Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.
Meister EckhartRead
Know that when you seek anything of your own, you will never find God, because you do not seek God purely. You are seeking something along with God, and you are acting just as if you were to make a candle out of God in order to look for something with it. Once one finds the things one is looking for, one throws the candle away. This is what you are doing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that true seeking of God should be pure and not tied to personal desires or material goals.
Meister Eckhart's quote articulates the idea that the search for the divine is often corrupted by personal motivations and desires. When individuals approach their spiritual journey with the intention of gaining something in return, they diminish the purity of that quest. The metaphor of making a candle from God to find something implies that people often use their spirituality as a means to an end, ultimately discarding the spiritual connection once their needs are met, rather than valuing the connection itself.
Themes
GodSeekingPuritySpiritualitySelflessness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a sermon to encourage parishioners to seek a genuine relationship with God, free of ulterior motives.
More from Meister Eckhart
All quotes →...Where and when God finds you ready, he must act and overflow into you, just as when the air is clear and pure, the sun must overflow into it and cannot refrain from doing that.
Meister EckhartRead
What good is it to me that Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.
Meister EckhartRead
In this breaking-through, I receive that God and I are one. Then I am what I was, and then I neither diminish nor increase, for I am then an immovable cause that moves all things.
Meister EckhartRead
Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God.
Meister EckhartRead
If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man.
Meister EckhartRead
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