Matthew Fox Quotes

The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere.

Healthy mysticism praises acts of letting go, of being emptied, of getting in touch with the space inside and expanding this until it merges with the space outside. Space meeting space; empty pouring into empty. Births happen from that encounter with emptiness, nothingness. . . . Let us not fight emptiness and nothingness, but allow it to penetrate us even as we penetrate it.

The prophets preach . . . that pleasure, not will-power and coercion, is how you most deeply transform people.

Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons - but they're not out there.

A job is something we do to get a paycheck and pay our bills. Jobs are legitimate, at times, but work is why we are here in the universe. Work and calling often go together.

I think that there's a hidden darkness in all of us!

I'm sorry, but I can't make a movie with the blonde from 'ER' who is starring in every single bad romantic comedy.

The only way to learn compassion is through your heart; you have to back up and pass through your own pain.

Political movements for justice are part of the fuller development of the cosmos, and nature is the matrix in which humans come to their self-awareness of their power to transform. Liberation movements are a fuller development of the cosmos's sense of harmony, balance, justice, and celebration. This is why true spiritual liberation demands rituals of cosmic celebrating and healing, which will in turn culminate in personal transformation and liberation.

We honor life when we work. The type of work is not important: the fact of work is. All work feeds the soul if it is honest and done to the best of our abilities and if it brings joy to others.

A civilization built on dualism and war within and between persons, one that puts its most creative minds and its best engineers to sadistic work building more and more destructive weapons, is no civilization at all. It needs a radical transformation from the heart outwards. It needs to outgrow and outlaw war just as in the last century it outlawed slavery. The human race has outgrown war, but it hardly knows it yet.

To create is always to learn, to begin over, to begin at zero.

Big-heartednes s is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey.

I enjoy a four-seasonal climate and wide-open spaces, so being on an island 2,500 miles into the South Pacific made me feel a little claustrophobic.

Humor and paradox are often the only ways to respond to life's sorrow with grace.

There is no end to the beauty for the person who is aware. Even the cracks between the sidewalk contain geometric patterns of amazing beauty.

I think you've got to take your time and make sure you're making choices that are smart for you.

We are in the cosmos and the cosmos is in us.

What is of most moment of compassion is not feelings of pity but feelings of togetherness.

A lot of the time I hate acting. It has a lot to do with the way I was brought up in a world where showing your emotions is frowned upon. It's just not manly. I don't do anything in life because I love doing it. It's because I want to be good at it.

To connect with the great river we all need a path, but when you get down there there's only one river.

A global awakening can only happen from a spiritual awakening that is of global dimensions.

Faith takes us to deep places, to the ruptures in our self-confidence and our lives. Do not settle for spiritual comfort all the time...Darkness is divine also. Faith is not about positive thinking so much as about what kicks in when we are weak, sick, and short of self-confidence. The via positiva never stands alone. The via negativa is always with us on our faith journey as well.

Animals love. They love their being. They strive to survive, to celebrate, to propagate . So certainly something we learn from animals is love. To survive and to celebrate, propagate and to love life. To be the best we can be - the right to be here and the responsibility to be the best dog or bear or horse that they can be. Humans have the tendency to self pity that other animals don't indulge in.

I am a Westerner. We're not going to change the West by going East. The East has a lot to teach us, but essentially it's like a mirror, saying, hey, can't you see what's here in your own religion, what are you, stupid?

Having a studio tell you when to jump and how high eight months of the year for six years is not a relationship I want to get into again.

I'll put it to you this way: I never, ever think about the things that I get involved with on a macro means-to-an-ends scale.

When our inner self connects to our work and our work to our inner self, the work knows no limit, for the inner self knows no limit.

I turn a lot of stuff down - big, big movies, the kind I wouldn't want to go to the cinema to see.

I directed an episode of 'Party of Five' toward the very end of that show. It was a great experience.

Sustainability is another word for justice, for what is just is sustainable and what is unjust is not.

Today's Catholic church seems to reward authoritarian personalities who are clearly ill, violent, sexually obsessed and unable to remember the past.

Prayer is essentially about making the heart strong so that fear cannot penetrate there.

Creation is all things and us. It is us in relationship with all things. All things, the ones we see and the ones we do not; the whirling galaxies and the wild suns, the black holes and the microorganisms, the trees and the stars, the fish and the whales - the molten lava and the towering snow-capped mountains, the children we give birth to and their children, and theirs, and theirs, and theirs.

We all share beauty. It strikes us indiscriminately. There is no end to the beauty for the person who is aware. Even the cracks between the sidewalk contain geometric patterns of amazing beauty. If we take pictures of them and blow up the photographs, we realize we walk on beauty every day, even when things seem ugly around us.

The whole purpose of letting pain be pain is this: to let go of pain. By entering into it, we see that we are strong enough and capable enough to move through it. We find out that it ultimately has a gift for us.

What is common to all paths that are spiritual is, of course, the Spirit-breath, life energy, that is why all true paths are essentially one path, because there is only one Spirit, one breath, one life, one energy in the universe. It belongs to none of us and all of us. We all share it. Spiritually does not make up otherworldly; it renders us more fully alive.

Cars are part of our genetic makeup. It's unavoidable.

I consider Otto Rank to be one of the great spiritual giants of the twentieth century, a genius as a psychologist and a saint as a human being. Though vilified by his original community of Freudians, he never became bitter. He died a feminist and deeply committed to social justice, in 1939....His deep understanding of creativity makes him a mentor for all of us living in a postmodern world....I believe that Art and Artist, especially chapters 12 to 14, may well emerge as the most valuable psychoanalysis of the spiritual life in our time.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.

I'm really enjoying the process of learning to fly. How it will fit into my life down the road - I'm looking forward to discovering that.

Pain destroys the illusions of false, that is, elitist pleasures. It burns from the inside out. It, therefore, sensitizes us to what is truly beautiful in life.

Beauty saves. Beauty heals. Beauty motivates. Beauty unites. Beauty returns us to our origins, and here lies the ultimate act of saving, of healing, of overcoming dualism.

It is precisely the despair of our times that convinces me that a renaissance is right around the corner.

Work should be in order to live. We don't live in order to work. That shift in awareness is necessary.

I don't think that fundamentalism has anything to do with Jesus Christ. They call themselves Christians, but if that's Christian, count me out. Fundamentalism is built on fear and greed. They're telling you to give them your money otherwise you're going to hell.

I'm either going to have the career I want doing films, or I'll do something else - I'll be gone.

A lot of people want to see this idealized version of heroism, all pretty and perfect, and I'm not interested in playing the goody-goody hero at all.