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When the Navy Recovered This Sunken Submarine, the Crew Was Dead. Why Were They Just Sitting There?
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When the Navy Recovered This Sunken Submarine, the Crew Was Dead. Why Were They Just Sitting There?
Some cities are cutting ties with firm that provides license plate reader cameras, others are signing new contracts and many are still looking for their footing
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post in this thread, but that was a lovely article. A stark reminder to all of us to lead a meaningful life everyday. Most of us end up just going through the motions in our life after a certain point. Many of us are sometimes jolted out of that state due to certain events or circumstances but some of us just continue living that way till the very end.
I needed that article. Thanks for sharing.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-mysticism-of-nietzsches-doctrine-of-the-eternal-return
The calling by Thomas Moore
The Lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither indicates clearly nor conceals but gives a sign. HERACLEITUS
Mahud was a simple man who lived in a small village and made his living by selling vegetables at a busy market. He was comfortable enough and liked his work. But one day the angel Khabir appeared to him and told him to jump in the river. Without thinking about it, Mahud leaped into the flowing water.
He was carried downstream until a man on shore threw him a rope and pulled him out. The man offered Mahud a job in his fishing business and a small room where he could live. Mahud appreciated the man’s kindness and took the job and worked at it, rather happily, for three years. Then Khabir appeared to him once more and told him to move on.
Mahud obeyed immediately and walked from village to village until in one place a man offered him a job in his fabric shop. This was new to Mahud, but he took the job and learned the trade and worked there relatively happily until the angel appeared again and sent him on. Mahud worked at odd jobs for years in this manner, always moving along when the angel instructed.
When Mahud was an old man, he had gained the reputation of a holy man. People began coming to him with their illnesses and worries begging him for cure and counsel. One day a visitor to his village asked him, “Mahud, how did you get to where you are now?”
Mahud thought for a moment and said, “It’s difficult to say.”
It’s difficult to say because Mahud’s only talent was his openness to the directives coming from the angel whose name means “The All Aware.” Mahud had the precious ability to recognize the call to move on and the openness of heart to follow it.
This is a story about calling and obedience to the call. But let’s remember that at root obedience means “listening.” To find your way you have to pay close attention to the signs about when to change your job, when to get unstuck and reenter the flow of life, and when to retire to a life of healing and teaching.
Unfortunately for us, perhaps, an angel isn’t going to physically appear and tell us what to do next. But the angel of the story does represent something that is real for all of us: a sense of destiny, vocation, and direction. The word vocation comes from the Latin word vox, voice. A vocation is a call.
Why would a sense of direction in life be called a “vocation”? Is the voice of the angel only supernatural or mystical? Or is there something natural about the capacity of life to “speak” to us and give us hints about where to go?
The question is not so much does the world give us a direction, but are we able to read the world for its information? We tend to look at the surface of events and deal with them practically. An alternative is to see events as symbols, images, and signs.
Let me offer an example from a key turning point in my life. I had been a Catholic seminarian as well as a brother in a religious order for thirteen years. I had studied spirituality, theology, philosophy, and the Bible. I was thoroughly prepared for the priesthood. But when I went to an ordinary parish church for the first time and gave a sermon, not as a priest but as a priest-to-be, I was shocked at the gap between my contemporary studies and ideas and the much more traditional views of the people I was speaking to. I was shaken by that experience and took it as a sign to reconsider my vocation. Was I called to fight the battle of liberal theology versus the church authorities and a conservative community? Or should I move on to something else? I read the signs carefully and with great intellectual and emotional difficulty decided to try something new.
The concrete, visible, material world speaks to us, if we would only listen. You don’t have to do exactly what the signs indicate, but it would help to consider them in evaluating the status of your work life. For example, if you are failing in a particular line of work, your difficulty may not mean that you are lacking or at fault, but that you are in the wrong profession.
