Spiritual Contemplation Quotes

When timeless moments solicit you, accept the invitation. Go deep within it, until you find yourself in your absence. ~ Jean Klein

The animal has its happiness in the senses, the human beings in their intellect, and the gods in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. ~ Swami Vivekananda

The naive which is simultaneously beautiful, poetic, and idealistic, must be both intention and instinct. The essence of intention, in this sense, is freedom. Consciousness is far from intention. There is a certain enamoured contemplation of one's own naturalness or silliness which itself is unspeakably silly. Intention does not necessarily require a profound calculation or plan. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Shortly after I started hitting some notable milestones on my Spiritual journey, I went into a thrift store that benefits veterans, My eyes were quickly drawn to a dusty and tattered image of Christ laying mixed in with some other things on a shelf. I picked it up, And on it was written these words:

"If you accept it...
I would give you the gift of seeing yourself as I see you..."

The truth and love of that image and simple words stopped me in my tracks and opened my heart. Since then I have received a wonderful gift, to know myself as an Eternal Spiritual Being, a Child of our Loving Father in Heaven.

...And no I didn't buy it, I received the message loud and clear, So I left it there, in hopes that the image and words would speak to someone else's Soul in the same way they had spoken to mine. ~ Raymond D. Longoria Jr.

The troubles of this world pass,
and what we have left is what we have made of our souls ... ~ Shoghi Effendi

Love, and everything else will come to you. ~ Raphael Zernoff

If you want to attain moksha (ultimate liberation), then you cannot give unsolicited advice. Give advice only when it is asked for. In order to give advice, you have to become the chief! ~ Dada Bhagwan

None of us lives to himself . . . ." Romans 14:7 Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible spiritually to God for other people? For instance, if I allow any turning away from God in my private life, everyone around me suffers. We "sit together in the heavenly places . . ." (Ephesians 2:6). "If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it . . ." (1 Corinthians 12:26). If you allow physical selfishness, mental carelessness, moral insensitivity, or spiritual weakness, everyone in contact with you will suffer. ~ Oswald Chambers

That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). He meant that there's no direct connection between the two. They are interrelated, as you'll later see, but spirit is spirit and flesh is flesh. You simply cannot contact your spirit through your emotions or your physical body. Herein lies one of the great problems of the Christian life! If you don't understand that spiritual reality can't be felt, then you'll be confused when God's Word declares that you have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead (Eph. 1:18-20). ~ Andrew Wommack

We can recognize that instead of lashing back, the best answer is turning the other cheek. This may be easy for some, but for others - especially those who have been deeply hurt - abandoning the urge to inflict injury will require spiritual strength, prayer, and self-control. ~ Anonymous

Formal education opens the world to you; contemplation and reflection open yourself to you. ~ Debasish Mridha

We encounter many bumps, bends, and forks in the road of life that leads to the eternities. There is so much teaching and correction as we travel on that road ...
President Brigham Young offered the profound insight that at least some of our suffering has a purpose when he said: All intelligent beings who are crowned with crowns of glory, immortality, and eternal lives must pass through every ordeal appointed for intelligent beings to pass through, to gain their glory and exaltation ... Every trial and experience you have passed through is necessary for your salvation. ~ James E. Faust

For many people, the love or the loss of an animal often becomes a gateway into a deeper spiritual journey. The most pragmatic of men will begin to question the fundamental nature of being when he is visited by an apparition of his deceased cat or dog companion. ~ Elizabeth S. Eiler

Intuition is the source of scientific knowledge. ~ Aristotle.

Traveling further ingrained my desire to connect to a place other than an island that is slightly older, in a New World way, than the United States, especially after I found characteristics of my face in the faces of the people in my global community. ~ Raquel Cepeda

Being spiritual is a far more intelligent way to exist. It means being in tune with the intelligence of the Creator. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

Encouragement is the strength of the spirit. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The Lord will deliver us from every chain of sin, slavery and bondage. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

But they shared in common a belief that the earth is a spiritual presence that must be honored, not mastered. ~ Kent Nerburn

In materiality we find some advance faster, some grow stronger, some become weaklings. Until there is redemption through the acceptance of the law (or love of God, as manifested through the Channel or the Way), there can be little or no development in a material or spiritual plane. But all must pass under the rod, even as He-who entered into materiality. ~ Edgar Cayce

Government, obviously, cannot fill a child's emotional needs. Nor can it fill his spiritual and moral needs. Government is not a father or mother. Government has never raised a child, and it never will. ~ William Bennett

Faith changes us - faith in something intrinsically good, something other than ourselves, something bigger than ourselves. ~ Donna Goddard

To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But behind all asceticism the thought should be, 'Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes?' Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world- shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King's stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else - since He has retained His own charger - should we accompany Him? ~ C.S. Lewis

When we put together two substances in nature that are dry, they cannot cohere; there is no way for them to join. When we add wetness, these two substances can bond; they can come together. In just that same way, the force of metta, lovingkindness, allows us to cohere, to come together within ourselves and with all beings. The beauty of this truth moved the Buddha to say that sustaining a loving heart, even for the duration of the snap of a finger, makes one a truly spiritual being. ~ Sharon Salzberg

Strength, both physical and spiritual, is the product of struggle! ~ Napoleon Hill

Phony gurus make themselves objects of adoration and worship. Real spiritual teachers aren't interested in adoration and worship. They like respect only because they realize respect will help the student. ~ Frederick Lenz

