Quotes About Reflection

Let me sum it up this way: We do not think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. Without action and lifestyle decisions, without concrete practices, words are dangerous and largely illusory.

To keep the mind space open, we need some form of contemplative or meditation practice. This has been the most neglected in recent centuries, substituting the mere reciting and "saying" of prayers, which is not the same as a contemplative mind, and often merely confirms us in our superior or fear-based system.

I finally had to be either Roman or catholic, and I continue to choose the catholic end of that spectrum.

Before you speak of peace, you must first have it in your heart. —St. Francis of Assisi13

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." I

We do not want to embark on a further journey if it feels like going down, especially after we have put so much sound and fury into going up. This is surely the first and primary reason why many people never get to the fullness of their own lives. The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further. Why would we?

When we learn to love anyone or anything, It is because they have somehow, if just for a moment, Mirrored us truthfully yet compassionately to ourselves.

Do not be shocked, but I suspect some priests' and ministers' moral failures are actually very helpful to their own "salvation" and necessary for their growing up.

The True Self always has something good to say. The False Self babbles on, largely about itself.

Religious energy is in the dark questions, seldom in the answers.

Encontramos a Dios en nosotros mismos, y nos encontramos a nosotros mismos en Dios.

Contemplation is a spiritual practice that has the potential to heal, and connect us to the source of our being.

Our unveiled gaze receives and reflects the brightness of God until we are gradually turned into the image that we reflect. —2 Corinthians 3:18

Matter and Spirit mirror one another and reveal the depths of one another.

The advantage of those on the further journey is that they can still remember and respect the first language and task. They have transcended but also included all that went before. In fact, if you cannot include and integrate the wisdom of the first half of life, I doubt if you have moved to the second. Never throw out the baby with the bathwater. People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place. They are not mere iconoclasts or rebels.

Old men ought to be explorers Here and there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For another union, a deeper communion —T. S. ELIOT, "EAST COKER

To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half, which is the equal mystery of death and doubt. To know anything fully is always to hold that part of it which is still mysterious and unknowable.

Perfect spirituality is just to imitate God.

What Richard does is more like what Jesus did when he spoke in parables: He takes you to see from one angle, and then backs up and brings you to see from another angle, and then another, and then another, until a whole new way of seeing begins to dawn on you.

It is often when the ego is most deconstructed that we can hear things anew and begin some honest reconstruction, even if it is only half heard and halfhearted.

You fight things only when you are directly called and equipped to do so. We all become a well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. You lose all your inner freedom.

it is very surprising to me that so many Christians who read the Scriptures do not see this. Yet maybe they cannot answer a second call because they have not yet completed the first task. Unless you build your first house well, you will never leave it. To build your house well is, ironically, to be nudged beyond its doors.

In this high place it is as simple as this, Leave everything you know behind. Step toward the cold surface, say the old prayer of rough love and open both arms. Those who come with empty hands will stare into the lake astonished, there, in the cold light reflecting pure snow, the true shape of your own face. David Whyte, "Tilicho Lake"   Conservatives

Contemplation is really the change that changes everything—especially, first of all, the seer.