“You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You’re not meant to crawl, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.”
‘You sit here for days saying: this is a strange case. You are the strange company. You have the energy of the sun within you, but you keep tying it to the base of your spine. You’re a strange kind of gold that wants to stay melted in the furnace so you don’t have to become coins.
“Why should I stay at the bottom of a well when I have a strong rope in my hand?”
“Become heaven. Take an ax to the prison wall. Escape.”
‘Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript of a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look within yourself; everything you want, you already are.”
2. Your job is to live your life in a way that makes sense to you, and not to “them.”
“Start a big, silly project like Noah… it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
3. Never give up on yourself.
“When you’re going through a difficult time, when everything seems to be going against you, … when you feel like you can’t hold on for another minute, NEVER GIVE UP! Because it is the time and place where the course will change!”
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your home, allowing new joy to find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the branch of your heart so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots so that new, hidden roots have room to grow. Whatever sadness shakes from your heart, much better things will take its place.”
‘Dance, if you are broken open. Dance, once you’ve torn off the bandage. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you are completely free.”
“Ignorance is God’s prison. Knowing is God’s palace.”
5. The treasures found outside of you don’t even compare to the treasures found within you.
“You wander from room to room, hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!”
‘If you knew yourself for even a moment, if you could catch a glimpse of your most beautiful face, perhaps you wouldn’t slumber so deeply in that house of clay. Why not move into your home of joy and shine in every crevice! For you are the secret Treasure Bearer, and always have been. Didn’t you know?”
“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask everything of yourself.”
“Why are you so enchanted by this world, when there is a gold mine inside you?”
“You go from village to village on your horse and ask everyone, “Has anyone seen my horse?”
“Don’t knock on any door like a beggar. Extend your long hand to another door, beyond where you go on the street, the street where everyone says, “How are you?” and no one says: How are you?
“There is a fountain inside you. Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.”
6. When you let go of who you are, you become who you could be.
“Knock, and He will open the door, disappear, and He will make you shine as the sun falls, and He will raise you to heaven, become nothing, and He will change you into everything.”
“Forget safety. Live where you are afraid to live. Destroy your reputation. Be infamous.”
“Don’t be satisfied with stories about how others have fared. Unfold your own myth.”
“Set your life on fire. Find those who fan your flames.”
“Be melting snow. Wash yourself from yourself.”
7. There is something you can do better than anyone else.
“Everyone is made for a certain work, and the desire for that work is placed in everyone’s heart.”
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help heal someone’s soul. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
8. You don’t have to see the entire staircase, just take the first step.
“When you start walking along the way, the road appears.”
9. When you commit to something, do it with all your heart.
‘Half-heartedness does not reach majesty. You go looking for God, but then you dwell for a long time at small-minded roadside restaurants.’
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving within you, a joy. When action comes from another section, the feeling disappears.”
“Wherever you are and whatever you do, be in love.”
10. Good things come to an end, so that better things can come together.
“Don’t grieve. Everything you lose comes back in another form.”
11. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
“What hurts you blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”
“Where there are ruins, there is hope of treasure.”
“Do not turn away. Keep your gaze focused on the connected spot. That’s where the light comes into you.”
‘Sorrow can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through it all, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s quest for love and wisdom.”
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
12. Do what you love and do it with love.
“Let the beauty we love be what we do.”
“Let yourself be quietly carried away by the stronger pull of what you truly love.”
“So focus on what you really value and let the thief take something else.”
13. Think less. Feel more.
“Reason is powerless in the expression of love.”
“Let your thoughts sleep, do not let them cast a shadow over the moon of your heart. Let go of thinking.”
“Only from the heart can you touch heaven.”
“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be lit. There is an emptiness in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?”
“Be free from worries. Consider who created thought! Why do you stay in jail when the door is so wide open?
14. Love is worth it all.
“Gam everything for love, if you’re a real person. If not, please leave this meeting.”
“Let the lover be shameful, mad and absent-minded. A sober person will worry that events will go badly. Let the lover be.”
15. Appreciate both the good and the bad in your life.
“Be thankful for whoever comes, for everyone has been sent from outside as a guide.”
“If you get irritated by every friction, how do you get polished?”
“When someone hits a carpet, the blows are not against the carpet, but against the dust in it.”
16. You change your world by changing yourself.
“Yesterday I was smart, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I change myself.”
17. We are made of love and made to love.
“We were born of love; Love is our mother. “
“Your job is not to look for love, but only to look for and find all the barriers within yourself that you have erected against it.”
“Through love all that is bitter will be sweet, through love all that is brass will be gold, through love all the lees will become wine, through love all pain will be turned into medicine.”
“I have no companion but Love, no beginning, no end, no dawn. The Soul calls from me: ‘You, ignorant of the way of Love, free Me.’ “
“What is untrue troubles the heart, but the truth brings joyful rest.”
18. Your soul is not of this world, but your body is.
‘I think about it all day long, and at night I say it. Where do I come from and what should I do? I have no idea. My soul comes from somewhere else, I’m sure, and I intend to end up there.”
“If I die, I will ascend with the angels, and if I die before the angels, you cannot imagine what I will become.”
19. At the soul level we are all ONE.
“All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. The light from the sun looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall, and a lot different on this other one, but it’s still one light.
“What can I say, O Muslims, I do not know myself, I am neither a Christian, nor a Jew, nor a Zoroastrian, nor a Muslim.”
“I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.”
20. Your soul is more precious than anything.
“You know the value of every commodity, but if you do not know the value of your own soul, it is all folly.”
21. Choose your life partner wisely.
“Take someone who doesn’t keep score, who doesn’t want to get richer, or is afraid of losing, who doesn’t have even the slightest interest in his own personality: he is free.”