Quotes About Spiritual life

It often happens, as a matter of fact, that so called "pious souls" take their "spiritual life" with a wrong kind of seriousness.

The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived. ... If we want to be spiritual, then, let us first of all live our lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed by the will of God.

Concerning solitude: most of the accidents of community life need not seriously concern me—differences of opinion, other people's ideas of the spiritual life, the kind of organ music that seems to please many. Why should I bother about all that? It is none of my business.

There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us. (p. 1)

Misplaced effort in the spiritual life often consists in stubbornly insisting upon compulsive routines which seem to us to be necessary because they accord with our own short-sighted notions.

There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude. Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything. Those who do not love, hate. In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate. That is why tepidity (which seems to be indifferent) is so detestable. It is hate disguised as love.

We have found that the Spirit is both the instrumental cause of the resurrection-act and the permanent substratum of the resurrection-life.

Of one hundred persons who take up the spiritual life, eighty turn out to be charlatans, fifteen insane, and only five, maybe, get a glimpse of the real truth. Therefore beware.

I'm strangely comforted when I hear from scientists that human beings are the most complex creatures we know of in the universe, still, by far. Black holes are in their way explicable; the simplest living being is not. I lean a bit more confidently into the experience that life is so endlessly perplexing. I love that word. Spiritual life is a way of dwelling with perplexity—taking it seriously, searching for its purpose as well as its perils, its beauty as well as its ravages.

These realities must be sanctified; we must not think that a person is holy just because he has made vows. One with this outlook thinks of the hour of spiritual reading or prayer as the only time for the spiritual life and ignores the longer time dedicated to work and everyday living. The result is at best an anemic and unreliable religious personality.

The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual life is. All these people thinking they're hardheaded materialistic practical types, they don't know shit about matter, their heads are full of dreamy ideas and notions.

Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

People gravitate to religion to feel a connection to the underlying meaning of everything. Well, as a scientist, you're always looking for the underlying meaning, and that, to me, is such a spiritual life, I wish people would open themselves up to that wonder.

The uniting of the soul, body and spirit is the beginning of both the natural and spiritual life, but the separation of these from one another is either the end of life or beginning of a new one.

Silence as I am using the term is a dimension of existence. You can live in it. It is what spiritual life is all about. It is quite literally unfathomable, limitless space permeated by a vast stillness. In a way it is inside us—that is where we seek it—though at some point in our exploration words like inside and outside, all the spatial terms I've been forced to use, don't mean a thing.

We suggest that you consistently work throughout your lifetime on the creation of a coherent and integral spirit body. If your mind never turns to the spiritual in life, why do you think it will turn to the spirit in death? If you are not 'at home' with things spiritual, why do you think you will be able to orient yourself when you are thrust into the spirit world? At best, you will be disoriented and uncomfortable.

In the domain of the spiritual life, the same term S'akti signifies the celestial energy that allows one to enter into contact with the Divinity.

These three—fellowship, the Word, and prayer—will enable the believer to experience the new life in his heart: in his intellect, emotions, will, and spiritual life.

By the word genuine I mean biblical, for only in the Bible do we have truth that is indisputably reliable. For this reason, the Bible must be the guide and test for all of our experiences in the spiritual life, for biblical spirituality is the only genuine spirituality.

He lived his spiritual life without any communion with others, visiting his relatives at Christmas and escorting them to the cemetery when they died. He performed these two social duties for old dignity's sake but conceded nothing further to the conventions which regulate the civic life.

There the union of Church and State tends strongly to paralyze some of the members of the body of Christ. Here there is no such influence to destroy spiritual life and power.

French philosopher-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

The point of the spiritual life is to realize Truth. But you will never understand the spiritual life, or realize Truth, if you measure it by your own yardstick.

Andrew Murray once said that what the church and individuals have to dread is the inordinate activity of the soul with its power of mind and will. F. B. Meyer declared that had he not known about the dividing of spirit and soul, he could not have imagined what his spiritual life would have been. Many others, such as Otto Stockmayer, Jessie Penn-Lewis, Evan Roberts, Madame Guyon, have given the same testimony.