Paul Brunton Quotes
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Man is more miserable, more restless and unsatisfied than ever before, simply because half his nature--the spiritual--is starving for true food, and the other half--the material--is fed with bad food.
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The Quest not only begins in the heart but also ends there.
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Our greatest illusion is disillusion. We imagine that we are disillusioned with life, when the truth is that we have not even begun to live.
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Look how the smaller birds greet the sun, with so much merry chirruping and so much outpouring of song! It is their way of expressing worship for the only Light they can know, an outer one. But man can also know the inner Sun, the Light of the Overself. How much more reason has he to chirp and sing than the little birds! Yet how few man feel gratitude for such privilege.
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While the mind remains so fixed in its own personal affairs, be they little or large, it has no chance to open up its higher levels. When attention and emotion are kept so confined, the chance they offer of this higher use is missed. The peace, truth, and goodness which could be had are untouched.
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Your self is sacred; be true to it.
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No man who has lived through a temporary spiritual experience is ever likely to forget it. His days will be haunted until he sets out to seek ways and means of repeating it.
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It is a grave misconception to regard the mystical progress as passing mostly through ecstasies and raptures. On the contrary, it passes just as much through broken hearts and bruised emotions, through painful sacrifices and melancholy renunciations.
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Worry is spiritual short sight... Its cure is intelligent faith.
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Every test successfully met is rewarded by some growth in intuitive knowledge, strengthening of character, or initiation into a higher consciousness.
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When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one.
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Every discussion which is made from an egoistic standpoint is corrupted from the start and cannot yield an absolutely sure conclusion. The ego puts its own interest first and twists every argument, word, even fact to suit that interest.
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When spiritual seeking becomes too complicated, its exercies too elaborated, its doctrines too esoteric, it becomes also too artificial and the resulting achievements too fabricated. It is the beginners and intermediates who carry this heavy and unnecessary burden, who involve themselves to the point of becoming neurotics.
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God needs no worship, no praise, no thanksgiving. It is man himself who needs the benefit to be derived from these activities.
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If outer events bring him to a position where he can bear them no longer and force him to cry out to the higher power in helplessness for relief, or if inner feelings bring humiliation and recognition of his dependence on that power, this crushing of the ego may open the door to grace.
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Let us accept the invitation, ever-open, from the Stillness, taste its exquisite sweetness, and heed its silent instruction.
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Outwardly one's life may suffer every kind of limitation, from bodily paralysis to miserable surroundings, but inwardly it is free in meditation to reach out to a sphere of light, beauty, truth, love, and power.
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If you investigate the matter deeply enough and widely enough, you will find that happiness eludes nearly all men despite the fact that they are forever seeking it. The fortunate and successful few are those who have stopped seeking with the ego alone and allow the search to be directed inwardly by the higher self. They alone can find a happiness unblemished by defects or deficiencies, a Supreme Good which is not a further source of pain and sorrow but an endless source of satisfaction and peace.
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Living in the present moment means living according to truth and principle (but not according to hard rigid dogma) flexibly applied in the particular way required by the immediate situation in which you are. Such a way of living leaves you free, not ruled tyrannically by imposed regulations which may not at all suit the particular case.
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This withdrawal from the day's turmoil into creative silence is not a luxury, a fad, or a futility. It is a necessity, because it tries to provide the conditions wherein we are able to yield ourselves to intuitive leadings, promptings, warnings, teachings, and counsels and also to the inspiring peace of the soul. It dissolves mental tensions and heals negative emotions.
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Find the god in your own heart and you will understand by direct intuition what all the great teachers, real mystics, true philosophers and inspired people have been trying to tell you by the tortuous method of using words.
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You may accept the inevitable with bitterness and resentment or with patience and grace. Mere acceptance is not sufficient.
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The seeker after stillness should be told that the stillness is always there. Indeed it is in every man. But he has to learn, first, to let it in and, second, how to do so. The first beginning of this is to remember. The second is to recognize the inward pull. For the rest, the stillness itself will guide and lead him to itself.
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Meditation is THE fundamental practice of the Quest.
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The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind.
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All methods and techniques - and of course all human beings who propound them - are merely instruments to help the student obtain a methodless, technique-free, teacherless state.
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The ego will always be able to find ways to keep the aspirant busy in self-improvement, thus binding him or her to the fact that the self is still there behind all the improvements. For why should the ego kill itself?
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Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.
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He is beginning to master wisdom when he tries to learn how not to try.
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The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration.
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