Truth Seeking (Plus a Slew of Killer Quotes)
Saturday, August 23, 2008 
Here are a few quotes I found as I sought a few that relate directly to the topic of a recent post: sharing my meta media, and my belief that the spiritual quest and its ultimate goal are the journey itself, during which we maintain open minds, and not a destination, where folks suddenly believe they have the answers and therefore reject further inquiry.
I like and agree with these quotes, obviously; otherwise, you’d not see them here! These timeless sayings might appeal more to open-minded folks with pluralist or syncretist leanings than those with closed, restricted, dualistic, or fundamentalist views. I hope you enjoy these and that you get something out of these can’t-we-all-just-get-along sayings!
Most of these were found online at sites such as ReligiousTolerance.org.
Beware any ‘Spiritual Path’ that claims to be the one true path to Enlightenment. (Ashlynn) 
My heart is open to all the winds… Wherever God’s caravans turn, The religion of love shall be my religion and my faith. (Aribi, 13th century Sufi traveler and mystic)
God has made different religions to suit different aspirations, times and countries…one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with wholehearted devotion. (Ramakrishna)
Trouble no one about their religion, respect all in their views, and demand that they respect yours. (Chief Tecumseh)
There are many paths up the Mountain, but the view of the moon from the top is the same. (Ancient Japanese saying)
There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions. (Hans Küng)
I believe that love, kindness, compassion, tolerance, and peace can be implanted in the psyche of man only when fear, paranormal illusion and ignorance are removed. We can then shift our attention more to matters of peace, rather than to matters of war. (Peter Retzinger)
When the unreal is taken for the real, the real becomes unreal. (Tsao Hsueh-chin)
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. (Galileo Galilei)
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels. (Goya)
I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! (John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson)
The worst thing you can do to a dogma is give it an empire. (Anon)
People consider themselves to be orthodox, and everyone else to be a heretic. (Anon)
And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the holy books were used to beat plowshares into swords. (Anon)
The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself. (Sir Richard F. Burton)
I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it. (Benjamin Franklin)
A glance at history, or at the pages of any newspaper, reveals that ideas which divide one group of human beings from another, only to unite them in slaughter, generally have their roots in religion. (Sam Harris)
I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another’s creed. I have judged others’ religions by their lives, for it is from our lives and not our words that our religions must be read. …it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. (Thomas Jefferson)
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. (His Holiness the Dalai Lama)
Filed under: Points of View, Religion on August 24th, 2008 | No Comments »

Monday, August 18, 2008
It’s easy to make the assumption that someone using Suboxone must have been an IV drug user. This is not always the case; I have never used morphine or heroin or any such junk, nor have I ever used a needle. My thing was ordering
Knowing there are a bunch of alcoholic and addict types reading this post 









The truth is, I have neglected many things – important things, many would say: health, career, and finances, for example – in order to spend more time exposing myself to knowledge or information in the spiritual vein during the last several months. I have sought to read, watch, and listen to media in the form of books, audio books, web sites, movies, DVDs, etc. that I believed would help me to progress spiritually. I have also sensed sort of a futility and meaninglessness in some of those other “important” things which I believe is one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that I have slacked off in those areas- especially work.