More accurately, when we first encounter the empty chamber of the heart, we feel it as lack, as poverty. We need wholeheartedly to accept this poverty; otherwise we will fill it again with idols and impostors. We need to realize that we are totally poor as long as the Guest has not arrived, that we are completely bereft without the nearness of the Beloved. To pretend otherwise means that our love of the Beloved is still not complete, is still divided between the Beloved and our own selfhood. We are still in the stage of worshiping idols; we have not arrived at true monotheism. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, ch. 2
When a group actually functions together with the sincere intention to be present and real, and to treat people and our tasks well, then something is created that is not possible in any other place. This is the only time that the true heart unfolds. The true heart unfolds when each person in concert is living according to the truth. If one person withholds their attention from the work of the group, it will interfere with the overall energy. When we’re here together doing this work, it’s important that we each participate as best we can. Without that intention, it is better not to come. You don’t have to be in the work. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, ch. 8
When first receiving a subtle teaching, it’s important to listen with your heart and with your being. If the mind understands the teaching, that can help open up your experience, but the openness and receptivity of the heart is foremost. Should you feel that these ideas are over your head or are too radical to accept, you can let that be and allow yourself to simply feel whatever is here. – The Alchemy of Freedom: The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence, Ch. 5
Did I tell you the story about the student who was taking care of an older woman who was dying? She is a student I see weekly. Week after week, she came to me crying, suffering, talking about the old woman in the hospital who had suffered so much in her life and how she was always in pain now. Every week the student would come and cry about this woman. When the old woman finally died, the student cried even more and was angry at God. Suffering with pain, she asked, “What’s it for?” Good question. There is an interesting answer: The old woman taught the student compassion. Through knowing the old woman, the student’s heart opened, and she experienced as she never had before the green subtlety the Sufis recognize as compassion. The suffering led to the opening of her heart, which is necessary to allow Essence. The old woman also learned what compassion was through the student. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book One: Elements of the Real in Man, Ch. 7