“Love Everything!”

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything you will perceive the divine mystery in things. And once you have perceived it you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly, more and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an abiding universal love.”

- The Elder Zosima, from Doestoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

Ya Haqq!

‘…sustain the flow of a sacred Name.”

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“Whenever you possibly can, sustain the flow of a sacred Name. To repeat His name is to be in His presence. If you associate with the Supreme Friend, He will reveal His true being to you.”

- Sri Anandmayi Ma

 

Prayer of Mother Cabrini

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“From the moment I became acquainted with You I was so enchanted by Your beauty that I followed You. The more I love You, it seems the less I love You, because I want to love You more. I can bear it no longer. Expand, expand my heart! … O Jesus, Jesus Love, help always Your poor miserable one, Your miserable little bride, and carry her always in Your arms…. I love You, I love You so very, very much.”

- Mother Cabrini

Ya Haqq!

The Prayer before Prayer

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“O Allah, place within my heart light, and upon my tongue light, and within my ears light, and within my eyes light, and place behind me light and in front of me light and above me light and beneath me light. O Allah, bestow upon me light.”

- Du’a (prayer) before going to the Mosque (Masjid).

Ya Haqq!

A Lesson in Compassion

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

- Pema Chodron

The Gate of Repentence

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

A man once came to Ibn Mas‘ud and asked him: “I have repeatedly committed a major sin – can there be any repentance for me?” Ibn Mas‘ud turned away, and the man saw that his eyes had filled with tears. He said: “Paradise has eight gates, and each one of them is sometimes open and sometimes shut, with the exception of the Gate of Repentance, which is held open eternally by an angel who never leaves that place. So do not despair!’”

Ya Haqq!

Note: Also, see post on The Eight Gates of Paradise.

“… in need of the alms of my own kindness…”

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ – all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself – that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness – that I myself am the enemy who must be loved – what then? As a rule, the Christian’s attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us “Raca,” and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.”

-Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Note:  Raca, a Biblical term of Aramaic origin used in Matthew 5:22. Its meaning is “worthless”, “vain”, “empty”. It is a word of contempt towards an object that is depised.