Spirit
2
Quotes
for
the Journey:
Spirit
Unrest of spirit is a mark of
life.
Karl Menninger
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The spiritual life is, at root, a matter of
seeing. It is all of life
seen from a certain perspective. It is waking, sleeping, dreaming,
eating, drinking, working, loving, relaxing, recreating, walking,
sitting, standing, and breathing. . . . spirit suffuses everything; and
so
the spiritual life is simply life, wherever and whatever,
seen from the vantage point of spirit.
-John Shea
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The
paralyzing effect of fear makes us as helpless as babies and
blinds us to the truth that God didn’t send us here to be powerless
spectators,
but to become powerful initiators.
We are spiritual beings having an
earthly experience, and we have the power to break the cycle of
negativity
that is fueling a very dangerous world.
It’s not only possible, it’s why we are here.
-Susan
L. Taylor
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Everything science has taught me--and
continues
to teach me-- strengthens my belief in the
continuity of our spiritual existence after death.
Nothing disappears without a trace.
-Wernher von Braun |
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All
you need is deep within you waiting to unfold
and reveal
itself. All you have to do is
be still and take
time to seek what is within,
and you will surely find it.
-Eileen Caddy
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Delve within; within is the
fountain of good,
and it is always ready to bubble up, if
you always delve. -Marcus Aurelius |
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My whole
attitude to life is spiritual--a feeling of identification with all
nature,
all mankind, all life, the whole of the past, the whole of the
future. -Fenner
Brockway |
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Our
spirit is a being of nature quite indestructible and its
activity continues
from eternity to eternity. It is like
the sun, which seems to set only
to our earthly eyes, but which,
in reality, never sets, but shines on unceasingly.
-Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe |
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We are not human beings having
a spiritual
experience. We are
spiritual beings having a
human
experience.
-Teilhard de Chardin |
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Sadly, some people
wait until they have a heart attack or ulcers,
or have a
teenage child who gets into trouble, or until their
spouse leaves them,
or the like, to attend to their soul
needs. The disastrous experience pushes them to it.
But you don't have to wait for disaster. You
can open yourself to the possibility
of nourishing your
soul, and you can make it a priority. Take careful
stock of the way
you spend your life energies doing
things that are not so nourishing. Often,
in the
middle adult years especially, people find that they have
been busy
being productive in some task-oriented way,
some way in which their souls
were excluded. The
responsibilities of everyday life--taking the kids to
school,
paying the bills, doing the grocery shopping, all
the stuff that life requires
of mature adults--expand to
fill the entire life. -Jean Shinoda Bolen |
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Are
you aware that your spirit needs to be fed?
Did you know that
your spirit would be delighted to partake in a feast of spiritual
food?
How about a plate full of prayer?
Or maybe a few hours of succulent
self-reflection.
Perhaps a piping-hot selection of spiritual literature,
served by the side of a lake or under a tree, would satisfy your
spiritual
hunger.
Can you imagine feasting for a few hours on spiritually
uplifting music?
What about some forgiveness à la mode, topped
with compassion?
You cannot imagine how much your spirit would enjoy it.
-Iyanla Vanzant |
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The balance and peace we seek for
ourselves and our society won’t be achieved
through mental effort alone. Mind
and spirit are meant to travel together,
with spirit leading the way. Until
we make a conscious commitment to understand
and embrace our spiritual nature, we will endure the ache of living
without
the awareness and guidance of the most essential part of ourselves.
-Susan L. Taylor
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We collect
data, things, people, ideas, "profound experiences,"
never penetrating any of them. . . But there are other times. There are times when we stop.
We sit still. We
lose ourselves
in a pile of leaves or its memory.
We listen and breezes
from a whole other world begin to whisper.
-James
Carroll |
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Be
patient with everyone, but above all with yourself.
I mean, do not
be disturbed because of your imperfections, and always rise up
bravely from a fall.
I am glad that you make a daily new beginning;
there is no better means of progress in the spiritual life than to be
continually beginning afresh, and never to think that we have done
enough. -St. Francis de Sales |
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In
this noisy, restless, bewildering age, there is a great need for
quietness of spirit.
Even in our communion with God we are so busy presenting our problems,
asking for help,
seeking relief that we leave no moments of silence to listen for God’s
answers.
By practice we can learn to submerge our spirits
beneath the turbulent surface waves of life and reach that depth of our
being where
all is still, where no storms can reach us.
Here only can we forget the
material world and its demands on us.
-Alice Hegan Rice |
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It’s tempting, when faced with a flaw of the
spirit or other growth issue,
to pray for and expect immediate change.
Sometimes it happens. But
how lost
and confused we feel if our prayers don’t bring the instant relief we
seek.
During such times, it’s good to remember that all facets of our
nature—whether
traits we love about ourselves or those we want to improve—are part of
our
God-created being. Even our
less-than-desirable parts are there for a reason
and contain His lessons for us. When
change seems to come slowly, don’t
give up hope. Consider that
the timetable for your growth is in the Lord’s hands.
Continue your daily communion with God and trust your spirit to be
healed in His time. -unattributed |
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No
great spiritual event befalls those who do not summon it.
-Elbert Hubbard |
Spirit
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Zen does not confuse spirituality with
thinking
about God while one is peeling potatoes.
