Thoughts for the week:

March 17  MIRACLES 

Now what, after all, is a miracle? Those who deny the possibility of miracles on the ground that the universe is a perfect system of law and order, to the operation of which there can be no exceptions, are perfectly right. But the explanation is that the world of which we are normally aware, and with whose laws alone most people are acquainted, is only a fragment of the whole universe as it really is; and that there is such a thing as appealing from a lower to a higher law—from a lesser to a greater expression. In the sense of a real breach of law, miracles are impossible. Yet, in the sense that all ordinary rules and limitations of the physical plane can be set aside or overridden by an understanding that has risen about them, miracles can and do happen.

Fox, Emmet. Around the Year with Emmet Fox . HarperOne. Kindle Edition. (Excerpt)

When the brain is calm, in a state of profound serenity, then the human microcosm is a perfect and harmonious image of the macrocosm. The moment our consciousness creates the slightest concept, produces the least discriminatory notion, the harmony disappears.

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It is a truism that suffering is nourished, maintained, increased by mental rumination. Suffering is always the thought that one is suffering. And then one suffers even more. By letting one's thoughts pass by, in meditation, one can cut the roots of suffering... When one has learned this, things become relative again, as they should be.

Taisen Deshimaru, The Ring of the Way