Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others....
Ambient sounds, especially with words, occupy about 5-10% of your intellectual bandwidth. By wearing ear protectors, you acoustically isolate yourself. This freed up bandwidth can now be focused on the desired task. It's a great deal. Just put on som...
Love is fireworks. It’s the first dance. It’s the first kiss. It’s the first time you make love. It’s the first hateful word. It’s the first fight. It’s the first tear you shed. It’s the first time you made up.
Dead. The words fall from my tongue and linger there like poison. A slow death hanging from my lips. I shake the thought away and swallow but I can still taste the remnants in the back of my throat. It's sour and I gag a little as tears swell behind ...
He was no lover in a worldly sense; the only love he knew was that of divine understanding, of taking a whole life into its depths as if they were his own. From this, the greatest pain, the greatest happiness is born: the hope that we too will one da...
The daily mindfulness, consistency, and discipline is ultimately more important than the amount of time. In other words, it’s more about quality than quantity. If you use 15 minutes effectively, you’ll accomplish more than you would be able to wi...
She loved him, more than she could ever find words for, but this love he felt for her was not quite the same. It wasn't so much stronger, as more demanding, more insistent. As though he feared he would lose that which he had finally won.
Alice started to cry. It came with no sound, no shuddering, no childlike hysterics, just a soul-deep release that turned into moisture and dripped down her puffy pink cheeks. She touched her tears, frowning. Then she looked up at Julia and whimpered ...
The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak...
...a woman, silent, voiceless, a mere woman who didn't bear on her shoulders the enormous responsibility of building the conquest with her words. A woman, who, contrary to what would be expected, felt relief in reclaiming her condition of submission,...
All the accounts of the burial of Jesus are somber, laced through with the silence of grief, the shock that violence does to one's soul, even experienced vicariously in the body of another who is loved. They are written as though they are dirges, lam...
Rahul’s great idea, he said that having either darkness or too much white made someone’s sanity decay and made them easier to manipulate. In the dark, though, they felt they could hide, and in Rahul’s words... 'They can hide, but they can’t r...
Once upon a time the fairy tales begin. But then they end and often you don't know really what has happened, what was meant to happen, you only know what you've been told, what the words suggest.
How had it come about that these particular designs were chosen as our letters? Who decreed what sound would accompany each shape? And how was it decided the manner they would come together to form a word? 'Why is this so?' I demanded to know.
I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretence invented b...
At another time she asked,'what is a soul?' ' No one knows,'I replied; 'but we know it is not the body, and it is that part of us which thinks and loves and hopes'...[and] is invisible...'But if I write what my soul thinks,'she said, 'then it will be...
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me. Bones mend and become actually stronger in the very place they were broken and where they have knitted up; mental wounds can grind and ooze for decades and be re-opened by the quiet...
Unni will come, if not today, then tomorrow. Today is nearly gone, but other todays stir fecund in the word tomorrow, many other todays when this one has lapsed from existence. And because I think of Unni, invoking his name in this for ever recurrent...
The Romans feared their dead. In fact, Roman funeral customs derived from a need to propitiate the sensibilities of the departed. The very word funus may be translated as dead body, funeral ceremony, or murder. There was a genuine concern that, if no...
As a general rule, desire is always marketable: we don’t do anything but sell, buy, exchange desires. . . . And I think of Bloy’s words: “there is nothing perfectly beautiful except what is invisible and above all unbuyable.
A person less fortunate than yourself deserves the best you can give. Because of duty, and honor, and service. You understand those words? You should do your job right, and you should do it well, simply because you can, without looking for notice or ...
