Serena Caron

“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies”
― Lord Byron

“Of all the terms used in the world's religions, none is as controversial as jihad. Jihad literally means "struggle," and Muslims have traditionally understood it to point to two kinds of struggles: the spiritual struggle against pride and self-sufficiency; and the physical struggle against the "house of war," namely, the enemies of Islam. The second of these struggles calls for a variety of tactics, including preaching, teaching, and working for social justice. It may also include war.

Some apologists for Islam have tried to minimize the importance of jihad, and to insulate Islam from its extremists, by arguing that, of these two struggles, the spiritual struggle is higher. A Muslim merchant I met in Jerusalem took this argument further, contending that jihad has nothing whatsoever to do with war because jihad is nothing more than the personal struggle to be good. "Treating me with respect is jihad," he said. "Not ripping me off is jihad." The Quran, he added, never even mentions war.

But the Quran does mention war, and it does so repeatedly. One Quranic passage commands Muslims to "fight," "slay," and "expel" in the course of just two sentences (2:190–191), while another says that fighting is "prescribed . . . though it be hateful to you" (2:216). Whether it is better for a religion to largely ignore war (as the Christian New Testament does) or to carefully regulate war (as does the Quran) is an open question, but there is no debating the importance of the themes of fighting and killing in both the Quran and Islamic law. So while it is incorrect to translate jihad as "holy war," the plain sense of this struggle in both the Quran and contemporary Islamic practice is both spiritual and military.”
― Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter

“Atman or Soul is visible in the ‘Samadhi’ stage. The Soul is percolated. It means ‘Kundalini’ or Life power is percolated. After percolation from the whole body, it is accumulated in the cerebrum or the seventh plane of the body and is seen. If any cell of the brain is defective, the man will not thrive at this stage. The life power will melt. And if it is flawless, the life power will descend from the cerebrum, and just at this stage, Atman is seen.”
― Sri Jibankrishma or Diamond

“he said,
what do you want?
i said… you.
he said,
no. i want to know what you want… for you.

i want…
to search. and stretch. and grow. and glow.
and drip myself in wild creativity,
and burn and breathe at once
in this skin. in these lungs.
wings untethered, under the moon, into the sky,
and to dream big and bigger and biggest,
and to feel free in here… inside my anxious chest.
to just. feel. free.
and to have the universe say… yes, you are worthy of all this.

and yes… you.
…the way you give me butterflies and adrenaline highs,
and who you are, and how you are, and how you think and
speak and feel and exist and move,
and there’s this feeling when you look at me… i think
this is maybe love… how you actually give a damn
about all this mess inside my head.”
― butterflies rising, she's flowers and fire