Quotes About Spirituality

Jesuits make a vow of obedience to the Pope. But if the Pope is a Jesuit, perhaps he has to make a vow of obedience to the General of the Jesuits! I don’t know how to resolve this … I feel a Jesuit in my spirituality; in the spirituality of the Exercises, the spirituality deep in my heart.

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives.

An important distinction can be made between religion and spirituality. Religion [is] concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition... Spirituality is concerned with qualities of the human spirit, love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, that bring happiness both to self.

Serving the Truth becomes our life instead of just an isolated event. It takes the abstractness out of spirituality. That's the opportunity of real spirituality: to be in service to the silence of the heart.

I think the new spirituality will be a spirituality that's not based on a particular dogma. And that steps away from the old spiritual paradigm that we have created on this planet, which comes from a thought that there is such a thing as being better.

To me, love, spirituality and life are all the same thing. To me they're all about honoring the circle, and they're just different ways of defining the same understanding. Our society as a whole, because we have placed our love for money above our love for life, has devalued the sacred and devalued love.

My spiritual life is an interesting thing. It's pretty private. I was raised Catholic in the Baptist Bible belt, so my spirituality was challenged and very much a private thing and it continues to be.

What I would argue is that real spirituality is the ability to keep encountering two opposite thoughts at the same time and still maintain some kind of morality and perspective in the world. It is not the elimination of one side of the equation or the elimination of what you don't like; it is the investigation of everything.

Always consider the qualifications of anyone who assumes or professes authority, what do they really know? Authorities on spirituality can rarely give a half coherent explanation of what they persuade us to believe they know. They achieve authority by stage management and then exploit audience suggestibility. Same old trick they have pulled for thousands of years.

Thus when I have to summarize naturalized spirituality in a single phrase, it is this: the thoughtful love of life.

I actually feel that personal matters, like religion and spirituality, are things that I really discuss only with intimates. I think it's, in a way, like sexuality, something where it touches upon something very private.

I realize that I've had a very idyllic vision of what spirituality looks like. Honestly, most of Western culture has an idyllic and simplified idea of what enlightenment entails.

Spirituality is allowing compassion and love to flourish. When belongness begins, corruption ends.

Spirituality really lost its way when it became a stick to beat people with: ‘Do this or you’ll burn in hell.

No circumstances can ever make or mar the unfolding of the spiritual life. Spirituality does not depend upon the environment; it depends upon one's attitude towards life.

My passion comes from the things that have historically happened to black people in Mississippi. I can honestly say that most of the things that I've accomplished in my life have come from my spirituality and my belief in God.

Religion should unite all hearts and cause wars and disputes to vanish from the face of the earth; it should give birth to spirituality, and bring light and life to every soul. If religion becomes a cause of dislike, hatred and division, it would be better to be without it... Any religion which is not a cause of love and unity is no religion.

Spirituality is a harmonious blend of outer silence and inner celebration; and also inner silence and outer celebration!

Talking about spirituality is like talking about new love - it always sounds kooky to those who aren't experiencing it.

The more we invest in our spirituality, the more consistently we can elevate our consciousness and connect to the spiritual source of everything good.

I am an atheist, I have no religious beliefs. And obviously I don’t believe in spirituality of some kind.

There is no spirituality without ethics

Spirituality and the secular world are not that far apart.

Even when our life is most difficult, it is important to remember that something within us is keeping us alive- the life force-that lift us, energizes us, pulls us back sometimes from the abyss of despair. True spirituality does not exist without love of life.

Spirituality is like a bird: If you hold it too closely, it chokes, And if you hold it too loosely, it escapes.

And when we come to refute them, we shall show in its fitting place that this class of men [i.e., the gnostics] has been instigated by satan to a denial of that baptism which is regeneration to God, and thus to a denial of the whole faith [by denying all physical aspects of spirituality, including the incarnatian and bodily resurrection of Jesus].

When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana. The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself. [Satan] is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it. That is why people serve Satan without ever knowing it or deciding to, but no one can be a child of God without making a decision to surrender to him. Beware of systems of spirituality which tell you to empty yourself. You will end up filled with something you probably do not want.

Archaeological materials are not mute. They speak their own language. And they need to be used for the great source they are to help unravel the spirituality of those of our ancestors who predate the Indo-Europeans by many thousands of years.

I guess I'm a spiritual secularist, if that's not an oxymoron. My paths of secularism and spirituality are the same: I try to do the appropriate thing at each moment.

Suffering is part and parcel of the human condition, but suffering can either embitter or ennoble us. It can ennoble us and become a spirituality of transformation when we find meaning in it.

When you look at the Asians, the Asian is very gifted in creation, creativity and inventions. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They're very creative. And you look at the Indians, they have been very gifted in the spirituality.

Somehow, we have gotten off track from the basics of health and spirituality, and we get in our own way.

Spirituality is that place where the utterly intimate and the vastly infinite meet.

My mother ... had a very deep inner spirituality that allowed her to rebuild her life. It's extraordinary that she had such a strong sense of self and such a commitment to the future and such a strong creative sense that she could build new worlds for herself and for us out of the total devastation in her life.

Like a child exploring the attic of an old house on a rainy day, discovering a trunk full of treasure and then calling all his brothers and sisters to share the find, Richard J. 'Foster has 'found' the spiritual disciplines that the modern world has stored away and forgot, and has excitedly called us to celebrate them. For they are, as he shows us, the instruments of joy, the way into mature Christian spirituality and abundant life.

In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.

I think being really connected to a higher power, of having a spirituality to me, has been really good for me and I pray all the time.

You could conceive spirituality as the study of the immeasurable, of the qualitative. But that's very different from the way we typically use the word. A spiritual person, in the popular conception, is somebody who's kind of aloof from the world, introspective, meditating, communing with non-material beings. That's the spiritual realm, and we elevate it above the material realm. What's more worthy, what's more admirable? Who's the one who has done this hard work on the self, and has done a lot of "practice"? That's the spiritual person.

I think that every living person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group thinking, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there, the problem is the needy beast of a thing living in my chest.

I love artists who have spirituality. Jonathan Coulton is the man, I love his melodies and lyrics. Chap-hop is the bomb!

To play June, I had an immediate connect with her background and culture. We grew up with the same religion and shared a lot of the same values of family and spirituality. But I was really so inspired by what a modern woman she was.

Spirituality is committing suicide. Consciousness is attempting to will itself out of existence.

This latter day work is spiritual. It takes spirituality to comprehend it, to love it, to discern it. Therefore, seek the spirit in all you do. Keep it with you continually. That is our challenge.

Tantra means the avoidance of a set or defined form of spirituality. Tantra is intuitive self-discovery.

Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

This is our challenge at the beginning of the twenty-first century - we need to find the courage to see our own spiritual yearnings in the biggest possible context, in such a way that is going to compel us to finally transcend our self-concern. We need to find the heart to come together in such a way that will enable us to face the challenges before us. And to do this, we need a new spirituality. We need a new enlightenment.

We can no more do without spirituality than we can do without food, shelter, or clothing.

I spent so much of my life reading about spirituality and reading about neuroscience and trying different meditation practices. It's a really big part of my life. But it's sometimes hard to talk about. There are so many people in the world who don't live in Southern California and don't spend their time meditating.