Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have a family and you know very well the time that that takes. That's good time. I have a couple hobbies. I'm a runner and play tennis. In the summer my family and I uproot ourselves and go live in Maine for the summer. We have a house on a very tiny island in Maine. Which is really my spiritual center. We've been going there for ten years, and it has no ferry service, no bridges, no telephone service. It's really isolated.
I have to always, always pay homage to a woman I never met but she touched me like she touched so many others with that amazing voice, Whitney Houston. The very first time I heard her voice, I knew I wanted to make people feel that way. Even if I couldn't do all of that that she did, the way she was able to tell my story without even knowing me, the way she could feel what I didn't know how to express, it was spiritual almost.
Ideal for the child and society in the best of times, Rudolf Steiner's brilliant process of education is critically needed and profoundly relevant now at this time of childhood crisis and educational breakdown. Waldorf Education nurtures the intellectual, psychological and spiritual unfolding of the child. The concerned parent and teacher will find a multitude of problems clearly addressed in this practical, artistic approach.
The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior's last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his intent is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.
Seeking the Cave is part travelogue, part literary history, and part spiritual journey. James Lenfestey is a lively and entertaining tour guide. Modest, funny, curious, and wide open to the world, he gives us perceptive glimpses of Chinese culture, ancient to contemporary, and into what it means to be a poet, both now and twelve centuries ago. The account of his quest to find Han Shan's cave is a delight from beginning to end.
Repentance can become a very, very deep phenomenon in you if you understand the responsibility. Then even a small thing, if it becomes a repentance-- not just verbal, not just on the surface; if it goes deep to the roots, if you repent from the roots; if your whole being shakes and trembles and cries, and tears come out; not only out of your eyes but out of every cell of your body, then repentance can become a transfiguration.
When a man receives something Divine, in his heart he rejoices; but when he receives something diabolic, he is disturbed. The Christian heart, when it has received something Divine, does not demand anything else in order to convince it that this is precisely from the Lord; but by that very effect it is convinced that this is heavenly, for it senses within itself spiritual fruits: love, joy, peace, and the rest (cf. Gal. 5:22).
That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don’t let past move your mind; don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.
When you meditate you have to try to quiet and calm the mind. There should be no thought within the mind. Right now you feel that if you can cherish twenty ideas at a time, then you are the wisest man on earth. The more thoughts that enter into our minds, the more clever we feel we are. But in the spiritual life it is not like that. If consciously we can make the mind calm and quiet, we feel that a new creation dawns inside us.
The clergy profession is fundamentally self-defeating. Its stated purpose is to nurture spiritual maturity in the church - a valuable goal. In actuality, however; it accomplishes the opposite by nurturing a permanent dependence of the laity on the clergy. Clergy become to their congregations like parents whose children never grow up, like therapists whose clients never become healed, like teachers whose students never graduate.
The present moment has always been available to spiritual seekers, but as long as you are seeking you are not available to the present moment. "Seeking" implies that you are looking to the future for some answer, or for some achievement, spiritual or otherwise. Everybody is in the seeking mode, seeking to add something to who they are, whether it be money, relationships, possessions, knowledge, status.. or spiritual attainment.
Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.
From the standpoint of our spiritual development, it might be important for us to realize that we came from an unknown somewhere; we brought with us an attained state of consciousness; and while we are here, we are expanding that consciousness. From some perspectives, it may seem that we are making giant strides, but from the greater overview, our quantity of spiritual knowledge is smaller than Ptolemy's knowledge of astronomy!
Dealing with adversity is like preparing for surgery. By putting our faith in what the doctor has said, we believe we will be better off if we have the surgery. But that does not make it any less painful. By submitting to the hand of a surgeon, we are saying that our ultimate goal is health, even at the cost of pain. Adversity is the same way. It is a means to an end. It is God's tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives.
The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.
Love as much as you can from wherever you are. This line is especially good to recall when you feel frightened, crazy, or have taken some bad dope. Write it on the wall of your room. You may not want to love what you feel or see, you may not be able to convince yourself that you could love it at all. But just decide to love it. Say out loud that you love it, even if you don't believe it. And say, "I love myself for hating this."
Here, the certain temple rule, this seems to me to have a certain responsibility to look after the well-being of society and look after Buddhism and culture. I consider these part of the practice of spirituality. There is no competition between spiritual practice and party politics. That is outdated. We already, since 2001, have elected political position. My position is semi-retired. I am looking forward to complete retirement.
How can a man find a sensible way to live? One way and one only- Philosophy. And my philosophy means keeping that vital spark within you free from damage and degradation, using it to transcend pain and pleasure, doing everything with a purpose, avoiding lies and hypocrisy, not relying on another person's actions or failings. To accept everything that comes, and everything that is given, as coming from that same spiritual source.
