Quotes About Spirituality

One of the major problems in the spiritual life is our attachment to our own self-image—either positively or negatively created. We have to begin with some kind of identity, but the trouble is that we confuse this idea of ourselves with who we actually are in God. Ideas about things are not the things in themselves. We all have to start by forming a self-image, but the problem is our attachment to it, our need to promote it and protect it and have others like it. What a trap!

The trouble is that most Christians pushed this great liberation off into the next world, and many Twelve Steppers settled for mere sobriety from a substance instead of a real transformation of the self. We have all been the losers, as a result—waiting around for "enlightenment at gunpoint" (death) instead of enjoying God's banquet much earlier in life.

This realization that Someone is living in us and through us is exactly how we plug into a much larger mind and heart beyond our own.

the Greek word meta-noia, which literally means to move "beyond the mind," is usually translated "repentance" and no longer points to its much deeper meaning.

Human life is about more than building boundaries, protecting identities, creating tribes, and teaching impulse control.

To keep the mind space open, you need some form of meditative practice—something much more than saying prayers. In fact, if recitation of prayers does not lead to a change in consciousness, it is actually counterproductive.

Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.

First of all, you can only see and understand the earlier stages from the wider perspective of the later stages. This is why mature societies were meant to be led by elders, seniors, saints, and "the initiated." They alone are in a position to be true leaders in a society, or certainly in any spiritual organization. Without them, "the blind lead the blind

Anne Wilson Schaef

Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it now, and about its healing now. It is rather amazing and very sad that we pushed it all off into a future reward system for those who were "worthy"—as if any of us are.

It seems we are not that free to be honest, or even aware, because most of our garbage is buried in the unconscious. So, it is absolutely essential that we find a spirituality that reaches to that hidden level. If not, nothing really changes.

do not find our own Center; it finds us. The body is in the soul. It is both the place of contact and the place of surrender.

The path to Christian perfection always runs across the collapse of our own moral efforts and self-established ideals.

Remember, light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything else. This is why in John's Gospel, Jesus Christ makes the almost boastful statement "I am the Light of the world" (John 8:12). Jesus Christ is the amalgam of matter and spirit put together in one place, so we ourselves can put it together in all places, and enjoy things in their fullness. It can even enable us to see as God sees, if that is not expecting too

If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position and personal advantage—as if it were God!

Only presence can know presence. And our real presence can know Real Presence.

We are not just humans having a God experience. The Eucharist tells us that, in some mysterious way, we are God having a human experience!

One of the few generalizations we can make in the field of universal spirituality is this: No one else is your problem.

When you tossed pebbles down from the embankment, they believed in God. One

The whole conduct of a Christian is nothing else but knowledge reduced to will, affection and practice.

someone with access to an inner source of spiritual insight does not need the church—or does not need it as ordinary people do. Furthermore, such a person often has an inner authority lacking in many leaders of established religions. This was precisely the response Jesus evoked when he began to preach: "And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority and not as the scribes" (Mark 1:22).

the tricksterlike unpredictable spontaneity of the divine

The distinction often seems precarious. Both traveler and tourist are, by definition, separate from their environment. We like to think that the role we aspire to, the traveler, has that distance on the scene that implies vision and understanding, while the tourist suffers the alienation of the passive viewer, the sightseer. At its worst, tourism is felt to represent a moral or spiritual failing. And in our hear we fear that we, too, are tourists.

the civilization which had given birth to Bigger contained no spiritual sustenance, had created no culture which could hold and claim his allegiance and faith, had sensitized him and had left him stranded