Quotes About Spirituality

Death is alive, they whispered. Death lives inside life, as bones dance within the body. Yesterday is within today. Yesterday never dies.

The integration of daily life with spirituality is something I believe is neglected all too often. Spirituality is often treated as something separate from the rest of our lives, a way of thinking that stems in large part from the tendency to see the physical and spiritual as distinctly separate realms.

To become accepted by the bulk of humanity, spirituality must be "cleansed" of magic, thereby turning it into religion. The original ritualistic elements that are designed to liberate the individual from his cultural trance are labeled as "immoral" or "primitive.

Humans are more creative, physically hale, and less depressed after walking in a forest; wandering barefoot upon the earth improves podiatric health and increases the physical intelligence of our whole being. Our bodies, minds, and spirits stand in ancient communion with the soil.

She did not find these riches (of fulfillment). They were a gift from God.

I was touched, he said quietly, by your remark about seeing one another's souls. Do you believe that's possible? First you must believe there is a soul. Do you? If by a soul one means the creature who lives within each of us, a creature born loving, born joyful, but who with each worldly blow shrinks more deeply into its shell until at last, the poor desiccated thing is unrecognizable even to its own self, yes. I do.

There is something wonderfully sacred that happens when a girl chooses to realize that being set aside is actually God's call for her to be set apart.

The one who obeys God's instruction for today will develop a keen awareness of His direction for tomorrow.

Never is a woman so fulfilled as when she chooses to underwhelm her schedule so she can let God overwhelm her soul.

Spiritually evolved people, by virtue of their discipline, mastery and love, are people of extraordinary competence, and in their competence they are called on to serve the world, and in their love they answer the call.

Another characteristic of human nature—perhaps the one that makes us most human—is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature.

As I grow through love, so grows my joy, ever more present, ever more constant.

So if your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution. First, you cannot achieve them without suffering, and second, insofar as you do achieve them, you are likely to be called on to serve in ways more painful to you, or at least demanding of you, than you can now imagine.

The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.

If they love their children parents must, sparingly and carefully perhaps but nonetheless actively, confront and criticize them from time to time, just as they must allow their children to confront and criticize themselves in turn. Similarly, loving spouses must repeatedly confront each other if the marriage relationship is to serve the function of promoting the spiritual growth of the partners.

If we kill those who are evil, we will become evil ourselves; we will be killers. If we attempt to deal with evil by destroying it, we will also end up destroying ourselves, spiritually if not physically. Evil can be defeated by goodness. Evil can be conquered only by love. We must somehow be both tolerant and intolerant, accepting and demanding, strict and flexible. An almost godlike compassion is required.

It is in the giving up of self that human beings can find the most ecstatic and lasting, solid, durable joy of life. And it is death that provides life with all its meaning. This "secret" is the central wisdom of religion. The process of giving up the self (which is

Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.

Even when we truly understand these matters, the journey of spiritual growth is still so lonely and difficult that we often become discouraged.

Mystics have spoken to us through the ages in terms of paradox. Is it possible that we are beginning to see a meeting ground between science and religion? When we are able to say that "a human is both mortal and eternal at the same time" and "light is both a wave and a particle at the same time," we have begun to speak the same language. Is it possible that the path of spiritual growth that

The idea that God is actively nurturing us so that we might grow up to be like Him brings us face to face with our own laziness.

Or some people may yearn for riches, not for money's sake but in order to send their children to college or provide themselves with the freedom and time for study and reflection which are necessary for their own spiritual growth. It is not power or money that such people love; it is humanity.

Being about spiritual growth, this book is inevitably about the other side of the same coin: the impediments to spiritual growth. Ultimately there is only the one impediment, and that is laziness. If we overcome laziness, all the other impediments will be overcome. If we do not overcome laziness, none of the others will be hurdled.

Through grace we are helped not to stumble and through grace we know that we are being welcomed. What more can we ask?