Matt

“All of that stuff is true. All the other worlds that human beings believe in, via group myths or spiritual visitations or even imaginations if they're vivid enough, they exist. Imagining a world creates it, if it isn't already there. That's the great secret of existence: it's supersensitive to thought. Decisions, wishes, lies—that's all you need to create a new universe. Every human being on this planet spins off thousands between birth and death, although there's something about the way our minds work that keeps us from noticing. In every moment, we're continually moving in multiple dimensions—we think we're sitting still, but we're actually falling from one universe to the next to the next, so fast that it all blends together like . . . like animation. Except there's a lot more than just images flipping past.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“For the Christian, the sacred doctrine is revealed theology; for the Jew and the Muslim, the sacred doctrine is, at least primarily, the legal interpretation of the Divine Law (talmud or fiqh). The sacred doctrine in the latter sense has, to say the least, much less in common with philosophy than the sacred doctrine in the former sense. It is ultimately for this reason that the status of philosophy was, as a matter of principle, much more precarious in Judaism and in Islam than in Christianity: in Christianity philosophy became an integral part of the officially recognized and even required training of the student of the sacred doctrine. This difference explains partly the eventual collapse of philosophic inquiry in the Islamic and in the Jewish world, a collapse which has no parallel in the Western Christian world.”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

“It is here, in the secret recesses of the heart, that the relationship with the Beloved takes place. He was always here, waiting to be born into consciousness. But we need to prepare ourself for this meeting, we need to align ourself to the inner vibrations of the Self. How can you notice your invisible lover when your consciousness is filled with the outer world? How can you enter the sacred space of your own heart wearing boots muddied with the desires of the ego? Here lies the esoteric meaning of the immaculate conception. For the Beloved to be conceived as a living presence we need to go through a process of inner purification. (p. 29)”
― Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Bond with the Beloved: The Mystical Relationship of the Lover & the Beloved

“Some may be inspired to respectfully adorn the body of a bodhisattva with sandalwood powder, while others may prefer to throw lava on the bodhisattva's head, yet both affect the bodhisattva equally. May the mind of equanimity be developed.
—Prajñāpāramitāsañcayagāthā (Gathering of Precious Qualities)”
― Pema Lungtok Gyatso, Dudjom Lingpa's Chöd: An Ambrosia Ocean of Sublime Explanations