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Kabir Edmund Helminski Quotes

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Famous Kabir Edmund Helminski Quotes

“A Seed has no energy of its own, but it can respond in the right environment. Every form of life has a capacity for response but none so much as the human being. In an infertile environment this capacity for response may be dormant. The cultivation we need to provide is through conscious awareness. This makes the difference between nominally being alive and being alive abundantly. Life is not just this bioenergetic vitality, but a spiritual vitality that is eternal, and we are that. This life span that we know on earth is said to be one chapter in the story of Life. This eternal Life reflects through us. With awareness we can develop all our faculties. The body, mind, spirit, and ecology form an interconnected whole. When a harmonious relationship exists among all of these, we have abundant life.”

“The work of presence is first to purify and harmonize our conscious and subconscious faculties, to purify the heart around a single center; and second to patiently awaken those latent human faculties that have gone to sleep or atrophied. One day the heart may reach such contact with its own Source; it will gain an intimacy with the Creative Power and know the One behind multiplicity. It will rediscover its home in the unity of all that is. This possibility exists, and human beings are destined to realize it more and more. This is the complete human being, the drop that becomes the sea. It is not difficult, as our teachers told us, because we are made for it.”

“Our work is to cross a treshold into emptiness and stillness. It is like entering an empty room that proves to hold a great presence. The apparent emptiness of simple presence is richer than the crowded experience of ordinary personality. We can either be empty with Spirit or full of ourselves.”

“To cross the treshold from habits and conditioning to emptiness, which is the receptive quality of the soul, we must become still and patient. We must give up certain impulses and let go again and again. This is the way we come into our essential Self. We leave behind our compulsive egos, embodying the „I am“ and selflessness at the same time. The „I am“ is not the mechanical self - the role-playing, superficial personality - that feels its existence through its ordinary reactions and resistances. With the right kind of attention and observation we can see the relationship between our various thoughts and sentiments and how each of them invokes some imaginary „I“. Instead we can learn to feel our own existence through recollection and intention. A positive sense of I-ness emerges through recollection. It is the first thing we can trust: our own presence, the sacred „I am“.”

“We can bring quality into the details of life if we remember to be and act with precision. If we can consciously be at that point where the horizontal force of active choice meets the vertical force of Being, a certain „something“, larger than life, will be activated. This „something“ can be felt in anything produced by the hands and hearts of a conscious human being – in works of art, in a well-tended garden, in food prepared with love.”

“The soul is a knowing substance that knows the Reality beyond time and space. To acquire this kind of knowing is to become illuminated, to be connected to a greater intelligence that will guide every step of your life. Instead of living in fear and uncertainty, you will more and more be able to trust the unfolding of Life. (p. 78)”

“The Work of the Soul is the greatest satisfaction in life. It is a long journey with many stages of realization. If you want to know how close you are to living the life of the soul, simply ask yourself: how much of my life energy is devoted to complaining about my circumstances, blaming others for my own unhappiness, controlling others to achieve my desires, deceiving others to make myself look good, or promoting myself? The remedy for all these spiritual diseases is the same: contact with your true inner being, which is a reflection of the Divine. After all is said and done, after all our spiritual practices and all the esoteric knowledge that might be acquired, the real measure of soulfulness is simply the degree of our humility, gratitude, patience, and love.”

“This presence is like a passport to greater life. It is our connection to that Greater Being to which we belong, but which is often buried beneath mundane concerns, bodily desires, emotional disturbances, and mental distractions. Through knowledge, practice, and understanding, this presence can be awakened. Eventually, we will not be without it – whether in speaking or moving, whether in thinking or feeling. Awakening this presence is the most reliable and direct means of cultivating our essential human qualities, of activating everything that we need to meet the conditions of our lives. Presence is the point of intersection between the world of the senses and the world of the Spirit. May we never cease to discover its beauty and power.”

“The heart is not merely a metaphor for an undefined capacity for feeling. The heart is an objective, cognitive power beyond intellect. It is the organ of perception which can know the world of spiritual qualities. It is the heart that can love, that can praise, that can forgive, that can perceive the Divine Majesty. Only the human heart can say yes, can affirm wholeness, can know the Infinite. Guided by its inner discernment, al-Furqan, the heart can apprehend what is Real. As a Hadith Qudsi says: „The heavens and the earth do not contain Me. Only the heart of my faithful servant contains me.“ We need an education of the heart to receive this qualitative knowledge.”

“The essential insight and consistent point of view of Islam is tawhid: the fundamental Oneness underlying all of existence. From the perspective of tawhid, everything is emerging from God, being sustained by God, and ultimately returning to God. This has profound significance for all of our experience within this existence. All areas of human knowledge are related to this fundamental, unifying Truth. Sufism is the science, the objective knowledge, of the souls relationship to God. This science describes an Origin, a downward arc of manifestation, and an upward arc of return. In the arc of manifestation, everything is coming down from God into successive levels of ever denser realities. In the arc of return, we recognize our Origin and begin the journey back toward its light. This essentially means that we ourselves must become more conscious of the light within ourselves. [...] The arc of return calls us to make a journey from darkness and toward the light. The immediate darkness we face around us is the imaginary world created by human ignorance, fear, self-righteousness, and hatred. We must not succumb to the mass heedlessness and self-hypnotism which presents itself to us, mostly through the mass media, as the so-called real world. It is our responsibility to find and act upon the knowledge that can guide us in that journey. This means establishing the truth of tawhid within our own minds and hearts. ~ Essays and talks by Kabir Helminski/Breathe And Remember”

“Love is the essence of this religion. I pray that we will approach all of our questions and concerns, especially the most difficult and intimate questions, with love, in order to be able more and more to solve our problems with love. The Sufi lives in a compassionate and passionate universe, a universe born from a spark of love. (p. 108)”

“There is a knowledge and a practice of connecting ourselves with cosmic Life. It has nothing to do with belief; it is learned. It is increased by our consciousness of it, by our increasing awareness of the abundance of cosmic energy. Life is infinite, and this infinity can be tapped. The only limitation is one of awareness. (p.13 Soul Work, Reflecting Spirit)”