We must learn to accept ourselves in the painful experiment of living. We must embrace the spiritual adventure of becoming human, moving through the many stages that lie between birth and death.
Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.
While spirituality provides an efficient and endless fuel for your mind and body, you must burn that fuel with human action towards your goals, dreams, and desires.
How would your life be different if your religion was love, and your spirituality was governed by kindness? How would the world be different if everyone did this?
I suppose the spiritual trance is harder to break than the religious one because the delusion is more difficult to distinguish. You have a quasi-cloud of ideas that include wonderful concepts of openness and altruism without the blatant anthropomorph...
Our unfathomable evolutionary past paints a picture vastly more immense than any spiritual story could ever create because it is raw and real, violent, dirty and beautiful—and because of that—it's spectacular!
It is abnormal for a Christian not to have an appetite for the impossible. It has been written into our spiritual DNA to hunger for the impossibilities around us to bow at the name of Jesus.
Spiritual activity, education, civilization, culture, the idea are all vague, indefinite concepts, under the banner of which it is quite convenient to use words that have a still less clear meaning and therefore can easily be plugged into any theory.
...the subject of walking is, in some sense, about how we invest universal acts with particular meanings. Like eating or breathing, it can be invested with wildly different cultural meanings, from the erotic to the spiritual, from the revolutionary t...
Positive, truthful and helping people always get rewards. Oneness, love, compassion and enlightenment can be attained by following the spiritual laws of the universe." -Hina Hashmi
I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in m...
Our worldly successes cannot be guaranteed, but our ability to achieve spiritual success is entirely up to us, thanks to the grace of God. The best advice I know is to give is to give those worldly things your best but never your all - reserve the ul...
Jazz is very important. It's not something I can put my finger on. When I'm writing at my favorite time, I like to have the gentle side of Coltrane or Brubeck on the CD player. It creates sort of a spiritual space in which I write best.
As one man said, "I got a pretty good education. It took me years to get over it." That's what spirituality is all about, you know: unlearning. Unlearning all the rubbish they taught you.
Often truly authoritative leadership falls on someone who years earlier dedicated themselves to practice the discipline of seeking first the kingdom of God. Then, as that person matures, God confers a leadership role, and the Spirit of God goes to wo...
My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it's not really forgiveness. It's Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you're trying to live up to but you're just using...
The Jesuits have a vow to obey the pope, but if the pope is a Jesuit, maybe he should have a vow to obey the superior general... I feel like I'm still a Jesuit in terms of my spirituality, what I have in my heart.
You see what you choose to see, because all perception is a choice. And when you cease to impose your meanings on what you see, your spiritual eyes will open, and you will see a world free of judgment and shining in its endless beauty.
Life's temptations have the purpose of putting our spiritual integrity to the test. To yield to them, however, gives one a precarious and tormented satisfaction. But the worst temptations are those we give in to without getting anything in return exc...
I look on most religions as fear-based rather than love-based. I've drifted away from all that. Yes, I think I'm more spiritual. I just don't go and pretend every Saturday or Sunday that I'm in this wonderful club. I'm exploring.
The reason that people start wars is because they still believe in their separation from life. But when you experience the wholeness with all living beings, you understand that hurting somebody else is just hurting yourself as we are all one on the s...
