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1 " Spirituality wants to know and experience higher states of mind and being. It wants to wrestle with angels and look the Creator in the eye. "
― Stefan Emunds , A Modern Crash Course in Spirituality
2 " What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.” —Richard David BachThe caterpillar believes it is dying because it's being sealed in a tomb. The Master knows that the caterpillar is not dying, and is simply transitioning (to something more). This points out that things are never over, that change is carrying us, (so often kicking and screaming), to higher states of being.I find it interesting that the caterpillar spends it's caterpillar existence crawling, (on a lone weed in the midst of an endless beautiful forest), surviving on bitter, poisonous leaves. Yet resists the changes to come.After the caterpillars " death" ... And upon the butterflie's rebirth... The butterfly lives out it's butterfly existence experiencing all of the forest's wonders, being carried by the wind, landing on beauty, and drinking sweet nectar, all the while, being shielded from harm by the caterpillar's bitter and poisonous experiences of eating the weeds.Without the struggles of the caterpillar, the butterfly could never be.It is Truly wonderful how something as simple as caterpillars and butterflies can be such amazing reminders sent to us by a Loving Eternal Creator. "
3 " Quinn seemed to have become one of a jaded philosophical society, a group of arcane deviates. Their raison d'etre was a kind of mystical masochism, forcing initiates toward feats of occult daredevilry - " glimpsing the inferno with eyes of ice" , to take from the notebook a phrase that was repeated often and seemed a sort of chant of power. As I suspected, hallucinogenic drugs were used by the sect, and there was no doubt that they believed themselves communing with strange metaphysical venues. Their chief aim, in true mystical fashion, was to transcend common reality in the search for higher states of being, but their stratagem was highly unorthodox, a strange detour along the usual path toward positive illumination. Instead, they maintained a kind of blasphemous fatalism, a doomed determinism which brought them face to face with realms of obscure horror. Perhaps it was this very obscurity that allowed them the excitement of their central purpose, which seemed to be a precarious flirting with personal apocalypse, the striving for horrific dominion over horror itself.(" The Dreaming In Nortown" ) "
4 " Mind is not a product of brain rather an integral part of the soul, our eternal being. Those who understand this truth can think beyond the material reality and move to higher states of consciousness. "
― Thomas Vazhakunnathu , Spiritual Theory of Everything