#lighten

For thousands of years humans were oppressed— as some of us still are— by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea.* Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun. And that the stars were very far away. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#greece #ionia #knowledge #learning #reality

From a mind filled with infinite love comes the power to create infinite possibilities. We have the power to think in ways that reflect and attract all the love in the world. Such thinking is called enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a process we work toward, but a choice available to us in any instant. ↗

— Marianne Williamson

#love #potential #present-moment #love

When you love yourself, utterly and completely, all of yourself, what you will discover then is that you love others, all others, utterly and completely. ↗

— T. Scott McLeod

#love #loving-others #loving-your-fellow-man #love

In short, the Enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any "broader good" such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#marriage #the-enlightenment #love

It's not our mission to change or direct another person's path. There is no wrong way or right way. We each have our own life journey and our mission is to just become a LIGHT that enlightens other people's pathways. ↗

— Jan Mckingley Hilado

#inspirational #journey #light #mission #path

The Jews are a race and not a religion. My goal was not to persecute the Jews but to enlighten Gentiles to put them on guard. ↗

— Julius Streicher

#gentiles #goal #guard #jews #persecute

Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity. ↗

— William Howard Taft

#adequate #basis #effort #enlightened #enterprise

The burden of the self is lightened with I laugh at myself. ↗

— Rabindranath Tagore

#i #laugh #lightened #myself #self

Personally I believe that the courses we followed for some years after World War II were enlightened, surprisingly imaginative and extremely effective. ↗

— David Bruce

#believe #courses #effective #enlightened #extremely

I was tired in the evening yesterday. I felt drained by the last days outer conflicts. I felt separated from life. Suddenly I heard the wind blowing through the trees outside my open window, whispering a silent and playful invitation: "Do you want to play? Do you want to join the dance?" This playful invitation again joined my heart and being with the Existential dance. I was again in a silent prayer and oneness with life. ↗

— Swami Dhyan Giten

#existence #god #life #meditation #one-with-life