Quotes About Being

God does not stop giving Himself over to us, in His deifying manner, until He has become flesh in us and our flesh has become God by participation, as fully as possible, in Him. This deification of our being is a transforming, mystical ascent: God is transforming us through the operations of His hierarchies. The ones being transformed are, in their turn, acting members of the hierarchies.

A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.

As its campfires glow against the dark, every culture tells stories to itself about how the gods lit up the morning sky and set the wheel of being into motion. The great scientific culture of the West--our culture--is no exception. The calculus is the story this world first told itself as it became the modern world.

Ardent love or desire introduced, as passionately longing to please and glorify the Divine Being, to be in every respect conformed to him, and in that way to enjoy him.

Who we are is who we choose to be in this very moment.

The secret is that nothing knows, the secret is that all life flows, the secret is that thoughts and hearts are different beings, split apart.

who they are and not which

Nature itself is a dynamic unfolding power, yet it is also a power manifest in the human psyche. Deep within our being, our innermost nature is nature itself.

Before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves, for no one can give up what he or she does not first possess.6 Jesus puts it this way: "If you're content with simply being yourself, you will become more than yourself" (Luke 18:14 The Message). Before we can become our self we must accept our self, just as we are. Self-acceptance always precedes genuine self-surrender and self-transformation.

Sin is more basic than what we do. Sin is who we are. In this regard we could say that sin is fundamentally a matter of ontology (being), not simply morality. To be a human is to be a sinner. It is to be broken, damaged goods that carry within our deepest self a fundamental, fatal flaw—a flaw that masks our original creation goodness and infects our very being.

This disconnection of being and doing represents a misalignment of our souls that clouds our presence to ourselves and others.

While the first revelation of our calling is in the givens of our being, it is important to note that God's will for us does not always grow naturally out of our wishes.

Prayer is not simply what we do. It is a way of being. More specifically, it is resting in the reality of our being-in-God. This is our fundamental identity. It is the hidden but deepest truth of our existence.

Knowing God's love demands that we receive God's love—experientially, not simply as a theory. Personal knowledge is never simply a matter of the head. Because it is rooted in experience, it is grounded in deep places in our being. The things we know from experience we know beyond belief. Such knowing is not incompatible with belief, but it is not dependent on it.

Our calling is therefore the way of being that is both best for us and best for the world. This is what Frederick Buechner means when he states that "the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think.

The other day a man asked me what I thought was the best time of life. "Why," I answered without a thought, "now."

Suddenly everything her grandfather had been saying about God made sense, as if the pieces were waiting for her to click into place. This beautiful mother's very life was constantly flowing into her baby. The baby didn't have to do anything to get it. It was already his. He possessed her very life. He didn't have to do anything to activate it. It was already active inside him. Apart from her, he had no life. But being joined to her, he had her life. All he had to do was be

Vorrei che tu potessi ricordare come ci si sente quando si è donna, e come ci si sente quando non si è né uomo né donna. Solo "essere", prima di tutto, prima delle definizioni, dei pronomi personali, delle parole e dei generi. Forse, in questo modo, potresti anche arrivare, quasi per caso, alla possibilità primordiale di essere me

Jung discerned that "the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."100

It is quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humor, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance.

And so, there is nothing to practice because we are always already enlightened, always already Absence somehow open to the world.

The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object, of his being.

Yesterday is gone, tomorrow doesn't exist – we need to accept Now.