Casimir

It seems to me that we face very grave crises indeed, and that if we are to survive, we need not just a few new measures but a complete change of heart and mind

[Dr Rudolf Steiner @RudolfStein2026]

"He who tries to withdraw from the sacred tasks of this Earth and escape into another world may be sure he never reaches his goal."

The spiritual world is not a refuge for those who feel "too elevated" for ordinary life.
It is the hidden source of ordinary life.

And the purpose of spiritual development is not to abandon Earth — but to return to it transformed.

You ascend through meditation, concentration, self-knowledge and moral development.
But then you must descend again.

Because Earth is where your insight becomes action.
Where thoughts become deeds.
Where ideals become reality.
Where freedom is tested.
Where Love becomes more than an idea.

This is why Dr Steiner warns against treating the spiritual world as a “higher” realm meant to replace earthly existence.

The moment you think, “I am too spiritual for ordinary life,” your development becomes disharmonious.

You separate yourself from the very world in which your spiritual knowledge is meant to become effective.

The real path is rhythmic:

Ascend.
Receive.
Descend.
Transform.
Ascend again.

Like breathing.

The ascent gives meaning.
The descent gives responsibility.

Without ascent, you sink into materialism, habit and unconsciousness.
Without descent, you drift into spiritual intoxication, detachment, and illusion.

One leads toward spiritual sleep.
The other toward spiritual fantasy.

The human being stands between both.

Below us is the pull toward fear, instinct, egoism and sleep.
Above us is the temptation to dissolve into abstraction and escape the concrete world.

The task is neither to fall downward nor flee upward —
but to become a bridge.

To take what is discovered inwardly and incarnate it outwardly.

To turn fear into courage.
Dreaminess into wakefulness.
Cold intelligence into moral thinking.
Spiritual experience into earthly responsibility.

Earth is not a prison.
It is a task.

You are here because consciousness must learn to act within matter without becoming imprisoned by it.

The highest spiritual insight is not what carries you furthest away from life —
but what enables you to return to life with greater clarity, freedom, courage, and Love.

The spiritual world gives you the light.
Earth gives you somewhere to shine it.

Initiation is not escaping.
It is transformation.
It is participation.
It is service.

What part of the Earth is waiting for your light?

[God/Brahman is the Ocean of Love/all-Consciousness @GodBrahman]

Lama Surya Das

“What we seek is so close that we overlook it; so good that we can’t believe it’s true; so transparent that we see right through and don’t notice it; and so interior that, even in this materialistic era of instant gratification, no matter where we turn we can’t get it from outside.”
https://t.co/2xtm8I5ihy

[Casimir @lsdimkaffee]

@ignisanimae Energy is so HEAVY

[blue @bluewmist]

You're unhappy because you do nothing worth being proud of. You haven't done anything hard in months. You haven't made anything. Fought for anything. Dared anything. You coast, consume, complain, and repeat. Then you wonder why life feels empty. Fulfillment comes from building something that outlives your moods.

[Father Christopher @FChristopher77]

“A mind dependent on the news is a lost mind. It jumps from one piece of news to another, from one tragedy to another, and in the end it no longer has the strength for repentance. Cut off this curiosity once and for all. Let the entire world die for you, and you die for the world, so that you may rise together with Christ in silence.”

Saint Joseph the Hesychast

[Binary Bodhi @binarybodhi]

Adi Shankaracharya's final 5 warnings before leaving his body 2000 years later, still undefeated:

1. Pleasure is a trap dressed as reward, chase it and you chain yourself.
2. You are not this body; that belief alone is the root of every fear you've ever felt.
3. Stop arguing to win, it only feeds the ego, never the soul.
4. Hunger is a disease, food is medicine, stop treating it like entertainment.
5. Nothing is yours, not the house, not the money, not the praise. Let go before it lets go of you.

He said this. Then he left.
We're still scrolling.

[Europe-Action @EuroAction]

“There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet...”

- J.R.R. Tolkien

[Nick Hinton @NickHintonn]

You don’t overcome the darkness by fighting it. You focus on what’s good, true, and beautiful.

[NEPSIS @nepsisblog]

"The nous's being in the likeness of God resides in its justice, truthfulness, love, sympathy and compassion. When these qualities are energized and guarded in a person, that which is in the image and likeness of God is clearly manifest in him..."

Agios Niketas Stethatos
"On Spiritual Knowledge", No. 8

[ⲕⲁⲣⲟⲗ ♱ @byzantinecopt]

when God brought into being natures endowed with intelligence & intellect He communicated to them, in His supreme goodness, four of the divine attributes by which He sustains, protects & preserves created things. these attributes are being, eternal being, goodness & wisdom. of the four He granted the first two, being & eternal being, to their essence, & the second two, goodness & wisdom, to their volitive faculty, so that what He is in His essence the creature may become by participation. this is why man is said to have been created in the image & likeness of God (gen. 1:26). he is made in the image of God, since his being is in the image of God's being, and his eternal being is in the image of God's eternal being (in the sense that, though not without origin, it is nevertheless without end). he is also made in the likeness of God, since he is good in the likeness of God's goodness, & wise in the likeness of God's wisdom, God being good and wise by nature, & man by grace. every intelligent nature is in the image of God, but only the good & the wise attain His likeness.

