In the soil of contemplation…
What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
Do not think that saintliness comes from occupation; it depends rather on what one is. The kind of work we do does not make us holy, but we may make it holy.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
You need not seek him here or there, he is no further that the door of your heart; there he stands patiently awaiting whoever is ready to open up and let him in. No need to call him from afar: he can hardly wait for you to open up. He longs for you a thousand times more that you long for him.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
Although God is Almighty, He can only work in a heart when He finds readiness or makes it. He works differently in humans than in stones. For this we may take the following illustration: if we bake in one oven three loaves of barley-bread, of rye-bread, and of wheat, we shall find the same heat of the oven affects them differently; when one is well-baked, another will be still raw, and another yet more raw. That is not due to the heat, but to the variety of the materials. Similarly God works in all hearts not alike but in proportion as He finds them prepared and susceptible. If the heart is to be ready for the highest, it must he vacant of all other things. If I wish to write on a white tablet, whatever else is written on the tablet, however noble its purport, is a hindrance to me. If I am to write, I must wipe the tablet clean of everything, and the tablet is most suitable for my purpose when it is blank. Similarly, if God is to write on my heart, everything else must come out of it till it is really sanctified. Only so can God work His highest will, and so the sanctified heart has no outward object at all.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
It is not what we do that makes us holy, but we ought to make holy what we do.
— Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)