“I am in desperate need of help—or I’ll go crazy. We’re living in a single room, my wife, my children and my in-laws. So our nerves are on edge, we yell and scream at one another. The room is a hell.”

     “Do you promise to do whatever I tell you?” said the Master gravely.

     “I swear I shall do anything.”

     “Very well. How many animals do you have?”

     “A cow, a goat and six chickens.”

     “Take them all into the room with you. Then come back after a week.”

     The disciple was appalled. But he had promised to obey! So he took the animals in. A week later he came back, a pitiable figure moaning, “I’m a nervous wreck. The dirt! The stench! The noise! We’re all on the verge of madness!”

     “Go back,” said the Master, “and put the animals out.”

     The man ran all the way home. And came back the following day, his eyes sparkling with joy. “How sweet life is! The animals are out. The home is a paradise—so quiet and clean and roomy!”

– Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

 Source: http://lazarus.trinityjanesville.org/demello.htm

     “The whole spiritual process is just this: that you are willing to take the next step not knowing where it will lead you. If you are not ready for that, that means you are not ready for any new possibility.”

― Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8519765-the-whole-spiritual-process-is-just-this-that-you-are

     I believe that everyone and anyone can know God.  It’s this belief that has allowed my relationship with God to flourish and prosper, and open my eyes and heart to the love of God.

— Excerpted from The Truth as I See It: A Collection of Spiritual Writings by Adam Soto (p. 39)

 

Copyright 2018 Golden Rule Independent Publications

     My experiences of God have been of a love so perfect it’s hard to describe.  I know that we’re imperfect beings, and I know that it’s impossible to fully describe our feelings and experiences, but I will never believe that it’s impossible to know God.  What God wants us to know we can know without any limits, our own imperfections aside.  Our minds and our bodies may be imperfect, they may cease and fade away, but our souls can understand what our minds cannot.

— Excerpted from The Truth as I See It: A Collection of Spiritual Writings by Adam Soto (p. 39)

 

Copyright 2018 Golden Rule Independent Publications

     “Unconditional love is not based on the performance of the receiver, but on the character of the giver.”

-Jack Frost

Source: https://www.yourtango.com/2017301798/12-unconditional-love-quotes-why-radical-acceptance-matters

     Perfect love, I realized, is the only thing that can bring us together, whether it’s in our relationship with God or our relationships with those around us.  That’s the ultimate function of love anyways, isn’t it … to bring about unity?  Deep down, isn’t that what we all want in life, to love and be loved, and through this sharing, find peace, joy, and unity?  In my experience, that’s what God wants, too.

     That’s why the idea of an eternal hell is a foreign concept to me now.  For hell to exist, it would mean that God would have to say, “I’m sorry … it’s too late.  You had your chance.  We can never be together now.”  A God of perfect love would never do that.  Hell would show a limitation to God’s love.

     Although we’re all free to choose our own paths in life, I believe that no matter how long it takes, the power of love and God will unify even the most resistant soul, until all are One.

— Excerpted from The Truth as I See It: A Collection of Spiritual Writings by Adam Soto (p. 38)

 

Copyright 2018 Golden Rule Independent Publications

     So I thought to myself, “What’s the problem here?  Why is there still so much hatred and separation in the world?”

     The problem, I came to realize, is that most religions are all too willing to define the limits of God’s love.  You’re either saved or not saved, righteous or unrighteous, Jew or Gentile, sinner or saint.  But is this really the way God sees things?  Can a being of perfect love ever not love?

     To me, the answer is no.  If it were “yes,” then it wouldn’t be perfect love at all, it would be something else.  And so I thought, “That’s it!  Perfect love!  God’s love is perfect!  It has no limits!”

     Although I already knew this to be true and I had seen the words “perfect love” together many times, I had never thought about it as a spiritual concept before.  It described God more completely than any other way I had come across.  It was clear to me then that this was the “Good News” Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount.  This was the kind of love that made so much sense to me as a teenager.  This was the kind of love I had experienced from God.

— Excerpted from The Truth as I See It: A Collection of Spiritual Writings by Adam Soto (p. 38)

 

Copyright 2018 Golden Rule Independent Publications

     The Master explained to his disciples that Enlightenment would come if they achieved non-interpretative looking.

     What, they wanted to know, was interpretative looking.

     This is how the Master explained it:

     A couple of Catholic laborers were hard at work on the road in front of a brothel when they saw a rabbi slink into the house of ill repute.

     “Well, what can you expect?” they said to each other.

     After a while a parson slipped in.  No surprise.  “What can you expect?”

     Then comes the local Catholic priest who covers his face with a cloak just before he dives into the building.  “Now isn’t that dreadful?  One of the girls must have taken ill.”

– Anthony de Mello, One Minute Nonsense

     During my explorations of love, I studied many religions and many bibles, and read books on a wide range of religious beliefs.   There are many similarities in the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, and many others, with much to be gained from all of them.  Although these religions have their differences, it’s clear that at the core of each of them is a message of love.

— Excerpted from The Truth as I See It: A Collection of Spiritual Writings by Adam Soto (p. 37)

 

Copyright 2018 Golden Rule Independent Publications

“Truth, like gold, is to be attained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”

– Leo Tolstoy

Source: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/leo_tolstoy_122214