You also have to attend to your interior life to a degree that you can also sense your calling from internal indications. It may be a strong interest, a feeling of magnetism, pleasure, or joy around a particular kind of work, or blissful daydreams. On the other hand, distaste and discomfort on a job may also be a sign to move on. Difficulty at work can stem from many different sources, one of them the mere fact that you are unsuited for the job. Or it may mean that you have lessons to learn and need to stay and be present for them. You have to read your dissatisfaction and your problems at work to find their meaning and take them as signs. One of the goals of this book is to show how you can attend to and interpret these signs.
I had a colleague once who, while teaching at a university, was denied tenure and fought it with every resource he could conjure up. He and I had very different temperaments, and perhaps it was only natural that he would fight, in that situation, while, when my turn came up, I read being denied tenure as a sign again to move on. Still, I think he would have been a happier person if he had been more flexible generally and willing to listen to the guidance of life around him. I had the feeling that he simply couldn’t imagine himself in another line of work, and he stayed, even though all signs pointed him in a different direction.
The signs that tell you to make a move, stay where you are, or change something about your situation come in many forms. It may be trouble at work, as in the case of my colleague at the university. It could be a strong desire to be in another occupation. Maybe you spend more time and energy at an activity outside of your work, indicating that you could find a way to make that activity your job.
I know a man who was quite successful in running businesses, but he spent more time in programs for children at a nearby park than he did at work. Eventually he saw what was happening, quit his job, and became a full-time teacher in a school athletic program. He is happy with his work and has no regrets about making less money.
Sometimes the signs are more difficult to read. You may get headaches, stomach upsets, or frequent colds that interfere with the work you’re doing. Obviously, physical symptoms such as these may have nothing to do with work, but sometimes they may reflect tension and stress that come from being in the wrong job or not doing it in a way that satisfies.
Tensions in the marriage or family may also be related to dissatisfaction at work, yet people often don’t read these signs in relation to the job. They assume that all family tensions have to do with family interactions, whereas unhappiness at work can function as a root emotional problem radiating into other apparently unrelated parts of life.
Psychoanalysis has taught us to read the events of daily life and our ordinary emotions with considerable subtlety and imagination. The most ordinary action or object can be a symbol for something truly significant and deep-rooted.
If you are making mistakes at work, you might well be sabotaging yourself or your employer. Your anger and aggression may be coming out so indirectly that you don’t recognize what you are doing. If you could read these mistakes as signs, you might be able to trace your anger and discover what is really bothering you. Then you can make a more intelligent decision about your career.
If you can read the signs in your work, you can adjust and perhaps avoid unnecessary failures. In my work in television and video production, I have met many creative people, but none as impressive as Robert, who, as far as I know, has never had a full-time job. He makes documentary films and he produces very imaginative large public programs. He told me that he is very good at coming up with fresh ideas and putting on a successful show. But whenever he tries to repeat a program and make a series out of it, he fails. So he has found a way to be a “starter.” He produces only first-time events and then turns his successful idea over to someone else to keep the project going.
This may not sound like a brilliant solution, but I can imagine many people believing that they should carry their projects through, even though they know they will fail. Robert has the imagination and emotional freedom to let go of the part of a project he knows he can’t do. He has read the signs and adjusted.
Called by Whom? By What?
A calling is the sense that you are on this earth for a reason, that you have a destiny, no matter how great or small. Those who look at life more soberly might question whether such an attitude is warranted. It may seem naive. But the sense of calling doesn’t necessarily require belief in the supernatural and it doesn’t have to be naive.
A calling is a sensation or intuition that life wants something from you. It can give meaning to the smallest acts and helps create a strong identity. If you have a reason for being, you don’t feel entirely aimless. You know who you are and what to do. In a culture where existential anxiety—the worry that nothing is of value and nothing makes sense—is still the order of the day, these are valuable realizations.
Those who believe in God or a higher power or in the intelligence of nature and life have little trouble recognizing the legitimacy of a sense of calling, but still they might feel it lacking in their own lives. Their problem may be that they put too much wishfulness into their belief, expecting life to serve them their destiny in clear and concrete terms. They may want specific direction without the quest and search and sorting out that is also part of the human condition.
In the 1980s I gave frequent workshops and lectures at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. It was an exciting venture, working with James Hillman, Patricia Berry, Gail Thomas, Robert Sardello, and others developing “archetypal psychology” and exploring the soul of culture. A woman full of ambition and energy came to several of my workshops, and one day she told me she felt a strong calling to do the exciting work she saw teachers at the institute doing.
