Sunday Reflections — The journey inwards with Khalil Gibran
This week, Sunday Reflections brings you insightful quotes from the works of poet, author and visual artist Khalil Gibran:
“At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all my soul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my ignorance upon the shore.”
“My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me never to delight in praise or to be distressed by reproach. Before my Soul taught me, I doubted the value of my accomplishments until the passing days sent someone who would extol or disparage them. But now I know that trees blossom in the spring and give their fruits in the summer without any desire for accolades. And they scatter their leaves abroad in the fall and denude themselves in the winter without fear of reproof.”
“In the autumn I gathered all my sorrows and buried them in my garden. And when April returned and spring came to wed the earth, there grew in my garden beautiful flowers unlike all other flowers. And my neighbors came to behold them, and they all said to me, “When autumn comes again, at seeding time, will you not give us of the seeds of these flowers that we may have them in our gardens?”
“Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.”
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the same well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?”
“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”
“In the depths of your hopes and desires, lies your silent knowledge of the beyond, and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.”
“All things in this creation exist within you and all things in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and the closest things, and there is no distance between you and the farthest things, and all things, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are within you as equal things.”
“In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence.”
“And before my Soul took me to task I was hard of hearing; I heard only tumult and uproar. But now I am all ears listening to the silence and its choirs singing the hymns of time, intoning the praises of the firmament, revealing the secrets of the invisible.”
This selection is from online resources in the public domain.
