A Parenthesis In Eternity by Joel S. Goldsmith

Incredible book about mysticism and spiritual development.  For those of us that have found ourselves trekking along a spiritual journey, the lessons found in this book serve as a torch lighting up the pathway. The lessons serve as a "steppingstone or bridge to a deeper awareness" of truth.

"To Seek, To find, and to experience this inner glow, this inner communication with God, and then realize that each time that it is repeated it becomes a deeper, richer experience, and a more fruitful one, so that there can never be an end, or a sense of dullness, monotony, or boredom in it - therein lies the real adventure of the spiritual life."

Pg.17  The lessons that we learn in the interior world become the basis of our conduct in the outer world.  The spiritual grace we learn within becomes our life without.  Without the impetus of this spiritual grace, the life as lived on the outer plane is an animal life.  It has its periods of good and its periods of bad, its periods of health and its periods of disease.  It never knows the peace that passes understanding; it never knows the life that God gave us, the life that is God.  This life is discerned only through inner grace.  Through this power of discernment we glimpse the Spirit of God and then behold It in others; we witness that Spirit living in what we call human form, and just as the Spirit of God lived as the human form of Jesus, so It lives as individual you and me when we are animated by it.

Pg.75  Life cannot be seen with the physical eyes.  Life itself is invisible: we see only the forms which Life assumes.  Life pushes Itself into expression as beautiful flowers and leaves, but we know that in time they all drop away.  The Life does not - just the leaf or the flower does.  The Life goes on forever and ever, always appearing as new forms.  

Pg. 71  The captain of a ship has to go through storms, but as he abides by the principles of seamanship, he will sail out through the storm.  No storm can last forever.  So with us.  There are storms in this human life - some of our own - but often we take on the storms of our families or of our students who are unable to find their peace.  Every teacher must accept the burdens of his students and patients.  He cannot avoid it.  He has to sit up nights sometimes; he may have to go weeks always taking on the burdens of those whom he is trying to lift across the wilderness, but that also makes life interesting, because there, too, proves for himself and for others that the way out is to know God aright.

A Lesson To Sam