There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.
Interpretation
Transformation often requires deep personal turmoil and a complete reassessment of one's identity and beliefs.
This quote by Vilayat Inayat Khan suggests that true rebirth or profound personal transformation comes only after experiencing significant suffering or existential crisis. The 'dark night of the soul' signifies the difficult process of dismantling one's previous self-conceptions and beliefs in order to emerge renewed and enlightened on the other side.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth and resilience.
Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, you are sharing in a certain measure of that cosmic pain, and are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self pity.
Rest enough for the individual man, too much and too soon, and we call it death. But for man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet and all its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and, at last, out across immensities to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deep space, and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.
Out of many millions of wandering living entities, one who is very fortunate gets an opportunity to associate with a bonafide spiritual master by the grace of Krishna. By the mercy of both Krishna and the spiritual masters, such a person receives the seed of the creeper of devotional service.
Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle - the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.
Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.
Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
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