No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing to have it ... Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly droughts to dry up. Peace is the gift not of volitional struggle but of spiritual hospitality.
Interpretation
Inner peace cannot be forcibly attained but is a natural state of being that arises from spiritual openness.
This quote emphasizes that genuine inner peace is not something that can be achieved through sheer willpower or forceful attempts. Instead, it suggests that true peace comes from a deeper spiritual understanding and a welcoming attitude towards that peace, which is always available regardless of external circumstances.
In practice
In a meditation class, to illustrate the nature of inner peace.
Nothing else matters much...not wealth, nor learning, nor even health...without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.
I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.
He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.
No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Nothing in this world is more inspiring than a soul up against crippling circumstances who carries it off with courage and faith and undefeated character-nothing! See Light From Many Lamps, edited by L. E. Watson, article by H. E. Fosdick, pp. 93-94 re: a serious cripple who succeeded.
Money is a miraculous thing. It is your personal energy reduced to a portable form and endowed with power you yourself do not possess. It can go where you cannot go; speak languages you cannot speak; lift burdens you cannot touch with your fingers; save lives with which you cannot deal directly.
Repentance is simply giving up to stop fighting against God and to stop attempting to gain your own salvation through your own works; to literally give up and fall upon Christ. That is salvation.
The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.
It was certainly not this mummified and outrageously painted old woman he was seeing before him, but the entire "female species," as it was his custom to call women. The individual disappeared, the features were obliterated, whether young or senile, beautiful or ugly - those were mere unimportant variations. Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.
Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.
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