Meister Eckhart's Book of Secrets Meditations on Letting Go and Finding True Freedom

Becoming What You Love

A great teacher once said that the soul becomes what it loves, so pay attention to this and consider well what you love – whether things that delight or inspire, or those you feel drawn toward. For while there's nothing wrong with any of this, consider when you love that you are becoming what you love and so love in a way that grows the soul and gentles the mind and graces the world. The rest will take care of itself.

Some Imagine There Is No Light

Some imagine there is no light in their life, but only a long darkness. I say that the light is never absent, always seeking to flow forth within the ground of the soul, but we block it in our confusion and fail to see how it ever shines and burns in us. So, if you want to know the light you must first face the darkness that is in you. Only then will this light overflow your soul and dance with radiance in your life.

A Wide Wilderness

You will not find me in the usual places, come to the desert if you'd like to see. Look where you might become lost for a while, there is a wide wilderness in me.

If You Want to Reach the Highest Wisdom

If you want to reach the highest wisdom refuse everything you know, abandon all you aspire to be, and seek the darkness of the lowest place of all.

Find The Inner Eye

We see in two ways because the soul has two eyes. One is an outer eye beholding all that is creaturely around us, all that we can see in the outer world, all that we can imagine among things that change. We need this eye to manage from day-to-day and moment to moment, but the eye that really matters is the inner eye that beholds what is beyond change. When you retreat from what is outside of you, you'll taste what true freedom means. Not that you will have no more troubles, but all this will no longer bother you. What to do? Find the inner eye and learn to see your life entirely with it; the rest will follow.

There is a secret hidden in the heart, a treasure as close to us as our breath. A mystery living in the midst of our soul. Finding it is simple but may be hard since to do so we must abandon the self we thought we were and seek the gift that was always ours. This inner spark that no darkness can finally extinguish, though it keeps us from knowing it. This gift is always present to us if only we have eyes to see. And when we do, we will find its radiance in everything, and at all times this light that blazes on in a darkness that cannot put it out.