Quotes About Reflection

As Mary Oliver puts it, "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Shadow work is humiliating work, but properly so. If you do not eat such humiliations with regularity and make friends with … all those who reveal to you and convict you of your own denied faults…, you will certainly remain in the first half of life forever.

It has been said that 90 percent of people seem to live 90 percent of their lives on cruise control, which is to be unconscious.

What, then, does it mean to follow Jesus? I believe that we are invited to gaze upon the image of the crucified Jesus to soften our hearts toward all suffering, to help us see how we ourselves have been "bitten" by hatred and violence, and to know that God's heart has always been softened toward us.

Ordinary people in times of shame and doubt needed an anamchara, or a "soul friend." Soon

for Action and Contemplation puts it this way: "The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better." I

Of course, clergy cannot talk about a further journey if they have not gone on it themselves.

Life is a luminous pause between two great mysteries, which themselves are one.

ALL SAYING MUST BE BALANCED BY UNSAYING, and knowing must be humbled by unknowing. Without this balance, religion invariably becomes arrogant, exclusionary, and even violent.

but I do believe that the only way out of deep sadness is to go with it and through it.

In his critique of his fathers and uncles, Jung recognized that many humans had become reflections of the punitive God they worshipped. A forgiving God allows us to recognize the good in the supposed bad, and the bad in the supposed perfect or ideal.

Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of the spiritual journey is this: wisdom and love do not come from success but from continuing failure.

What made us think we were

If you don't walk into the seond half of your own life, it is you who does not want it.

We are a "first-half-of-life culture," largely concerned about surviving successfully. Probably most cultures and individuals across history have been situated in the first half of their own development up to now

But it takes us much longer to discover "the task within the task," as I like to call it: what we are really doing when we are doing what we are doing.

Thérèse, almost counter to reason, says: "Whoever is willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to herself, that person is a pleasant place of shelter for Jesus.

The wounds to our ego are our teachers and must be welcomed. They must be paid attention to, not litigated.

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.

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.

Anne Wilson Schaef

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

One of the odd things about middle age...was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them.