In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.
True greatness,true leadership,is found in giving yourself in service to others, not in coaxing or inducing others to serve you. True service is never without cost. Often it comes with a painful baptism of suffering. But the true spiritual leader is focused on the service he and she can render to God and other people, not on the residuals and perks of high office or holy title. We must aim to put more into life than we take out.
I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have judged formerly to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon (faint)as to all evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge him so is this -- because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if you judge him in a swoon,(faint) though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.
Our attitude towards evil must be freed from hatred, and has itself need to be enlightened in character...Satan rejoices when he succeeds in inspiring us with diabolical feelings to himself. It is he who wins when his own methods are used against himself...A continual denunciation of evil and its agents merely encourages its growth in the world a truth sufficiently revealed in the Gospels, but to which we are persistently blind.
When we harbor negative emotions toward others or toward ourselves, or when we intentionally create pain for others, we poison our own physical and spiritual systems. By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person's emotional resources. The challenge...is to refine our capacity to love others as well as ourselves and to develop the power of forgiveness.
[May] this civic and social landmark [the Washington, D.C., Jewish Community Center] ... be a constant reminder of the inspiring service that has been rendered to civilization by men and women of the Jewish faith. May [visitors] recall the long array of those who have been eminent in statecraft, in science, in literature, in art, in the professions, in business, in finance, in philanthropy and in the spiritual life of the world.
St. Teresa of Avila wrote: 'All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.' This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general. It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey. This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.
I'd like to say is that we shouldn't have an idea that the goal of spiritual practice is to annihilate ones ego, that would be a mistake. In the early years of enlightenment, psychologists were afraid of Hindus and Buddhists meditating because they thought they were going to shatter their egos and then they'd have to wear diapers or something, like they'd lose their toilet training or what have you. They were really afraid of it.
. . . just as God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, as we become more like Him, neither can we. The best people have a heightened awareness of what little of the worst is still in them! Indeed, the divine discontent, the justifiable spiritual restlessness that we feel, is a natural follow-on feeling in the disciple who has taken the Lord's counsel to "make you a new heart and a new spirit." (Ezekiel 18:31.)
Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
What is dangerous about the far right is not that it takes religion seriously - most of us do - but rather that it condemns all other spiritual choices - the Buddhist, the Jew, the Muslim, and many others who consider themselves to be good Christians. The wall of separation between church and state is needed precisely because religion, like art, is too important a part of the human experience to be choked by the hands of censors.
Humanism is an overemphasis on human worth and ability, leading man to glorify himself instead of God...While its historical forms may vary, humanism inevitably leads people away from God and spiritual concerns. It promotes the false idea that man is good and that he is superior to God. Secular Humanism of the twentieth century altogether rejects belief in God and worships man as God. The pride of humanism will not go unpunished.
The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.
Many native cultures believe that the heart is the bridge between Father Sky and Mother Earth. For these traditions, the 'four-chambered heart,' the source for sustaining emotional and spiritual health, is described as being full, open, clear, and strong. These traditions feel that it is important to check the condition of the four-chambered heart daily, asking: 'Am I full-hearted, open-hearted, clear-hearted, and strong-hearted?'
Some feelings are quite untranslatable; no language has yet been found for them. They gleam upon us beautifully through the dim twilight of fancy, and yet when we bring them close to us, and hold them up to the light of reason, lose their beauty all at once, as glow worms which gleam with such a spiritual light in the shadows of evening, when brought in where the candles are lighted, are found to be only worms like so many others.
You are Hannah, a lover of life, a strength to those who shared in your friendships. You are a dream, a creator of happiness, an artist who has touched a thousand souls. You've led a full life and wanted for nothing, because your needs are spiritual and you have only to look inside you. You are kind and loyal, and you are able to see the beauty where others do not. You are a teacher of wonderful lessons, a dreamer of better things.
Ideally, as parents we'd have unlimited energy, the ability to manage tricky emotions like fear and anger, vast stores of wisdom to answer complicated but important questions, love that never grows tired, patience that never ends... Every parent would like to have all of these, but God alone possesses them fully. Parenting reminded me of what I lacked more than it ever made me feel equipped. But there's a spiritual purpose in that!
I notice that when I feel the most disconnected, once I'm done blaming the moon and everything else, I can see that I am so mired in identification with form and ego and story and identity, and that if I want to, I can read some scripture or read some spiritual book or pray or meditate or sit in the sun or hang around the birds and the dogs, and get a real objective sense of what's really going on here. That usually softens things.
