Quotes About Spirituality

Slowly, as waves recede, my expanding spirit shrinks back into earthly dimensions -- not voluntarily, because I would prefer to lose myself, but I am pulled from below, back to myself, into myself, so that for just one moment I am on the couch again, fitting the fingers of my awareness into the glove of my flesh. And I know I can move this finger or wink that eye -- if I want to. But I don't want to move. I will not move!

what's wrong with a person wanting to be more intelligent, to acquire knowledge, and understand himself and the world?" "If you'd read your Bible, Charlie, you'd know that it's not meant for man to know more than was given to him to know by the Lord

They are moved less by the direct presence of their gods than by the more indirect feeling that they would somehow like their gods to be present.

The Buddha said this clearly: "I teach Reality. . . . That is the inner realm truly taught by the Masters.

As Abhinavagupta says, "In Tantrism, nothing is advised, nothing is forbidden.

Lalla, exuberant, convinced her guru, the Siddha Shrikantha, to give her the teachings by defecating on an image of Shiva that was in the guru's house. When Shrikantha asked her the reason for this act, Lalla replied: "If Shiva is everywhere, he is also in the dirt of the dumping grounds where I usually go. If every place is sacred, why bother choosing?

The Bodhisattva does not differentiate between nirvana and samsara. For him, full consciousness of reality is nirvana. He therefore has no place to go to and even less to wait for, because there is no duality between worldly experience and nirvana.

What a practitioner of the Tantric path quickly feels, and sometimes the very first day, is that the benefit or reward—the state of joy, space, and freedom—is not subsequent to the practice of awareness. It is, on the contrary, an integral part of it.

What we are fundamentally is not a perception, and it is therefore impossible to find through drugs, sexuality, or any sect or religion.

You have the openness necessary to live this experience deeply.

at the heart of every person is an absolute and faultless realm that cannot be sullied or damaged by any action. All aggression takes place at the edges of this immaculate jewel.

We make our journey in the company of others; the deer, the rabbit, the bison, and the quail walk before us, and the lion, the eagle, the wolf, the vulture, and the hyena walk behind us. All our paths lie together in the hand of god and none is wider than any other or favored above any other. The worm that creeps beneath your foot is making its journey across the hand of god as surely as you are.

All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle's or the squirrel's or the sparrow's. All are held together.

All the major world religions (always excluding animism, of course), are founded on these notions: that man and man alone was the desired object of creation, that man occupies a preeminent place in the order of creation, that man has a value in God's eyes that is transcendently greater than that of all other creatures, that this world of matter is illusory, transitory, and worthless.

When Jesus departed, he left no one behind who was the message.

Even the most fundamental of the fundamentalists plug their ears when Jesus starts talking about birds of the air and lilies of the field. They know damn well he's just yarning, just making pretty speeches.

Tribal people get more out of life.

My death is the life of another, and I will stand again in the windswept grasses and look through the eyes of the fox and take the air with the eagle and run in the track of the deer.

Animists are not so much people with a religion as people with a fundamentally religious way of looking at things.

it's the work of animism to read the Law of Life that is written in the community of life.

Thanks," he says, and his eyelids flutter a bit, as if he's heard what he's come to hear. This is what is meant by last words: they are keys to unlock the afterlife. They're not last words but passwords, and as soon as they're spoken you can go.

This is what meant by last words: they are keys to unlock the afterlife. They're not last words, but passwords, and as soon they're spoken you can go

Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could.

God can be heard in the jingle of a spur, the thunder of hooves, and the bawl of a newborn calf.