Words of Spiritual Teachers
Have
you ever tried to be alone? When you do try, you will feel how extraordinary
intelligent we must be to be alone, because the mind will not let us be alone.
When you are willing to face what is - then that loneliness comes to an end
because it is completely transformed. It is no longer loneliness.
(J.
Krishnamurti).
You
cease to be an exile when you discover that creation is your home.
(Anthony
de Mello).
All
suffering comes from a person’s inability to sit still and be alone.
(Hugh
Prather).
There
will be times when you will have to stand very much alone, and in that
aloneness, you will have to be unshakable in your convictions. Remember this
and stand firm.
(Eileen
Caddy).
As
long as I have no relationship to the thing outside me, the problem is not; the
moment I establish a relation with it outside me the problem is.
(J.
Krishnamurti).
Which
is worth more,
a
crowd of thousands,
or
your own genuine solitude?
Freedom,
or power over an entire nation?
A
little while alone in your room
will
prove more valuable
than
anything else that could ever be given you.
(RUMI).
Loneliness
is not only positively characterized by a certain degree of isolation, but is
negatively characterized by a deficiency of participation.
(Stephen
Batchelor).
We
always find ourselves in the paradoxical situation of being simultaneously
alone with others.
(Stephen
Batchelor).
We
allow that which is termed the trauma as called fear to allude into our being
and to create in our being a lessening; the lessening creates that which is
termed a fear called aloneness which creates in the ultimate of its being a
state that is called madness.
Madness
is created with the inability to cope with one’s self and all that it is
creating. Knowing full well it can stop anytime it wishes to. It is an escape
but only into another consciousness. You never escape from anything.
(Ramtha).
I
was alone at birth; I must die alone; and, in a sense, I am always alone, for
the gulf separating me from others can never satisfactorily be bridged.
I
am alone and yet not alone, for I am together on this planet with trillions of
living creatures, all as eager as myself for happiness, all as afraid of pain
and sorrow as I am, all presumably with the same right to grasp happiness and
feel pain and sorrow to the maximum possible extent. How ought I to relate to
these fellow sentient beings in a positive, constructive way?
(John
Blofeld).
Through
the sustained contemplation of the equality of self and other we descend to a
depth at which we suddenly touch that being – with – others is inevitably
transformed into an existentially active being – for – others. It is like
feeding oneself: there is no hope for anything in return.
(Stephen
Batchelor).
Willingness
to listen comes from the gentle recognition that you are never alone.
(Hugh
Prather).
Optimum
being alone is the actualization of meaningful being for oneself. One is thus
constantly grounded in an awareness of the voidness of any self-sufficient
existence inhering within the core of things. One is also deeply conscious of
the dependent and relative nature of whatever is experienced. There is the
immediate “mystical” experience of oneself and the world as they are. And
instead of anxiety, joy becomes the underlying mood of one’s being in the
world.
(Stephen
Batchelor).