I was concerned right away because she didn’t have the educational background to join the rest of us, who had many years of study behind us. But she tried. She gave a workshop and then a lecture. Of course they didn’t go well and were an embarrassment to her and the institute. So she went back to the city she came from and tried to do the same thing there. Again, she failed. She was a dance instructor, and finally she got the idea of teaching dance in a special way informed by the ideas she had picked up at the institute. She was very effective at this work, and for many years afterward she fulfilled her calling.
The initial revelation of a life work may be highly emotional but unformed. A person may believe she is called to be just like someone she admires, but then she has to learn how to adapt that calling to her own abilities and temperament. It may take time for the calling to be fully revealed, if it ever is. It may also entail fumbling for a period of time, making mistakes, and failing.
As you will discover in the chapters ahead, chaos and calling go together. In your confusion and experimenting, you learn about the laws of life and you feel the burden of your existence. This is not a bad thing because it gives weight to your thoughts and gives character to your work. If you only toss around in chaos or latch onto a source of meaning without self-questioning and wonder, your convictions will lack the weight and bite of real life.
I never hear my friend Scottie talk about a calling or a need to serve or the desire to really do something with his life. He seems concerned about the details of whatever job he has at the moment. He never talks about his vision, except to say that he doesn’t know what to do with his life. Maybe he needs to step back, think about things, have a big conversation about life in general, and eventually find his calling.
Monks are forever talking about their vocation. They don’t talk about talents or wishes; they speak of being called. Work that requires complete dedication, like that of the monk, is so vast in scope that a mere aptitude isn’t sufficient to explain a person’s choice of profession. That could be true of a doctor or politician who feels called to be of service to humankind.
The story of Mahud suggests that any kind of job is a calling, no matter how ordinary. Maybe we elevate certain work, like that of doctors and politicians, and refer to it as a calling, overlooking the vocation to whatever work is our destiny. Most of us live within relatively narrow perimeters and enjoy a small life. There is beauty and satisfaction in that smallness, partly because the least significant of lives can still have cosmic proportions for the meaning and purpose they offer.
A person who shows special skill at a small craft, such as making wooden bowls or simple jewelry, is engaged in universal values of beauty and expressiveness. A bookkeeper or an accountant plays a role in the financial vitality of a community and even a nation. Honesty and care are as important in small things as they are in big things.
Samuel Beckett once wrote a quirky novel called Mercier and Camier about two men taking a walk around the block. Beckett tells the story as though these two were Dante and Virgil canvassing the whole of creation. He uses mythic language and large concepts to the point of comic absurdity. But our lives are like that: As we go about our small lives, constantly bumping into the great issues of love and death, meaning and ignorance, we, too, are comic. A sense of destiny can keep us in touch with that larger picture and gives profound significance to the insignificant things we do.
It’s tempting to inflate the notion of calling, to imagine it as a great revelation on a mountaintop, a once-and-for-all pronouncement of who we are and what we are to do. But Mahud has several “callings,” which together lead him to an unexpected ultimate life work: healing, counseling, and holiness.
At the end, Mahud’s openness to his many callings leads him to develop into a character of extraordinary depth and power, so much so that people come to him for help. He has gathered together no coherent set of skills from his work that would explain his effectiveness as a healer. Only his openness to destiny has given him his ultimate life work, and at that point it’s clear that the work he has done has been not just simple labor but internal development of character. The two are inseparable: the work that we do and the opus of the soul.
The Willingness to Change
People’s idea of a career can become monolithic. You spend years of education and apprenticeship to acquire the skills of a job, and you feel that investment as a heavy weight. You identify with your work, and the idea of changing it entails a personal reversal. If you change jobs, you change “who you are.”
The financial security developed over the years in a particular position may give you some flexibility to search out alternatives, but at the same time it may prevent you from detaching yourself from that career and starting over somewhere else. For many people security is a heavy weight around them that won’t let them consider a serious change in direction.