~ st. maximus the confessor, four hundred texts on love

[Thoughts Are Seeds @thoughtsRseeds]

Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny-he or she has something to fulfill, some message that has to be delivered, some work that has to be completed. You are not here accidentally-you are here meaningfully.

~ Osho

[//ɍØᵽɇx @null_ropex]

your sense of what remains possible got calibrated during a period when your capabilities were substantially lower, and the calibration never updated because updating requires attempting things the old settings classify as impossible. the boundary stays exactly where a much weaker version of you drew it. periodically running an experiment specifically designed to fail reveals how much of the perimeter has been maintained by nothing except the absence of testing, and how much territory has been sitting unclaimed on the other side of an assumption nobody renewed

[Sophia Apologetics ♱ @orthodox22790]

Today is the feast of the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor 📿

The feast of the transfiguration (μεταμορφώσεις) reveals the pinnacle of repentance (μετάνοια) and both words share the same etymology; μετάνοια is μεταμορφώσεις.

μεταμορφοῦσθε τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοός
be transformed by the renewal of your mind (epistle to the romans 12:2).

Now, God didn’t become incarnate merely to destroy death, but to elevate our nature. The Incarnation wasn’t a “Plan B”. God intended to become incarnate even if Adam and Eve had never fallen.

It was God's will from the beginning to one day dwell & enter amongst His own creation & experience the world He had made.

He made Adam in His own image for that reason. So that Adam would be the host that God would become incarnate from, to make us what He is truly; involving the process of “theosis” (the deification) of the entire human person in Christ; it involves, that is, becoming like unto Christ to the point of identity with Him.

The transfiguration (meshtakhlapanutha) of the human flesh to divine light, is the experience referred to as theosis - deification - methalahanutha. The transfiguration of Christ at Mount Tabor, is the prototype of our own transformation, which we must long for and pray for while submitting our flesh to the will of God.

And so God in reaching man, lifting him to higher Being, wherein all things are at rest in the equilibrium that precedes their reintegration into the undivided unity of Being.

[Sophia Apologetics ♱ @orthodox22790]

Another philosophical argument I’ve formulated against Islamic Kalām from an Orthodox Christian perspective 📿

1) The Most Generous (al-Jawwād) gives the best of what exists.

2) God Himself is the best of all that exists.

3) Therefore, the Most Generous gives Himself.

4) God is the Most Generous (al-Jawwād).
Therefore, God gives Himself.

5) The perfect mode of giving oneself to rational creatures is to give oneself personally, without ceasing to be what one is.

6) Therefore, God gives Himself personally to creation.

7) God’s personal self-gift to creation is the Incarnation of the Word.

8) Therefore, the Word becomes flesh

[Sophia Apologetics ♱ @orthodox22790]

Q: What is Hell?

Answer: Hell is the non-participation of God.

“& you should also know this, that God does not punish anybody in the world to come, but each person makes himself capable of participation in God. Participation in God is joy; non-participation in Him is hell."

Source : St. John Damascene, Against the Manichaeans, in: J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XCIV, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1864), 1545D-1548A.

In Orthodox Christianity, God is impossible to access in and of Himself(Essence), for He is known only inwardly within Himself. But we can access him through his Divine Powers and Energies (which are not created by him, but are uncreated and belong to him). The same divine energy acts as light to the souls of those who abide in Him, while it acts like a burning fire to the souls of those who do not abide in Him. Thus, in Orthodox Christianity, Hell is not defined as a place of torment for satisfying a vengeful God.

On the contrary, Hell is a state of swimming in God's divine energy, just as much as Heaven is. The difference is not in the Divine Power itself, the difference is in the individual and his preparation to endure that Power. I like to describe it with the following parable.

If someone has prepared themselves with oil/sun lotion, the sun will give them a glowing tan. But if someone has not prepared, and go out in the sun, they will get burned. It is the same sun, the same light, the same heat that affects both individuals, the difference is that one prepared himself, the other didn't. The same goes with God's judgment which he executes as the power of burning love. If the people are prepared (good-willed and good-mannered) they will receive that burning love in the form of endless light and glory.

But those who are not prepared will receive that same portion of grace but will not withstand the heat of it, for them it will be an unquenchable burning flame that consumes them and purifies them.

[GabrielRose @AlastarYt62080]

The universe is held together and guided by God. His energies are within it and there is no place where he is not. Hail Christ the LOGOS os the universe

[Temet Nosce @GnothiSea]

Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

[𝕭𝖎𝖗𝖉𝖞 𝖛𝖘 𝕭𝖆𝖇𝖞𝖑𝖔𝖓 @mary_got_grace]

You survived a spiritual ambush from an entire army

I don’t think you know how powerful you really are.

[Enah @ignisanimae]

When you genuinely seek God, he is actually very generous with you. It’s honestly crazy how much we suffer just because of the absence of God in our lives.

[Frater D∴ T∴ @frater_dt]

“It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings. This is equally true of things whose existence is primal and of all that are in any degree to be numbered among beings. What could exist at all except as one thing? Deprived of unity, a thing ceases to be what it is called: no army unless as a unity: a chorus, a flock, must be one thing. Even house and ship demand unity, one house, one ship; unity gone neither remains: thus even continuous magnitudes could not exist without an inherent unity; break them apart and their very being is altered in the measure of the breach of unity.”
-Plotinus, Enneads, VI.9.1