Spiritual Quotes - Page 217

Self-esteem is not a luxury; it is a profound spiritual need.

Holiness is not just for some select few spiritual giants; it is not just for pious people who sit around all day with nothing to do but “be holy.”... “Everyone who names the name of the Lord” is called to live a holy life!

Learning comes from education, while knowing comes from revelation. Learning is cognitive, while knowing is spiritual.

Love For All; Hatred for None

By being receptive, we can avail ourselves of the spiritual wealth available to us. By being open, we can receive things beyond what we ourselves might imagine.

Cleaning is considered a vital part of the training process in all traditional Japanese disciplines and is a required practice for any novice. It is accorded spiritual significance. Purifying an unclean place is believed to purify the mind.

So the best marriages and the deepest relationships with God grow out of the startling discovery that there is nothing one can do to earn love, and even more startling, that there is also nothing one can do to unlearn it, or to keep oneself from being loved. This is a religious awakening that is utterly different from any other religious experience, no matter how profoundly spiritual it may seem.

Rebellion against God results in being cast out of his service. God doesn't run the affairs of the spiritual world or our world with rebels on his payroll. They are cast to the Underworld (in the case of the Eden rebel), or a special place in the Underworld (e.g., the offenders of Genesis 6:1-4, who are, to quote Peter and Jude, "kept in chains of gloomy darkness" or "sent to Tartarus"). There are more divine rebels than that in the Bible, but hopefully that scratches the surface enough.

The powers of darkness are still part of the spiritual world - they don't become something else when they rebel against God. Disembodied believers are, by definition, also part of the spiritual world. So are God and Christ.

A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world's struggle for spiritual integrity. In the land of Faerie, the reader may see his small battles writ large in the wars of titans or elves and understand for the first time, his own worth.

This same habitual blindness to spiritual, substantive dimensions of every significant challenge continues to handicap Hollywood.

Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society - one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security.

A spiritual sensibility encourages us to see ourselves as part of the fundamental unity of all being. If the thrust of the market ethos has been to foster a competitive individualism, a major thrust of many traditional religious and spiritual sensibilities has been to help us see our connection with all other human beings.

The only force that can sustain true and consistent courage is some form of spiritual belief that values like honor, duty, loyalty and integrity above the status, power, money and even security.

I don't want to be daft and say I had some spiritual awakening or something, but I really did come of age in Los Angeles, where we recorded the album. I had my own little house and my own little circle and I really got to feel how the city ticks.

I was spiritually bankrupt, and when that happens, it's like a spiritual cancer afflicts you.

The moral task of man is a process of spiritualization. All creatures are go-betweens, and we are placed in time that by diligence in spiritual business we may grow liker and nearer to God. The aim of man is beyond the temporal - in the serene region of the everlasting Present.

I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play, but in the spiritual arena there are people who are even closer to me than that.

Belief is a choice. Not everyone is going to love Jesus. I'm not asking them to. I'm not asking them to come on the same spectrum as me. No matter where you fall on the faith spectrum, the spiritual can instill a sense of hope in you that's undeniable. The spiritual doesn't ask you to believe any one thing. It just opens you up.

As long as I remain imperfect and refractory, neither obeying God by practising the commandments nor becoming perfect in spiritual knowledge, Christ from my point of view also appears imperfect and refractory because of me. For I diminish and cripple Him by not growing in spirit with Him, since I am 'the body of Christ and one of its members' (I Cor. 12:27).

The patient endurance of the saints exhausts the evil power that attacks them, since it makes them glory in sufferings undergone for the sake of the truth. It teaches those too much concerned with a life in the flesh to deepen themselves through such sufferings instead of pursuing ease and comfort; and it makes the flesh's natural weakness in the endurance of suffering a foundation for overwhelming spiritual power. For the natural weakness of the saints is precisely such a foundation, since the Lord has made their weakness stronger than the proud devil.

He who through virtue and spiritual knowledge has brought his body into harmony with his soul has become a harp, a flute and a temple of God. He has become a harp by preserving the harmony of the virtues; a flute by receiving the inspiration of the Spirit through divine contemplation; and a temple by becoming a dwelling place of the Logos through the purity of his intellect.

To accept grace is to admit failure, a step we are hesitant to take. We opt to impress God with how good we are rather than confessing how great he is.

[Some of the people I'd met] were wonderful people as human beings, and some people were more difficult. I could not see a correlation between their particular genius in playing chess and music and mathematics, etc. ... with human qualities. Some were really good, wonderful people, and some were difficult characters, but there was no clear correlation. But when I met some spiritual masters, [I thought that] there had to be a correlation, and it turned out to be true.

Real spiritual journey in life is the discovery of self. I think once you take all the religious bullshit away from Jesus Christ, it's saying it's about this journey of discovering who you are, and what's really important in life is simply love. That the journey of civilization, the journey of understanding, is forgiveness, is empathy. And that's what humanity is striving for.