Safe relationships are centered and grounded in forgiveness. When you have a friend with the ability to forgive you for hurting her or letting her down, something deeply spiritual occurs in the transaction between you two. You actually experience a glimpse of the deepest nature of God himself. People who forgive can - and should - also be people who confront. What is not confessed can't be forgiven. God himself confronts our sins and shows us how we wound him: "I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from me, and by their eyes, which played the harlot after their idols" (Ezek. 6:9 NASB). When we are made aware of how we hurt a loved one, then we can be reconciled. Therefore, you shouldn't discount someone who "has something against you," labeling him as unsafe. He might actually be attempting to come closer in love, in the way that the Bible tells us we are to do. ~ Henry Cloud

But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi
like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth
do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?"
So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good. ~ Brenda Ueland

She was a mystery, personal in her journey but social in her seek; you wouldn't believe the depth in her heart until the day you felt her essence, for the very first time. ~ Nikki Rowe

Wilderness, or wildness is a mystique. A religion, an intense philosophy, a dream of ideal society - these are also mystique. We are not engaged in preserving so many acre-feet of water, so many board-feet of timber, so many billion tons of granite, so many profit possibilities in so many ways for those concerned with the material aspects of the world. Yet, we must accept the fact that human life (at least in the metabolic sense) depends upon the resources of the Earth. As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes and seas, and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence.

From a speech to The Wilderness Society, May 9 1980 ~ Ansel Adams

A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in
what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars. ~ Victor Hugo

Nothing of spiritual significance comes without sacrifice. Your spirituality will always be measured by the size of your sacrifice. ~ Jerry Falwell

Surrender your pain, look within and see your perfect and divine self. ~ Earthschool Harmony

A true leader always leads by example, by demonstrating to others how the work is done. Sri Krishna, being a great spiritual leader of his time, also chose to perform certain worldly activities. Why? He explains, "If ever I cease to be vigilantly engaged in action, then people would follow my footsteps in every way and no one would perform action."28 The life of Krishna is marked by ordinariness. He did the earthly job of cow herding, and also indulged in romancing, dancing and playing the flute. He demonstrated a life for others to emulate. He led a balanced life with his strengths as well as frailties. His life was, therefore, not extraordinary. He was not an epitome of perfection. He showed others how to lead a normal, worldly life by himself performing all the actions and yet drifting away from it by reaching for higher ideals. ~ Nihar Satpathy

To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions. ~ Michael Sandel

After the day's active life, we spend at least a few hours quietly to develop our aesthetic, theoretical, and spiritual understanding of the way of life. By either reading, writing, performing, or thinking and meditating, we should continuously refine our personality and deepen our understanding of art, literature, science, philosophy, religion, and various other arts. ~ Michio Kushi

Animals are divine messengers of miracles that go far beyond emotional comfort and practical assistance. Talk to those who have been transported to a heavenly place by the gentle purring of a kitten or whose broken hearts, burdened by worry and pain, have been mended by a dog licking their hand. They will tell you that animals connect them with the River of Life in ways poets imagine and mystics contemplate. They will tell you that their deepest and most sincere relationships with animals are spiritual partnerships. ~ Allen Anderson

I tell you truly, when we are born, we enter the world with the sound of God in our ears, even the singing of the vast chorus of the sky, and the holy chant of the stars in their fixed rounds; it is the Holy Stream of Sound. ~ Edmond Bordeaux Szekely

No creature hath the like resemblance to the divine nature, as light hath. He doth not only dwell in light, but he is light. Light is a pure, bright, clear, spiritual, unmixed substance. God is infinitely so. ~ Matthew Henry

Love just feels like the truth ~ Renae A. Sauter

Christian theism, to those who believe it, commends itself as fact, not theory, by the sheer multiplicity of its bearings. Were it a speculation, it would surely face a single field of enquiry: it would assign the cause of the world, or the principle of duty, or the aim of existence, or the means of spiritual regeneration. If an equal light falls from a single source in all these directions at once, that source must seem to have the richness of a reality, rather than the abstract poverty of an idea. ~ Jocelyn Gibb

In a world so empty of human life, there was comfort in the thought that an invisible realm of spirits was aware of their existence, cared about their actions, and perhaps directed their steps. Even a stern or inimical spirit who cared enough to demand certain actions of appeasement was better than the heartless disregard of a harsh and indifferent world, in which their lives were entirely in their own hands, with no one else to turn to in time of need, not even in their thoughts. ~ Jean M. Auel

The gospel we preach must not be just something we hear from men or read from books or even conceived through our meditation. Unless it is delivered to us by God, it can serve no spiritual utility. ~ Watchman Nee

Science seeks to eliminate dualistic thinking in order to create a unified understanding that lends itself to greater simplicity. It is possible that scientific inquiry into the spiritual - such as through the methodology of Steiner's spiritual science - could eliminate the spiritual/physical dichotomy and produce a greater understanding of what we call spiritual experience and how it relates to the physical world. ~ Michael Szul

We are human beings with divine spirit. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Service is the highest spiritual discipline. Prayer and meditation, or knowledge of scripture and Vedanta (holy scriptures of India), cannot help you reach the goal as quickly as service can. Service has a double effect, it extinguishes the ego and gives bliss. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta.
No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there. ~ Charles Bukowski

Be the master of thy soul. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Imagining a virtual mentor evokes a genuine feeling of being supported and loved. ~ Deborah Sandella