INSPIRING QUOTES

Solo and Dark Retreat quotes

"Men have become the tools of their tools." -Henry David Thoreau

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms..." -Henry David Thoreau

"One day the sun admitted,

I am just a shadow.

I wish I could show you

The Infinite Incandescence

That has cast my brilliant image!

I wish I could show you

When you are lonely or in darkness

The astonishing Light

Of your own Being!"

~ Hafiz

"Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams."

Murasaki Shikibu

Everyone turns their mind to God in adversity, but not in prosperity. If one were to turn to God in prosperity, there would be no room for adversity.

(And so lets turn to darkness when there is plenty of light in our life)

Everybody stays within the limits of the mind - no one has transcended the limits of the mind. Those who have gone beyond, the limits of the mind, they alone knows the joys of life - Kabir

Dear Friend,

Steady my hand,

Still my mind,

And open my heart,

Shed me of my stories,

So I may be a conduit for your love,

So I may see clearly,

Love fiercely,

And be truly alive

- Anonymus

David Whyte's poem Sweet Darkness points out:

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness

to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

The ground of the soul is dark.

-Meister Eckhart

In a sense, mindfulness is the simultaneous practice of concentra­ tion, the ability to stabilize the mind in a state without distraction, and decentration, the ability to open attention to whatever is arising.

"Don't you know yet?

It is your light
that lights the worlds."

DIVE DEEP DOWN INTO SILENCE, DEEPER AND EVER DEEPER UNTIL IT IS REACHED.

Ramana Maharshi