When I use the word 'healing', by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we're very good at handling, but there's always a sense of the violation. 'Why me?' 'Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else's?' And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.
All your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be in vain, if at the same time you do not build your character, and attain mastery over your thoughts and actions.
The mind wants to land, to fixate, to hold a concept, but the only way you can be really free is by not fixating. That's part of true maturity, and it's one of the hardest things for spiritual people who have had true and powerful revelations to go through - to accept the degree of surrender needed to literally let go of all experience and all self-reference. Even in great revelations, there is almost always something that wants to claim, "I am this." Every time you claim, "I am this", you just claimed another sense perception, thought, emotion, or feeling.
Freedom lies outside the pattern of society; but to be free of that pattern you have to understand the whole content of it, which is to understand your own mind.
Encountering sufferings will definitely contribute to the elevation of your spiritual practice, provided you are able to transform calamity and misfortune into the path.
Neglect not your time, nor use it haphazardly; on the contrary you should bring yourself to account. Structure your litanies and other practices during each day and night. This is how to bring about the spiritual blessing (baraka) in each period. If each of your breaths is a priceless jewel, Be not like the deceived fools who are joyous because each day their wealth increases while their life grows ever shorter.
Kindness and a good heart are the foundation for success in this life, progress on the spiritual path, and the fulfillment of our aspirations. Our need for them is not limited to any specific time, place, society, or culture.
If you spent one-tenth of the time you devoted to distractions like chasing women or making money to spiritual practice, you would be enlightened in a few years.
How do I integrate spirituality into my everyday life? Throw out the concept of "spiritual life" and "everyday life." There is only life, undivided and whole.
I have observed that religious practice is not a precondition either of ethical conduct or of happiness itself. I have also suggested that, whether a person practices religion or not, the spiritual qualities of love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, humility and so on are indispensable.
There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.
Let the mind be empty, and not filled with the things of the mind. Then there is only meditation, and not a meditor who is meditating . . . The mind must be clear, without movement, and in the light of that clarity the timeless will be revealed.