Deepak Chopra and Clarice Lispector spiritual quotes

"The most difficult thing is to do nothing: to remain alone before the cosmos", writes Clarice Lispector (JdoB, Sept18/71).

Yet the ardor of this blank-minded effortlessness is the work of the highest souls; it is the return to the hub of the wheel- or, the eye of the hurricane, as it were- which allows the world to 'writhe' in 'raptures' before us.

And so it is merely each individual's choice to willingly succumb to this ever-available overwhelmingness of being, and to fall rapt into gratitude and wonder, rather than run about hither and thither, seeking, striving, and gathering. This is the 'the one thing needful.' Yet I am not trying to play Mary over Martha here, it is simply the obvious fact, that it is easier to enjoy the unimaginable beauty of a flower when you are gazing with unhurried attention upon it, rather then rushing past it on your way to work.

"The fool who pursues no ambitions has time to see, hear and touch the world", suggests Clarice Lispector again.

In the non-act of absolute surrender, all the walls of the mind and ego shatter in an apocalyptic rupture of our confines. We are now finished with the false cages of the world's tremendous lies, for we see how they only confine us, and thus we are finished pursuing their a-musing charms forever.

Deepak Chopra offers his own vehement diatribe, injecting:

"What society thinks of as reality today is the hypnosis of social conditioning, an induced fiction in which we are all collectively participating. It is the melodrama of a humdrum existence, filled with trite obsessions and trivial pursuits, wherein our only fate is to be born, grow old, and die. ¼[Yet] if we could just realize it, the keys to the miracle of life lie in our own consciousness. ¼.[That is when] life will bestow miracles on us, when we begin to see it as an expression of the miraculous. Life itself is a miracle. We are here and now- that is a miracle. ¼Life is magical, mysterious, wondrous, and miraculous. Lose the magic, and you lose life. It becomes dull and joyless. When you have flashes of wonder, that is the wizard's touch. The worst curse to befall anyone is stagnation, a banal existence, the quiet desperation that comes out of a need for conformity." (The Return of Merlin, intro)

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These excerpts are taken from unpublished chapters from

THE WAY OF WONDER, by Jack Haas