Spiritual Quotes - Page 184

Some friendships in life sustain themselves only at a particular life stage, products of some mutual developmental problem to be resolved together, or of some external circumstance, like being housed in the same dormitory in boarding school. Others grow out of a deeper spiritual and philosophical affinity, which continues throughout life.

You may repeat the most marvelous poems. And that is not worth a cent if you don't live it.

Goodness is not in the backyard of the individual nor in the open field of the collective; goodness flowers only in freedom from both.

Your life becomes what you believe.

What greater weakness can there be than not to know what is the source of one's being, of one's life, of one's senses, of one's knowledge, and what is to be their end? What can be more deeply disheartening than to wonder whether one's soul is, perhaps, a material thing, like a stone or a reptile, corruptible like these base creatures? Is there not more strength and greatness of mind in admitting the idea of a being superior to all other beings, who has made them all and to whom all owe their existence; of a being supremely perfect, who is pure, who had no beginning and can have no ending, of whom our soul is the image and, so to speak, a portion, being a spiritual and immortal thing?

Science demands objective factual evidence - proof; spiritual experience is subjective and leads to faith.

In the mountains, worldly attachments are left behind, and in the absence of material distractions, we are opened up to spiritual thought. We should be attempting to carry the spiritual experience of the mountains with us everywhere.

In moments of spiritual crisis we naturally fall back upon what worked for us, or seemed to work, heretofore. Sometimes this shows up through the reassertion of our old values in belligerent, testy ways. Regression of any kind is just such a return to old presumptions, often after they have been shown to be insufficient for the complexity of larger questions. The virtue of the old presumptions is that they once worked, or seemed to work, and therein lies if not certainty, then nostalgia for a previous, presumptive security. In our private lives, we frequently fall back upon our old roles.

Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.

Spiritual process is not about chanting a mantra or closing your eyes, spiritual process is essentially about enhancing your perception.

When you do something just because it is needed, you involve yourself totally without it meaning anything to you, then action becomes liberating.

Yoga is a way to produce a chemistry of blissfulness. Once you are blissful by your own nature, you can deal with outside situations effortlessly.

The most enduring sort of power is realizing the power within.

Once you realize that the way you exist right now is not enough, that there is something more, your spiritual process has already begun.

Your history is animal. Your future is divinity. Right now, you are like a pendulum, swinging between the two.

A spiritual process is not a divorce from life. It is an irrevocable love affair with life.

If you shift from compulsiveness to consciousness, being joyful will not be an effort.

If you cultivate your body, your mind, your emotions, and your energies to a certain level of maturity, meditation will blossom.

Detachment does not mean non-involvement. You can be deeply involved but not entangled.

Any serious man or woman in search of spiritual ideas will find a surprising challenge and an authentic source of inspiration and intellectual nourishment in the writings of Paul Brunton.

The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness. It is here in the present. It asks of us a welcoming spirit to greet all that life presents to us with a wise, respectful, and kindly heart. We can bow to both beauty and suffering, to our entanglements and confusion, to our fears and to the injustices of the world. Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom.

Spirituality is not about what you know. It is about growing, deepening, evolving and becoming a living reflection of your spiritual identity.

Artistic truth is for me literally the highest truth: art may seize the essence of persons and movements no less truly, and certainly far more vitally, than a scientific generalization unifies a chaos of phenomena. Time and Space are only the conditions through which spiritual facts struggle. Hence I have here and there permitted myself liberties with these categories.

Spiritual life and secure life do not go together; to save oneself on must struggle and take risks.

Spiritual pride is the worst of all pride, if it is not the worst snare of the devil. The heart is peculiarly deceitful on just this one thing.