Hold fast to one principle and all the others are identical. On seeing one thing, you see all things. On perceiving an individual’s mind, you perceive all mind. Glimpse one truth, and all truth is present in your vision, for there is nowhere at all that is devoid of the Truth. When you see a grain of sand, you see all possible worlds, with all their vast rivers and mountains. When you see a drop of water, you see the nature of all the waters of the universe.

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet, this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of time and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continuously visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the serenity of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency.

It is essential that you examine with the eye of spiritual insight these faults … you tend to exaggerate them and thus interpret your way of living as foolish and evil conduct. You would imagine faults where there are none and see a disease in what is really a cure.
~ Ibn ’Abbad of Ronda, 1332-1390 ~

There is nothing to do but be.
~ Stephen Levine, 1937- ~

Diversity is not an abnormality but the very reality of our planet. The human world manifests the same reality and will not seek our permission to celebrate itself in the magnificence of its endless varieties. Civility is a sensible attribute in this kind of world we have; narrowness of heart and mind is not.
~ Chinua Achebe, 1930- ~

Success rests with having the courage and endurance and above all the will to become the person you are, however peculiar that may be. Then you will be able to say, “I have found my hero and he is me.”
~ George Sheehan, 1918-1993 ~

Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man’s onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.