The idea of a calling can also be monolithic. You are called to be a doctor, and so you can’t imagine doing anything else. Or you are called to be a musician but you work for the post office and play in a band on weekends. You can’t picture yourself as a full-time musician because in your mind it isn’t who you are.
Thus the benefit of thinking of a multiplicity of callings rather than a single call to a profession. You may be called to be many things at once or one thing after another. You may be called to be a parent and a librarian, a husband and a mechanic, a fund-raiser and an artist. You may be called to be a nurse for a portion of your life and then discover a new calling to be a professional calligrapher. Many people have found their life work by making unexpected shifts in the work they do.
For some people the various callings penetrate one another and come together. I feel this about myself. I have been a monk, a teacher, a musician, a therapist, and a writer. I have been surprised how as a writer about the soul, I have been invited to speak in pulpits of many different religions and denominations. As I ascend the steps to the high perch of the pulpit, I often remember how as a teenager I wanted so desperately to be a priest speaking about the soul. Now here I am, a married person, making a living writing books, but still somehow fulfilling my dream of being a priest.
My work has led me into a friendship with the actor Martin Sheen. I remember watching him in films when he was a young man and being astonished at his talent. But he is also a social activist who supports a variety of causes and has been jailed for his actions. Now, is he called to be an actor, an activist, or both?
It seems important to nurture a strong sense of calling while not fixing on any particular form of work. This capacity to be flexible may be one of the most significant strengths in relation to a life work because it allows movement. Life is not usually monolithic, narrowly focused, or unchanging. Just the opposite; life is a flowing, shifting force that rushes over obstacles and seems bent on movement and transitions. If we don’t adjust to this torrent of vitality, we may have to become rigid in order to hold on to a job or career, and that rigidity causes many emotional problems.
When I was young I was sometimes criticized strongly for pursuing my many interests and for entering and then quitting careers. Then when I became an author, interviewers would look at that same life and say, “How interesting. Tell us about it. How did you do it?”
If flexibility is the primary virtue as you pursue your callings, then a philosophy of the polycentric life—the idea that you can be more than one thing—is a close second. This important lesson I learned in my early association with the psychologist James Hillman, who turns many common assumptions upside down to reveal the straitjackets we have willingly put on for years. In his view, a monocentric view in anything is bound to create rigidity and moralism.
Those who criticized me for going after too many dreams were speaking from a one-eyed place. They could only see one goal at a time, and they got judgmental whenever they suspected any deviation from that standard. I have applied Hillman’s principle of polycentricity as a therapist in many situations and have found it to be a philosopher’s stone, a discovery that becomes the source of insights and solutions. It works magic, just when the situation appears hopeless.
A woman tells me, “I’m a nurse. I’m interested in psychology. I want to be an artist. I’m fragmented. I can’t get my life together.” In that worry, instead of “fragmented,” a word of judgment, I hear “multitalented.” Instead of trying to get her life together, I think, “How can she do all of it comfortably?”
Many people believe that they should be whole, meaning that their life and work should look like one piece. They have never questioned this word whole, or imagined it in a way that doesn’t pressure them to give their life a single focus. An alternative would be to appreciate a multifaceted work life, to give attention to the many interests that claim your attention.
Often this pressure appears as a dilemma: “Should I quit my job as a nurse and become a psychologist? Which way should I go?” Maybe you should go both ways—and more. You will need a rich, flexible imagination guiding you toward a solution where you are not torn apart, where you at least give some of your energy to your various interests. People will judge you, of course, because the dominant value in society is unity and single-mindedness. But you don’t have to think that way. You can operate out of a personal philosophy of polycentricity—many centers of interest and attention.
“I want to be an artist but I love my work as head of a thriving business,” a man says. “Isn’t there some way to do both?” Remember Wallace Stevens, one of America’s greatest poets? He was an insurance executive and seemed to thrive at his job even as he wrote complex, brilliant poems. About his motive for becoming an insurance executive, he was quite clear: “I didn’t like the idea of being bedeviled all the time about money and I didn’t for a moment like the idea of poverty, so I went to work like anybody else and kept at it for a good many years.” He consistently appreciated ordinary labor, and yet he wrote to his wife that poetry is really what made his life worthwhile.