It's coming to America first, The cradle of the best and of the worst. It's here they got the range And the machinery for change And it's here they got the spiritual thirst. It's here the family's broken And it's here the lonely say That the heart has got to open In a fundamental way: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. O mighty Ship of State! To the Shores of Need Past the Reefs of Greed Through the Squalls of Hate Sail on, sail on.
Remembering that God is my source, we are in the spiritual position of having an unlimited bank account. Most of us never consider how powerful the creator really is. Instead, we draw limited amounts of the power available to us. We decide how powerful God is for us. We unconsciously set a limit on how much God can give us or help us. We are stingy with ourselves. And if we receive a gift beyond our imagining, we often send it back.
Sitting in the movie theater watching "Star Wars," I've never had an experience with any form of entertainment that was like that. It was almost spiritual. I couldn't believe that someone's mind created that. And, right, it felt like George Lucas had a piano that was playing my emotions, and he could go ahead and do whatever he wanted and make me lean forward if he wanted, or he could make me go oh, or he could make me hide my face.
Jesus' kingdom was not like the popular expectation. He used the phrase 'kingdom of God' with a different meaning. His kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36). It was not like the kingdoms of this world. It was the kingdom of God, a supernatural kingdom. It was invisible to most people (John 3:3)-it could not be understood or experienced without the Holy Spirit (v. 6). God is Spirit, and the kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom.
All the classical meditation traditions, in one way or another, stress nonattachment to the self as a goal of practice. Oddly, this dimension is largely ignored in scientific research, which tends to focus on health and other such benefits. I suppose the difference has to do with the contrast in views of the self from the spiritual and scientific perspectives. Scientists value the self; spiritual traditions have another perspective.
Be as delicate as possible. If communication accomplishes something on the gross but damages something on the level of feeling then it is a spiritual loss! The feeling is more important for life. Nourishment of the feeling level is the basis for growth of the spiritual holistic value. Delicate behaviour on the surface should be such as to nourish, uphold and enhance the Transcendental value where feelings merge into a common source.
Man doth seek a triple perfection: first a sensual, consisting in those things which very life itself requireth either as necessary supplements, or as beauties and ornaments thereof; then an intellectual, consisting in those things which none underneath man is either capable of or acquainted with; lastly a spiritual and divine, consisting in those things whereunto we tend by supernatural means here, but cannot here attain unto them.
Like a child exploring the attic of an old house on a rainy day, discovering a trunk full of treasure and then calling all his brothers and sisters to share the find, Richard J. 'Foster has 'found' the spiritual disciplines that the modern world has stored away and forgot, and has excitedly called us to celebrate them. For they are, as he shows us, the instruments of joy, the way into mature Christian spirituality and abundant life.
There is no religion in the world where there is a possibility of spiritual development outside of the context of that religion. This is only a modern invention. For example, Christian mystics were also Christians. They also went to Church and followed Christian laws. Hindu mystics were practicing Hindus; they didn't kill cows and have steak. They follow the Hindu laws and so on and so forth down the line and Sufism is no exception.
When like the patriarchs we learn to dig wells of virtue and spiritual knowledge within ourselves by means of ascetic practice and contemplation, we will find within us Christ the spring of life (cf. Gen. 26:15-18). Wisdom commands us to drink from this spring, saying, 'Drink water from your own pitchers and from the spring of your own wells' (Prov. 5:15). If we do this we shall find that the treasures of wisdom truly are within us.
As actors, the magic is in the almost spiritual experience to really enter another world, to really enter a belief of being in another person's shoes and to really take on their experiences as someone else has written them and imagined them. It's kind of a sacred thing. It's a very spiritual experience. That in itself for me is the main thing that keeps me coming back to it. I like to travel, but for me, this is the greatest travel.
If anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single spiritual person who has been able to show either empirically or logically the existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their moral choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife, I will give you my piano, one of my legs and my wife.
I, as a responsible adult human being, will never concede the power to anyone to regulate my choice of what I put into my body, or where I go with my mind. From the skin inwards is my jurisdiction, is it not? I choose what may or may not cross that border. Here I am the Customs Agent. I am the Coast guard. I am the sole legal and spiritual government of this territory, and only the laws I choose to enact within myself are applicable
Our first duty is to satisfy the spiritual master, who can arrange for the Lord's mercy. A common man must first begin to serve the spiritual master or the devotee. Then, through the mercy of the devotee, the Lord will be satisfied. Unless one receives the dust of a devotee's lotus feet on one's head, there is no possibility of advancement. Unless one approaches a pure devotee, he cannot understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead.