Quotes About Spirituality

As long as we seek validation from the world around us, we are entrapped by aham. As soon as we realize that all meaning comes from within, that it is we who make the world meaningful, we are liberated by atma.

Without the cerebrum there would be no imagination, and hence no notion of God!

Dharma must not only domesticate nature, it also needs to ensure there is harmony between nature and culture.

A Siddha must be differentiated from a Rishi. A Rishi obtains his power from the Devas by chanting the appropriate hymns and making the appropriate offerings during yagna. Siddhas bypass the Devas and go directly to God to get their powers.

Arjuna, the senses exist beyond the physical; mind beyond the senses; intelligence beyond the mind. Beyond intelligence is your sense of self. By knowing who you really are you will conquer all yearning.—Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 3, verses 42 and 43 (paraphrased).

Overhearing The Gita I

Arjuna, he who does not hate anyone, is friendly and compassionate always, is not possessive and self-indulgent, stable in pleasure and pain, forgiving, contained, controlled and firm in his love for me, in heart and head, is much loved by me.—Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 12, verses 13 and 14 (paraphrased).

Strength alone is not enough in this world; divine grace is needed.

God is not an external trophy to be possessed; God is internal human potential to be realized.

Even later, the red colour was replaced by saffron colour, indicating celibacy and continence, a rejection of all things sensory.

God doesn't erase our past for us. Instead, he heals the one we've got.

Love and prayer are intimately related.

He believes that this man has looped a bit of the thread-leash through a corner of his soul.

That it is precisely when we recognize our common humanity—when we recognize our own humanity in the face of the other—it is then that we also recognize the face of God.

Where do you live?' is ultimately a sacred question.

Spiritual awakening is not ultimately the work of invisible cultural forces. Instead, it is the work of learning to see differently, of prayer, and of conversion. It is something people do.

We must abandon the external height images in which the theistic God has historically been perceived and replace them with internal depth images of a deity who is not apart from us, but who is the very core and ground of all that is. —Paul Tillich

When someone asks me what kind of Christian I am," says Brent Bill, a Quaker writer, "I say I'm a bad one." He goes on to say, "I've got the belief part down pretty well, I think. It's in the practice of my belief in everyday life where I often miss the mark." Finally, he states, "I see myself as a pilgrim—traveling the faith path to the destination of being a good Christian—and into the eternal presence of God.

The deepest and most important spiritual lessons I ever learned came from a circle of drunks, fighting desperately not to drink today, whom I initially viewed as low-life losers, and who ultimately came to be for me the oracles of God. The Twelve Steps in no way diminished my appreciation for the gospel of Jesus Christ—quite the contrary—I am more convinced than ever of the reality of the gospel story.

The contemplative tradition has most deeply influenced my spiritual growth and my identity. My Christian action flows from my life of prayer." Aaron McCarroll Gallegos agrees: "An authentic prayer life has become one of the most important Christian practices for me…. Without a vital inner spiritual life, I believe it is almost certain that one will lose their way.

Throughout the first five centuries people understood Christianity primarily as a way of life in the present, not as a doctrinal system, esoteric belief, or promise of eternal salvation. By followers enacting Jesus's teachings, Christianity changed and improved the lives of its adherents and served as a practical spiritual pathway. This way—and earliest Christians were called "the People of the Way"—bettered existence for countless ancient believers.

Spirituality is not just about sitting in a room encountering a mystical god in meditation or about seeing God in a sunset. Awe is the gateway to compassion. It is a deep awareness that we are creators, creators who work with the Creator, in an ongoing project of crafting a world. If we do not like the world or are afraid of it, we have had a hand in that. And if we made a mess, we can clean it up and do better. We are what we make.

Conversion is not a single prayer. Conversion is pilgrimage.

hope. And the possibility of history's transformation lies through that door…. Spiritual visionaries have often been the first to walk through that door, because in order to walk through it, first you have to see it, and then you have to believe that something lies on the other side.2 A