A Quote by Shams Tabrizi
The words we use for the Creator are a reflect of ourselves. If we think of God as fear and shame, we are scared and have something to be ashamed of ... But if we see love, compassion and kindness, it is because we possess these qualities.
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How we see God is a direct reflection of how we see ourselves. If God brings to mind mostly fear and blame, it means there is too much fear and blame welled inside us. If we see God as full of love and compassion, so are we.
(You do not have to be shamed in my closeness. Family are the people who must never make you feel ashamed.) (You are wrong. Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.) (And you are deserving of shame?) (I am. I am trying to tell you.) 'We were stupid,' he said, 'because we believed in things.' 'Why is this stupid?' 'Because there are not things to believe in.' (Love?) (There is no love. Only the end of love.) (Goodness?) (Do not be a fool.) (God?) (If God exists, He is not to be believed in.)
What is most important is to go deep into ourselves and discover the loving kindness and compassion of the buddha within - the awakened nature we all possess.
In daily practice, reflect on the benefits of love, compassion and kindness, then reflect on the disadvantages of anger. Such continuous contemplation, the growing appreciation of love, has the effect of reducing our inclination towards hatred and increasing our respect for love. By this means even anger can be diminished.
God is all-loving, all-knowing and everywhere, and we possess those qualities. We are actually extremely powerful beings, yet we seem to fear being powerful so we hold ourselves back. However, in truth, we are one with God and each other. The belief that we are separated from God and other people is just that: a belief.
Because you’re a creation of God, you reflect the Divine qualities of creativity, wisdom, and love.
What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness. In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The I and the you vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved.
I'm motivated by fear. Fear of fear. I hate being scared to do something. And I think what developed in my early days was the attitude that I started attacking things that I was scared of.
Well, I think when we can turn to the person sitting next to us and really see them with kindness and see ourselves reflected back - when there's some dignity and compassion traveling back and forth.
We can’t save ourselves from fear by seeking safety, because safety always means there’s something to be safe from-in other words, something to fear. The way out of fear isn’t safety. It’s freedom.
The sun shines equally on diamond and charcoal, but the former has developed qualities that enable it to reflect the sunlight brilliantly, while the latter is unable to reflect the sunlight. Emulate the diamond in your dealings with people. Brightly reflect the light of God's love.
The Refinement of Shame. People are not ashamed to think something foul, but they are ashamed when they think these foul thoughts are attributed to them.
I have long believed that there are fundamentally two forces or emotions that drive our decisions - love and fear. Love has its many manifestations: compassion, gratitude, kindness, and joy. Fear often manifests in cynicism, anger, jealousy, and anxiety. I worry that many of our communities are being driven by fear.
Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.
There's no shame in a bronze medal. I used to think that, and I'm so ashamed of thinking that because there's so much joy and hard work and love in this.
We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