Barbara, a woman I have known for many years, who has never found her life work, says she wants to do family therapy, though she is very aware of her talent as an illustrator. Meanwhile, she suspects there is yet another calling waiting to be heard. She doesn’t know now what that might be. At this point at least, she might pursue many possibilities at once—take a class in psychology while working freelance as an illustrator, for example
A calling is a deep sense that your very being is implicated in what you do. You feel that you fit into the scheme of things when you do this particular work. You have a sense of purpose and completion in the work. It defines you and gives you an essential tranquillity.
The work that provides such a deep reward may change over time, and you may go through several periods in your life defined by a different work. Toward the end of your life you may see all the jobs you have done as fateful, composing your life work and answering your calling.
I once counseled a priest in his seventies who didn’t feel that he had a calling to the priesthood, even though he had spent over fifty years as a priest. He regretted giving his life to something he didn’t feel called to do, and he felt bitter and depressed in his old age. He would bring me paintings of his dreams, and we would sit there staring at the striking, colorful images on the floor between us, and we would look for a way out of the bitter regret. I had met him in a course I was teaching for art therapists, and he was discovering mild joy in self-expression and psychology. Though bitter to him, his regret and depression didn’t repel people; on the contrary, people were drawn to him and loved him. I had the impression that although he came late to the realization that he didn’t fully want the role he had lived all his life, he had done good work and was now following a new calling that gave him real satisfaction. He constantly talked about his depression, but at the same time he was finding new vitality.
I think this man did indeed have a calling to the priesthood, which he carried out very well. But he came to a point where he tasted the world he had given up for his vows and he badly wanted this new life. It was a sad situation, but it was bittersweet, because his sadness only made him more human and more connected to the people around him. His joy and sense of humor were muffled by the depression, but they were present. Here was a man on the cusp between two callings, one colored by regret and the other seemingly impossible for his age. At least, that is the way he felt. Eventually, his optimism came to the foreground, and without losing the depressive current in him, he was able to be what for him was a new kind of priest, now skilled in counseling and art therapy and more aware of the struggles people go through.
Loyalty to Your Calling
A strong call to a career or particular work is a precious thing. It gives a shape to your entire life and helps your relationships by quelling the search for an identity that is always implicated in the quest for a life work. But once you perceive your calling, you may still have problems because, as with this priest, circumstances might well work against it.
People feel called to work for which they have no background or education. It may take a great effort to get that education late in life or after having gone in a different direction previously. When I was a college professor I counseled many women returning to school after years of raising a family. It was difficult for these women to shift their orientation from home to school, and I was always impressed with the courage and loyalty most of them brought to the work they felt compelled to do. In some cases their husbands or children didn’t agree with their choice, and they had to move ahead toward their calling without the support they wanted. Many felt embarrassed being in classes with young men and women their children’s age. And yet, with their eyes focused on their goal of a life work, they persevered.
They didn’t see college as a complete break with their job of raising their children. Their calling involved both elements: family and a job. But they had to make the transition, and that was the most difficult task. One woman I remember in particular, Patsy, had always engaged in fund-raising for community causes while she was raising her family, and when the children left home and she got her degree in school, she became more focused and professional about her work. Her ability to help nonprofit organizations raise money now became a profession rather than a pastime. She set up an office, hired some help, and attracted clients. Her transition was not toward a new direction in life but toward a more formal and ultimately more satisfying leadership role as a professional.
We live in a pragmatic age when people often value the predictable standards of success. They may steer their friends toward practical goals. In this environment, you have to keep your sights on the vocation you feel within you, though it is not always easy to champion the interior life when the external world is pressing in.
There is something almost simpleminded about Mahud’s willingness to do whatever the angel says. He simply jumps into the river, an ancient image for the ongoing flow of life. He is willing without any hesitation to be part of life. That commitment to vitality is allied to the commitment to a calling. Both take you to a place you may never have known, but once there, you know it is what you have been looking for all the while.
Brown, White, or Blue Eggs—What Matters for Taste (and What You’re Really Paying For)
What's the most painful sting in the world?
