Look Within

If you cannot find the truth where you are,
Where do you expect to find it?
Truth is not far away; it is ever present.
It is not something to be attained
Since not one of your steps leads away from it.
Dogen

You who want knowledge seek the Oneness within. There you will find the clear mirror already waiting.  Hadewijch of Antwerp

Too late have I loved Thee, Beauty so old and yet so new, too late have I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I without, and there I sought Thee; and in my deformity rushed amidst those beauteous forms which Thou hadst made. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee. My life shall wholly live, as wholly full of Thee.  St. Augustine

Turn to thy heart, and thy heart will find its Saviour, its God, within itself.  William Law

I gazed into my own heart; there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.  Rumi

Hakuin's whole life was shining the light onto the place where he stood.  Abbot Amakuki

Our being here is our eternal being. Many people imagine here to have creaturely being, and divine being to be yonder. It is a popular delusion.  Meister Eckhart

If thine eyes were opened, then in that very place where thou standest, sittest, or liest, thou sholdst see the glorious Countenance of Face of God and the whole heavenly Gate.  Boehme

People seek it far away -- what a pity! They are like him who, in the midst of water, cries out in thirst so imploringly.  Hakuin

Look within; within is the fountain of all good. Such a fountain, where springing waters can never fail, so thou dig deeper and deeper.  Marcus Aurelius

God dwells in the inmost heart of man. We shall find Him within ourselves, if we will only enter in and seek him there.  John Nicholas Grou

To mount to God is to enter into oneself. Albertus Magnus 

Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.  Emerson

The true Buddha sits in the interior.  Chao-chou T'sung-shen

A man has many skins in himself covering the depths of his heart. Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, just like an ox's or a bear's, so thick and hard, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.  Meister Eckhart

If a person looks at the Heavens before he gazes within himself, he is liable to fall into a hunter’s trap. Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk

I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came - arising I know not from where - the current which I dare to call my life. Teilhard de Chardin. 

If you would know God, and worship and serve God as you should do, you must come to the means He has ordained and given for that purpose. Some seek it in books, some in learned men, but what they look for is in themselves, yet they overlook it. The voice is too still, the Seed too small, and the Light shineth in darkness…. The woman that lost her silver found it at home after she had lighted her candle and swept her house. Do you so too, and you shall find what Pilate wanted to know, viz., Truth. The Light of Christ within, who is the Light of the world, and so a light to you that tells you the truth of your condition, leads all that take heed unto it out of darkness into God’s marvelous light; for light grows upon the obedient. William Penn. 

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you. Jesus. 

The only journey is the one within. Rilke.  

God made the senses turn outwards, man therefore looks outwards, not into himself. But occasionally a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself. He is the imperishable among things that perish. Life of all life, He, though one, satisfies every man’s desire. He that dare discover Him within, knows peace; what other dare know peace?” Katha Upanishad 

Turn inward
for all thy arts
thy will not find the Stone
in foreign parts
Angelus Silesius 

The only useful purpose of the present birth is to turn within and realise the Self. Ramana Maharshi 

Thou seest, hearest, and feelest nothing of God, because thou seekest for Him abroadwith thy outward Eyes, thou seekest for Him in Books, in Controversies, in the Church, and outward Exercises, but there thou wilt not find him, till thou hast first found Him in thy Heart. William Law  

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