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.
The body is the instrument of our hold on the world.
In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.
Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us.
When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust.
Problems only exist in the human mind.
Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide resting places for them, where they can coal and repair, would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the development of the power of the nation at sea.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.