Zen
spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
-Alan Watts |
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Do not go looking for problems to feed your
soul. Just let
life be your teacher. It will
nourish you with its inevitable difficulties.
How
will you know whether you are letting life teach you and
nourish you? If your physical senses become more
sensitive
to the beauty you see, the words of love you
hear, and the life
you feel touching your body and soul,
then you know you
have discovered the great value of
misfortune. -Bernie Siegel |
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Spirit, and enlightenment, has to be
something that you are fully aware of
right now.
Something you are already looking at right now.
As I
was receiving these teachings, I thought of the old
puzzles
in the Sunday supplement section of the newspaper,
where there
is a landscape and the caption says, "The
faces of twenty famous
people are hidden in this
landscape. Can you spot them?" The
faces
were maybe Walter Cronkite, John Kennedy, that kind of
thing.
The point is that you are looking right at
the faces. You don't need to
see anything more in
order to be looking at the faces. They are
completely entering your visual field already, you just
don't
recognize them. If you still can't find them,
then somebody
comes along and simply points them out.
It's the same way with Spirit, I
thought. We are all already looking
directly at
Spirit, we just don't recognize it. We have all the
necessary cognition, but not the recognition.
-Ken Wilber |
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Why
do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye,
while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure
until next year?
-Horace |
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I've
found that what's true in nature is true for all humans in
understanding ourselves.
Just as the blossoms on a fruit tree fall away as the
fruit grows, so does our need
for a bouquet of rationalizations vanish as the Divine
produces the authentic self.
The more we allow ourselves to be guided by the principals
that identify us as
spiritual, the less we have any desire or inclination to
use excuses. As Carl Jung
put it: "Our most important problems cannot be
solved; they must be outgrown."
-Wayne Dyer |
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But
if we are to expand our souls, we need to pay attention
to the life all around us--the people and things and light
and
dark and wind and sun. If you believe that you have
a soul,
it's probably more important for us to focus on developing
our souls--which are immortal--than it is for us to gather
more information and develop our brains. A balance
would
be nice, but most of us don't work at all on our souls,
except for an occasional prayer or book on a religious
topic.
Much of our work on our souls can be accomplished by
working on our abilities to listen--not just hear, to see
and
understand--not just see, to feel in our depths--not just
feel. -tom
walsh |
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Spirituality
is a flower with a thousand petals: every act, every
thought,
every talk, every movement of our heart is a part of it.
-Robert Muller |
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Care of the soul is quite
different in scope from most modern notions of psychology and
psychotherapy. It isn't about curing, fixing, changing,
adjusting, or making healthy, and it isn't about some idea of
perfection or even improvement. It doesn't look to the
future for an ideal, trouble-free existence. Rather, it
remains patiently in the present, close to life as it presents
itself day by day, and yet at the same time mindful of religion
and spirituality.
-Thomas Moore, Care
of the Soul |
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Soul
loss can be observed today as a psychological phenomenon in the
everyday life of the human beings around us. Loss of soul
appears in the form of a sudden onset of apathy and listlessness;
the joy has gone out of life, initiative is crippled, one feels
empty, everything seems pointless.
-Marie-Louise von Franz |
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This
is the real gift: we have been given the breath of life,
designed with a unique, one-of-a-kind soul that exists
forever--whether we live it as a burden or a joy or with
indifference doesn't change the fact that we've been given the
gift of being now and forever. -Wendy More |
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If we
want to support each other's inner lives, we must remember a
simple truth: the human soul does not want to be fixed, it
wants simply to be seen and heard. If we want to see and
hear a person's soul, there is another truth we must remember:
the soul is like a wild animal--tough, resilient, and yet shy.
When we go crashing through the woods shouting for it to come out
so we can help it, the soul will stay in hiding. But if we
are willing to sit quietly and wait for a while, the soul may show
itself. -Parker J. Palmer, The Courage
to Teach |
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For
the journey of spiritual growth requires courage and initiative
and independence of thought and action. While the words of
the prophets and the assistance of grace are available, the
journey still must be traveled alone. No teacher can carry
you there. There are no preset formulas. Rituals are
only learning aids, they are not the learning. Eating
organic food, saying five Hail Marys before breakfast, praying
facing east or west, or going to church on Sunday will not take
you to your destination. No words can be said, no teaching
can be taught that will relieve spiritual travelers from the
necessity of picking their own ways, working out with effort and
anxiety their own paths through the unique circumstances of their
own lives toward the identification of their individual selves
with God. -M.
Scott Peck |
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The future
requires openness to all spiritual knowledge. You may prefer
one religion, but there are many paths to the center and we need
all the help we can get.
People who believe there is only one path limit
themselves. They find safety in spiritual rigidity.
They memorize phrases and mindlessly repeat them, confusing faith
with obedience. They threaten damnation, they hurl insults
in the name of God. They cannot feel the love of the
prophets they quote. They preach limits in the realm of the
unlimited.
The message of the spirit throughout the world is the
same. It is a message of love, tolerance, compassion,
respect, optimism, and a profound understanding of the meaning of
community. -Jennifer
James, Success Is the Quality of Your Journey |
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Spirit
2
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