My answer to this dliemma was self-discipline. I figured I could just make myself do good things, think good thoughts about other people, but that was no easier than walking up to a complete stranger and falling in love with them. I could go through the motions for a while, but sooner or later my heart would testify to its true love: darkness. Then I would get up and try again. The cycle was dehumanizing.
Don Miller
Have good thoughts in your lives. Have good manners, be polite, and have good actions. Be good, have love, and be patient. Never think of harming others. Only think of helping people. Think that others should be made better and that you should be made better. That is how your heart should be. Always wish for good things for other people. If you do, then your life will never be ruined, and you will progress higher and higher, and your brothers and sisters will also become exalted. Please think about this. Amin. May God give you His grace.
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Henceforth I will look upon all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness because it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness because it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards because they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles because they are my challenge.
I will greet this day with love in my heart.Og Mandino
Is it not a good deed to restrain the arm of someone who wants to commit a misdeed, and is it not also a good deed to restrain the judgment of someone who wants to misjudge and cannot judge otherwise if acknowledgment of the good does not prevent it? Much wrong can be done to a person, but perhaps the worst is to come with belated repentance over a rash, unjust judgment that one nevertheless has oneself helped to occasion. As you can see, if this happens, if a person goes astray in this way by doing the good, he can thank himself and cowardliness, because God gives a spirit of power of love, and of self-control. […] Do not do the good ashamedly and with downcast eyes, as if you were walking a forbidden road, acknowledge it even though you are ashamed because you always feel your own imperfection and lower your eyes before God. Venture it in trust in God. Let each one acknowledge the good, renewed in his resolution, never led astray by any jugglery that it is more difficult to serve the good when one is misjudged. How would it help for it to be more difficult if it was also less true or for it to be more difficult for many if it was easier for him?
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
The soul looks to God under two aspects or forms: First as the object of all its affections, or as an infinitely good and lovable being, and this imagine robs the heart; and insofar as he is good, infinitely beautiful, this is, infinitely perfect, he captures our intellectual vision, our thoughts and meditations.
In this regard, the theological virtues and their gifts cause God and the soul to become on single thing through love and purity of thoughts. While this divine union takes place primarily and mainly in the soul, all the other virtues are like aids, attendants and armies of that guard, assist and protect this work. This is the love of God for the soul and the love of the soul for God.Francisco Palau
When stinginess lives in the heart, when one gives with one eye and looks with seven to see what one obtains in return one readily discovers the multiplicity of sin. But when love lives in the heart, then the eye is never deceived, because when love gives, it does not watch the gift but keeps its eye on the Lord. When envy lives in the heart, the eye has the power to elicit the impure even from the pure; but when love lives in the heart, the eye has the power to love forth the good in the impure, but his eye sees not the impure but the pure, which it loves, and loves forth by loving it. Yes, there is a power in this world that in its language translates good into evil, but there is power from above that translates evil into good-it is the love that hides a multitude of sins. … When hate lives in the heart, sin is right there at the door of a human being, and the multitude of its cravings is present to him. But when love lives in the heart, then sin flees far away and he does not even catch a glimpse of it. p. 61
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Miller, Don
Miller, Ezra
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