Selected quotes from Khalil Gibran
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
A man's true wealth is the good he does in the world.
Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Love that is washed by tears will remain eternally pure and faithful.
Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets.
An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.
Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.
The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.
The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
As a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, so the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.
Do not limp before the lame, deeming it a kindness.
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.
All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.
Cast aside those who liken godliness to whimsy and who try to combine their greed for wealth with their desire for a happy afterlife.
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
All that spirits desire, spirits attain.
You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.
Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.
Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.
Those who give you a serpent when you ask for a fish, may have nothing but serpents to give. It is then generosity on their part.
Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.
To be able to look back upon one's life in satisfaction, is to live twice.
He who listens to truth is not less than he who utters truth.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.
Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
To belittle, you have to be little.
Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.
You have your ideology and I have mine.
He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy.
Hearts united in pain and sorrow will not be separated by joy and happiness. Bonds that are woven in sadness are stronger than the ties of joy and pleasure.
God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.
Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration.
I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. And you would accept the seasons of your heart just as you have always accepted that seasons pass over your fields and you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
He who does not see the angels and devils in the beauty and malice of life will be far removed from knowledge, and his spirit will be empty of affection.
I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.
The teacher gives not of his wisdom, but rather of his faith and lovingness.
If any of you would bring judgment the unfaithful wife, let him also weigh the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurements.
And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.
Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.
Your friend is your needs answered.
The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.
In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence.
We were a silent, hidden thought in the folds of oblivion, and we have become a voice that causes the heavens to tremble.
If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.
Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course.
If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?
You can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?
In the depth of my soul there is a wordless song.
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
By losing your goal, you have lost your way.
Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in your seeds.
When you reach the heart of life you shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty.
Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too self-ful to seek other than itself.
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.
When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.
Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.
My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love.
The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says, but rather to what he does not say.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.
Love... it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.
Mother: the most beautiful word on the lips of mankind.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.
No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.
Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Life is indeed darkness save when there is urge, and all urge is blind save when there is knowledge, and all knowledge is vain save when there is work, and all work is empty save when there is love.
If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.
It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone... but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.
In truth you owe naught to any man. You owe all to all men. What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.
Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.
Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.
If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.
All you have shall someday be given; therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors.
Oh, heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains.
Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.
Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers.
One's own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one's Maker and no one else's.
Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.
Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.
I am ignorant of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolutions.
Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.
Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.
The chemist who can extract from his heart's elements compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness and compound them into one can create that atom which is called love.
Remembrance is a form of meeting.
A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reach us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personalities.
Zeal is a volcano, the peak of which the grass of indecisiveness does not grow.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.
A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland.
The appearance of things change according to the emotions, and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Seek ye counsel of the aged for their eyes have looked on the faces of the years and their ears have hardened to the voices of Life. Even if their counsel is displeasing to you, pay heed to them.
The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun.
Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.
The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose.
The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.
Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.
The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.
It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.
The tears that you spill, the sorrowful, are sweeter than the laughter of snobs and the guffaws of scoffers.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving." The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pastures. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.
It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression.
Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky; we fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness.
Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.
Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, and a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.
The just is close to the people's heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.
We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body.
What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?
The earth is like a beautiful bride who needs no manmade jewels to heighten her loveliness...
No human relation gives one possession in another—every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.
Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.
We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.
Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand.
We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.
Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.
I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.
Yesterday is but today's memory, tomorrow is today's dream.
Words are timeless. You should utter them or write them with a knowledge of their timelessness.
Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.
Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.
It was in my heart to help a little because I was helped much.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
If the grandfather of the grandfather of Jesus had known what was hidden within him, he would have stood humble and awe-struck before his soul.
Love is trembling happiness.
You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.
If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.
I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.
You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison; but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free! The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.
If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.
The feelings we live through in love and in loneliness are simply, for us, what high tide and low tide are to the sea.
In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people's wrath.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260416-i-gave-up-eating-sugar-this-is-what-happened
Foods with added sugar are everywhere – even in some surprising places. So how easy is it to go without sugar and what difference can it make to your health?
Cricket
