There is no affliction, trial, or labor difficult to endure, when we consider the torments and sufferings which Our Lord Jesus Christ endured for us.
Teresa Of AvilaRead
There seem to me a great many blessings which come from true poverty and I should be sorry to be deprived of them.
Interpretation
True poverty can bring unexpected blessings and insights that might be overlooked in wealth.
Teresa of Avila suggests that true poverty, rather than being merely a lack of material wealth, can offer valuable blessings that contribute to personal growth and deeper understanding. By embracing simplicity and the lessons that come with it, one may find a richer, more meaningful life experience.
In practice
A motivational speaker may use this quote to emphasize the value of living simply.
There is no affliction, trial, or labor difficult to endure, when we consider the torments and sufferings which Our Lord Jesus Christ endured for us.
How often I failed in my duty to God, because I was not leaning on the strong pillar of prayer.
What friends or kindred can be so close and intimate as the powers of our soul, which, whether we will or no, must ever bear us company?
To converse with You, O King of glory, no third person is needed, You are always ready in the Sacrament of the Altar to give audience to all. All who desire You always find You there, and converse with You face to face
If we do not use great care to mortify our will, there are many things which can deprives us of the holy freedom of spirit that we are seeking in order to fly more freely to our Creator, without always being bogged down with the clay of this earth. Moreover, there can never be solid virtue in a soul that is attached to its own will.
I say the same of humility and of all the virtues; the wiles of the devil are terrible, he will run a thousand times round hell if by so doing he can make us believe that we have a single virtue which we have not. And he is right, for such ideas are very harmful, and such imaginary virtues, when they come from this source, are never unaccompanied by vainglory; just as those which God gives are free both from this and from pride.
The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point.
The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue
As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life. But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made . Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.
Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches; scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both.
If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress.
We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.
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