Quotes from Thomas Keating

To live in the presence of God on a continuous basis can become a kind of fourth dimension to our three-dimensional world, forming an invisible but real background to everything that we do or that happens in our lives.

Perhaps 90 percent of its desires, psychologists say, are unconscious; in other words, many of our deepest commitments to symbols of security, power, and affection in the culture are rooted in desires that are absolutely impossible to achieve.

life, you will fill me with joy in your presence.

The striking discoveries of contemporary science are continually telling us new things about how material creation came to be and how it continues to evolve. Although we do not have all the answers, we are clearly going in a direction that transcends the cosmology in which the great world religions came into existence. Our vision, understanding, and our attitudes about God inevitably must change.

The great treasure that interreligious dialogue among the world religions could unlock is to enable people to get to know and love other religions and the people who practice them. The

Einstein believed that science was directed toward discovering God's thoughts. Quantum physics itself is a kind of spirituality insofar as it is always looking farther into the unknown to see what is beyond the known. It is a search for ultimate reality.

In a crisis of choice when you are perplexed and do not know which way to go, it might be good to consult several persons.

If our value system doesn't allow us to enjoy anything without putting a price on it, we miss a great part of the beauty of life. When we bring this value system into the domain of prayer, we can never enjoy God. As soon as we start enjoying Him, we have to reflect, "Oh boy, I'm enjoying God!" And as soon as we do that, we are taking a photograph of the experience. Every reflection is like a photograph of reality. It isn't our original experience; it is a commentary on it.

What kind of God is this who permits or sends such tragedy into the lives of his friends? Job complained bitterly about his pitiful condition. But would he have learned who God is unless he had gone through the shattering experiences that brought to an end his naive conception of how God functions? The greatest fruit of the night of spirit is the disposition that is willing to accept God on his own terms. As a result, one allows God to be God without knowing who or what that is.

Service without seeking any return characterizes the Ultimate Reality.

Where am I? Where am I in relation to God, to myself, and to others? These are the basic questions of human life.

he experience of the transforming union is a way of being in the world that enables us to live daily life with the invincible conviction of continuous union with God. It is a new way of being in the world, a way

Now we are entertaining the suggestion that the real work of prayer is just to get rid of the very assumption that was the foundation of all these other modes of prayer. It is a matter of shifting the location of the sense of identity. We have to accept the idea that the word I does not have a fixed and clear and obvious referent. This is where the transformation that we undergo becomes more and more radical with each breakthrough or illumination.

Science and technology has tried to offer an alternative to religion by making a god out of human reason, but that didn't work out too well.

One of the values of centering prayer is that you are not thinking about God during the time of centering prayer so you are giving God a chance to manifest. In centering prayer there are moments of peace that give the psyche a chance to realize that God may not be so bad after all. God has a chance to be himself for a change.