Quotes About Spirituality

Human beings seem framed to pose problems for themselves that they cannot solve, pit themselves against the dark world of uncreated reality, and find that living with such unknowing is a source of astonishment and delight.

One of the reasons why religion seems irrelevant today is that many of us no longer have the sense that we are surrounded by the unseen.

The God of the mystics yearned to be known by his creatures. The Ismailis believed that the noun ilah (god) sprang from the Arabic root WLH: to be sad, to sigh for.46 As the Sacred Hadith had made God say: "I was a hidden treasure and I yearned to be known. Then I created creatures in order to be known by them.

Ibn al-Arabi imagined the solitary God sighing with longing, but this sigh (nafas rahmani) was not an expression of maudlin self-pity. It had an active, creative force which brought the whole of our cosmos into existence; it also exhaled human beings, who became logoi, words that express God to himself. It follows that each human being is a unique epiphany of the Hidden God, manifesting him in a particular and unrepeatable manner.

The unity of God could be glimpsed in the truly integrated self.

eminent monotheists in all three faiths—that instead of waiting for God to descend from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself.

A disorderly spirituality that makes the practitioner dreamy, eccentric, or uncontrolled is a very bad sign indeed. In

In fact Hell seemed a more potent reality than God, because it was something that I could grasp imaginatively.

The personal God reflects an important religious insight: that no supreme value can be less than human.

Christian spirituality had been strongly influenced by Platonism, which sought to liberate the soul from the body, but in some circles in the early fourth century, people were beginning to hope that their hitherto despised bodies could bring men and women to the divine—or at least that it was not a reality separate from the physical, as the Platonists held.25

This continues to be the case: the religion of compassion is followed only by a minority; most religious people are content with decorous worship in synagogue, church, temple and mosque.

Ultimately, however, he held that a person's theology or beliefs, like the ritual he took part in, were unimportant. They could be interesting but not a matter of final significance. The only thing that counted was the good life;

human beings were fallen divinities, the forms of the divine world were within them and could be "touched" by reason, which was not simply a rational or cerebral activity but an intuitive grasp of the eternal reality within us.

instead of waiting for God to descend from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself.

The texts emphasize that these ideas were not to be interpreted literally. They had nothing to do with ordinary logic or events in this world, but were merely symbols of a more elusive truth.

Ideas about God come and go, but prayer, the struggle to find meaning even in the darkest circumstances, must continue.

We shall often find in our story that the religious behavior of people who have not been major beneficiaries of modernity articulates a strongly felt need for the spiritual

Many found the very idea hilarious. "Hi, Karen—how's God?" they would ask, as though inquiring about a mutual acquaintance.

Het hoofdthema [van het verhaal van Kaïn En Abel] is het gevecht tussen eigenliefde en de liefde voor God. 'Kaïn' betekende 'bezit'. Kaïn wilde alles voor zichzelf houden en streefde enkel zijn eigenbelang na. 'Abel' betekende 'degene die alles in verband brengt met God'. Deze kwaliteiten waren in elk individu aanwezig en streden voortdurend om de voorrang.

It was not violence and self-assertion, but the spirit of mercy, courtesy and tranquillity that would cause the ummah to grow, "as a seed that puts forth its shoot and strengthens it and it grows stout and raises straight upon its stalk, pleasing the owners.

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed.

included: no religious doctrine or practice can be authentic if it does not lead to practical compassion.

the sacred reality is not simply transcendent, "out there," but is enshrined in every single human being, who must, therefore, be treated with absolute honor and respect.

Ibn Taymiyyah was a worrying figure to the establishment. His return to the fundamentals of the Quran and sunnah and his denial of much of the rich spirituality and philosophy of Islam may have been reactionary, but it was also revolutionary. He outraged the conservative ulama, who clung to the textbook answers, and criticized the Mamluk government of Syria for practices which contravened Islamic law as he understood it.