The Enlightened Heart Quotes

“I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside!”
― Stephen Mitchell, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry – Divine Verses from Rumi, Blake, Dickinson, and World Mystical Traditions

“One instant is eternity;
eternity is the now.
When you see through this one instant,
you see through the one who sees. The Great Way has no gate;
there are a thousand paths to it.
If you pass through the barrier,
you walk the universe alone.”
― Stephen Mitchell, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry – Divine Verses from Rumi, Blake, Dickinson, and World Mystical Traditions

“Holy Spirit,
giving life to all life,
moving all creatures,
root of all things,
washing them clean,
wiping out their mistakes,
healing their wounds,
you are our true life,
luminous, wonderful,
awakening the heart
from its ancient sleep.”
― Stephen Mitchell, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry – Divine Verses from Rumi, Blake, Dickinson, and World Mystical Traditions

“You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.”
― Stephen Mitchell, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry – Divine Verses from Rumi, Blake, Dickinson, and World Mystical Traditions

“Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings,
vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle,
unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat.
Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue
utter it; only in deep absorption can the mind,
grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth.”
― Stephen Mitchell, The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry – Divine Verses from Rumi, Blake, Dickinson, and World Mystical Traditions