Whenever our world changes for the better, it does so for only one reason: somewhere, in some place, someone (just like you and me) is suddenly "changed."
Like ripples radiating out from the center of a pond into which a stone has been thrown, the force of the awakened new perception -- this realization of what has always been one's higher possibility -- establishes a new reality. Everything is changed, forever.
Could the light of such revelations -- the hope and promise they hold about our own latent higher possibilities -- help liberate us from the host of fears that hold our consciousness hostage? Imagine the end of all forms of fanaticism born of imagined differences, the beginning of a new order of peace created from the collective understanding that all beings on earth share a common purpose.
Insights such as the ones you are about to read illuminate not just the history of our possibilities. We are also made aware of a latent interior greatness that awaits us now. This means that regardless of when in time, or where on earth, one of these truths appears, its effect is always the same. By its deft touch, "the sleeper awakens" and the meaning of our life takes on a whole new magnitude...
The more a man enters the light of understanding, the more aware he is of his own ignorance. And when the light reveals itself fully and unites with him and draws him into itself, so that he finds himself alone in a sea of light, then he is emptied of all knowledge and immersed in absolute unknowing. -- Symeon The Younger (ca. 949-1022, Constantinople)
Man does not know himself and does not know how to use the energies hidden in him, nor does he know that he carries the stars hidden in himself and that he is the microcosm, and thus carries within him the whole firmament with all its influence. -- Paracelcus (1493-1541, Switzerland)
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious. -- Carl Jung (1875-1961, Switzerland)
Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know, all mystics -- Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion -- are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare. -- Anthony de Mello (1931-1987, India)
All insight, all revelation, all illumination, all love, all that is genuine, all that is real, lies in now -- and in the attempt to create now we approach the inner precincts, the holiest part of life. For in time all things are seeking completion, but in now all things are complete. -- Maurice Nicoll (1884-1953, Scotland)
We invent nothing. We borrow and re-create. We uncover and discover. All has been given... we have only to open our eyes and our hearts to become one with that which is. -- Henry Miller (1891-1980, United States)
Finding this higher life is not meant to be the exception to the rule; it is the rule for anyone willing to undertake the interior journey. Within everyone there dwells a Light, a consciousness whose love and compassion never flags; it is a timeless intelligence whose wisdom, once awakened, provides both explanation and solution for all of the suffering and sorrow that we see taking place around... and within us.
