To go beyond the self, beyond even its most intimate union with God, and this is where we enter yet another new life- a life best categorized, perhaps, as a life without a self.
BERNADETTE ROBERTSWhen there is no longer a cyclone, there is no longer an eye. So the storms, crises and sufferings of life are a way of finding the eye.
More Bernadette Roberts Quotes
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To be forgiven is not enough; we must put an end to the very need to be forgiven.
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Only God is love, and for this love to be fully realized self must step aside. And not only do we not need a self to love God, but for the same reason we do not need a mind to know him, for that in us which knows God, is God.
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This is the step beyond our highest experiences of love and union, a step in which self is not around to divide, separate, objectify or claim anything for itself. Self does not know God; it cannot love him, and from the beginning has never done so.
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Spiritual life is like a moving sidewalk. Whether you go with it or spend your whole life running against it, you’re still going to be taken along.
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It can no longer be tested by any force or trial, nor moved by the winds of change, and at this point the self has obviously outworn its function; it is no longer needed or useful, and life can go on without it.
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When there is no longer a cyclone, there is no longer an eye. So the storms, crises and sufferings of life are a way of finding the eye.
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When one is perfectly still-mind and body, silent and alone-there is no personality to speak of, thus personality is one’s unique way of expression, it is what others see and know of us, nothing more or deeper than that.
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But coming home that day, walking downhill with a panorama of valley and hills before me, I turned my gaze inward, and what I saw, stopped me in my tracks.
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Since the moment of self-consciousness comes to a permanent end – and a new journey begins- is such a decisive stroke or milestone in the contemplative life.
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…a point is reached where the self is so completely aligned with the still-point that it can no longer be moved, even in its first movements, from this center.
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My purpose here is to affirm that the unitive state is a hidden path in itself, a movement in its own right that ultimately leads to no-self (no true-self and no-union). In short, the unitive state is the hidden path to no-self.
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In some ways, all our experiences of God are beyond belief, because all conceptual beliefs pale when compared to the experiential reality.
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This journey then, is nothing more, yet nothing less than a period of acclimating to a new way of seeing, a time of transition and revelation as it gradually comes upon “that” which remains when there is no self. this is not a journey for those who expect love and bliss.
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The reflexive mechanism of the mind -or whatever it is that allows us to be self-conscious – is cut off or permanently suspended so the mind is ever after held in a fixed now moment out of which it cannot move in its uninterrupted gaze upon the Unknown
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I went on to discover that in its deepest sense, the will is not primarily the faculty of desire for anything known, but rather, the desire for something unknown, animate desire for something that lies beyond ourselves, a longing for something we know is missing in us.
BERNADETTE ROBERTS