What, then, is an awakened person? One who has a longing for unity, who engages in a sincere quest for consciousness, who aspires to doing what’s right in spite of pressures against it, who conducts his life according to sound principles of goodness, who acts from the intrinsic nature of his being rather than the periphery of his personality, and one who desires with a consuming desire to be one with the universe.


What, then, is an awakened person not? He is not perfect, but he does not make excuses for his imperfection. And he is not offended by shoulds and oughts.


As I reflect on my sojourn through life I sometimes get this uncanny feeling that while I am searching for the highest and best, the highest and best is searching for me. The question I ask then is, have I at last found the highest and best, and has the highest and best found me. Or is the search a never-ending quest?


Not until you have been possessed with an insatiable desire to continue the quest have you been found.


We are not misled by falsehood so much as we are by half-truths.


What discourages us most in the pursuit of our spiritual goals is not our vision of the outcome – that we have a clear vision of – but the process, which is often obscure and difficult.


The Ten Commandments offend the radical liberal. The reason why is that they do not know, or will not accept, that they are but paradoxical laws. They do not know, or do not care, that when they break them they break themselves.


All the king’s men and all the king’s horses may not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But God can!


To exalt one’s self is the greatest kind of humility.


Oh, let the self exalt itself,
Not sink itself below:
Self is the only friend of self.
And self Self’s only foe.
For self, when it subdues itself,
Befriends itself. And so
When it eludes self-conquest, is
Its own and only foe.

So calm, so self-subdued, the Self
Has an unshaken base.
Through pain and pleasure, cold and heat,
Through honor and disgrace.

The Bhagavad- Gita


One of our greatest illusions is the assumption that actions determined by following our uninspired inclinations, by obeying our unschooled instincts and habits, is expressing our selves. In reality we have forfeited our freedom at the core level and frustrated the expression of our selves.