Perspectives

No one is perfect; this includes you.

No one is completely bad; this includes you.

You are a unique individual - a combination of forces that has never before existed and will never exist again.

It is a good thing to do as much for yourself as possible. If others do for you what you should do for yourself, you become dependent upon them.

It is a good thing to allow others to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. If you refuse their help, you become proud and lonely.

All persons have needs, and all persons seek to meet them.

The world in general treats people unfairly.

Some people are born into very difficult circumstances; others are more fortunate. These who have much are responsible for using their gifts to help those who have little.

Impressing other people is a very shallow way to attain status. What if they change their minds? Status attained through service will never exceed your integrity; status artificially bestowed will rob you of integrity.

Never do for others what they can and should do for themselves. Allow others the freedom to make their mistakes and to learn from them.

One hundred years from now, your body shall lie rotting in a grave with the worms, and it is likely that 99.999999% of the world's population will not even know or care that you ever lived.

People of today are like voyagers on an ocean cruise who are busy partying, decorating their cabins, playing shuffleboard, and planning future trips when, all the while, the ocean liner is slowly sinking.

There is indeed such a thing as an error in judgment, but it is not so common as errors in awareness. Lapses in consciousness account for most traffic accidents, broken appointments, and keys locked inside cars.

Enlightenment does not mean that you will not ever get tired or discouraged - only that you will be aware in your tiredness and discouragement.

The truly natural human being is the mystic. What most people call "natural" is really carnal perversion.

Self-reflection can help you to realize successes, pitfalls, and errors, but it cannot produce self- realization. To attempt realization through self-reflection is like a mirror gazing at itself.

If you can't find yourself, don't just sit there waiting for self-realization. Get moving, and do what you're doing in loving awareness. It will come to you in action and movement.

You are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings, you are not even what you have been, nor what you imagine yourself to be. You are the one who is loved by God. You are the awareness of God's love for you.

In the small self, feelings are reactive to "you" and "yours" in the narrowest sense. In the higher self, feelings are responsive to "we" and "ours." In the no-self, there are no personal feelings - only a steady, serene compassion, which is bliss.

The only sure thing about pleasant feelings is that you shall want them back when they are gone.

Use your common sense. (If, during prayer, you find yourself growing sleepy, it probably means that you are tired.)

The true mystic desires only to love others and leave them free. The false mystic speaks much of God, less of love, and very little of freedom.

If loving brings about the destruction of certain matters, then those matters needed to be destroyed.

What God wants most in this world is a heart that is open to receiving his gifts, for he gives lavishly for the pure pleasure of seeing people become joyful. Such is the nature of his love, and the main impediments to receiving his gifts are feelings of self-sufficiency and deservingness, and a desire to control the outcome.

Love is being and doing at the same time. In love, all dualisms are dissolved.

Love without empathy is do-goodism, which is ultimately a form of pride. If you cannot love people, than leave them alone!

If you desire anything other than love for another, you can eventually justify any imaginable cruelty toward this person while invoking your principles as justification.

What should you do around people? Love them. Who manages best around people? A lover. "But what does it mean to be a lover?" you ask. Spend your life with this question and you shall have passed your time very well.

Love is also a willingness to receive the gifts of others, that you might be joined with them, and allow them to experience the joy of giving. No receivers, no givers.

Where total surrender to the requirements of Love is lacking, there is fear, resentment, guilt, and other forms of emotional pain. Where there is emotional pain, there is self- concern. Where there is self-concern, there is a small self, a defensive center of consciousness designed to fend off further threat, and solve the problems of concern. Where there is a small self, there is a narcissistic pole in consciousness. When behavior proceeds from this pole, there will be an increase in separateness, fragmentation. When your life cycles between the above, there is addiction. When identity comes to rest in this cycle, there is hell.

Honesty--what an absolute value! If anything is to happen, you must be honest about everything - at least to yourself. Offer no pretense; practice frankness instead. Freed by truth, you are forgiven by love.

Prefer no other reality than now. Choose to do nothing more than what Reality calls you to do now in the service of love. Do this, and you will live in serenity.

If your desires conflict with the loving demands of Reality, you had better adjust to Reality, or else you will be filled with resentment toward the cause of the conflict.

You must even let go of the consequences of your actions. Nothing that you have done is so bad that it cannot be forgiven, and nothing so good that cannot be corrupted. Keep moving forward. Don't look back.

Do you believe that God's will is your happiness? If not, then whose will is?

The spiritually awakened mind is none other than the ordinary, everyday mind, but free from all anxiety and illusions of separateness. In such a mind, all knowledge is seen in the context of love. This is wisdom.

To know and not to do is not yet to know. Instead, it is mental paralysis.

You learn nothing by experience. You learn only through reflecting on experience.

Mystical consciousness cannot be sustained in a mind that tries to manipulate truth for its own ends. This is why honesty is one of the absolute values.

To truly understand something, you must stand-under it, or empathize with it. Therefore, empathy is the highest form of knowledge; contemplative prayer is the most exalted human experience.

Pathways to Serenity, Philip St. Romain, (extracts)