to each other in terms of higher and lower.

Awakening

It’s new, which means that you don’t know whether you are progressing or not. You don’t know where you’re going or what path you’re on. There are all sorts of things happening, but are they part of the path or aren’t they? I have no idea. Only at the other end will we know.
~Mother Aurobindo

Belief and Love

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us, that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary, and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love, — a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes of action, and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and willful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson