Spiritual Discipline Quotes

Soul is the central point of spiritual discipline. ~ Mahavira

Wisdom is spiritual discipline. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Too often in the west we fail to realize that even in eastern disciplines the spiritual life is not meant as an escape from the worldly life. There is karma to be fulfilled on earth, within the dharma of necessity. ~ James Hillman

The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface.
We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique. ~ Richard Rohr

People who think nonviolence is easy don't realize that it's a spiritual discipline that requires a great deal of strength, growth, and purging of the self so that one can overcome almost any obstacle for the good of all without being concerned about one's own welfare. ~ Alice Walker

When I walk in the forest just before the meal, while reciting the scriptural phrase that I "meditate" for that day, spiritual joy comes over me as if by appointment. ~ Adalbert De Vogue

Tolerance, a term which we sometimes use in place of the words respect, mercy, generosity, or forbearance, is the most essential element of moral systems; it is a very important source of spiritual discipline and a celestial virtue of perfected people. ~ Fethullah Gulen

God's discipline has nothing to do with rejection but more to do with refinement. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Very often in our culture, you are treated as though you have little spiritual capacity, as though you have no inherent power, and that people 'in the know' have to always liquidize your food in order for you to grow. But it is important that the true seeker understands that they must be open enough to be deeply challenged to awaken the living aspiration necessary for true freedom. To be free you are going to have to break out of the mold of personal conditioning, out of your cocoon. Each sincere seeker must be willing to undergo the necessary transformation from caterpillar consciousness to the butterfly of freedom! ~ Mooji

All that we can do with any spiritual discipline is produce within ourselves something of the silence, the humility, the detachment, the purity of heart and the indifference which are required if the inner self is to make some shy, unpredictable manifestation of his presence.11 ~ James Finley

Some people find the experience and practice of compassion as a spiritual discipline to be a more direct route to the transformation of the heart than prayer. It is not that prayer does not or should not play a role in their lives, but their way to the opening of the heart lies through deeds of compassion. "Just do it" summarizes this path of transformation. ~ Marcus Borg

We do not pray to inform God of our needs, because He knows what we need before we ask.

What is prayer like for you?

Is it a religious ritual that you perform out of habit?

Is it a spiritual discipline that you practice because you want to be the best Christian you possibly can be?

Is it a mechanism by which you can bring your "shopping list" to God in order to have your needs met?

Or are you running to meet your Lover, to commune with Him, hungering to find your joy in Him, and to be fulfilled in His presence? ~ Bill Mills

Asceticism, also called ascesis, is the practice of rigorous self-denial and active self-restraint and is performed as a spiritual discipline. Like ~ Randi Fredricks, Ph.D.

Ifa teaches when a person engages in the development of good character altered states of consciousness evolve organically and become a tool for serving the community. The spiritual discipline of Ifa involves the development and elevation of our essential nature. consciousness are discipline they are a byproduct of alignment with our essential nature. ~ Fa'lokun Fatunmbi

The organized churches must become schools of spiritual discipline where Christians are taught how to own without treasuring (Matt. 6:21); how to possess without, like the "rich young ruler," being possessed (Mark 10:22); how to live simply, even frugally, though controlling great wealth and power. ~ Dallas Willard

The spiritual discipline of simplicity is not a lost dream, but a recurrent version throughout history. It can be recaptured today. It must be. ~ Richard J. Foster

God insists that we ask, not because He needs to know our situation, but because we need the spiritual discipline of asking. ~ Catherine Marshall

When I say 'practice' I don't mean
repeating an act until you get it right. In this use, it means to instill regular discipline to accomplish a specific task, ritual without which we feel incomplete, or that our experience of each day is less. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

A man who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Love is spiritual. It's about self-sacrifice and commitment. And discipline. You cannot have true love without discipline and respect. When you lose the respect of your spouse, you've lost everything. ~ Candace Bushnell

This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first. ~ Thomas Merton

Together with worldly education, you have to cultivate the human values and undertake spiritual discipline. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

Knowledge is an intellectual art.
Wisdom is a spiritual discipline. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Writing for me is a form of spiritual discipline and creative vision, a means of being in the world and giving one's love to it without compromise or dilution. ~ Aberjhani

No Spiritual Discipline is more important than the intake of God's Word. Nothing can substitute for it. There simply is no healthy Christian life apart from a diet of the milk and meat of Scripture. The reasons for this are obvious. In the Bible God tells us about Himself, and especially about Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God. The Bible unfolds the Law of God to us and shows us how we've all broken it. There we learn how Christ died as a sinless, willing Substitute for breakers of God's Law and how we must repent and believe in Him to be right with God. In the Bible we learn the ways and will of the Lord. We find in Scripture how God wants us to live, and what brings the most joy and satisfaction in life. None of this eternally essential information can be found anywhere else except the Bible. Therefore if we would know God and be godly, we must know the Word of God - intimately. ~ Donald S. Whitney

In fact, according to physicians, the functioning of the digestion depends less on the brain than on hormonal mechanisms and autoregulators. However, during a fast, the digestive system gets an increasing rest. About ten hours after a meal, the contractions stop and the feeling of hunger disappears; five or six hours later the glucose stops coming directly from the intestines and begins to produce itself from the reserve of glycogen contained in the liver. From then on, the body works on itself in a closed circuit, becoming itself the source of the energy it uses. Instead of destroying an appropriating to himself nourishment taken from outside, man enters a state of nonviolence and detachment relative to the outside world. ~ Adalbert De Vogue

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

Do not consider painful what is good for you. ~ Euripides

Keeping your body in shape is a spiritual discipline. Its not just about losing a few pounds, wanting to live longer, or trying to look nicer. ~ Rick Warren

It is not that the university as such is against spiritual formation. It is just that often the university does not know how to integrate spiritual formation within its academic disciplines. ~ Henri Nouwen

The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding an gradual training. ~ Jack Kornfield

But should we accept this negative view of power? Is power all bad? Specifically, can Christians share in this devaluation of power and discipline as inherently evil? Can we who claim to be disciples - who are called and predestined to be conformed to the likeness of the Son (Rom. 8:29) - be opposed to discipline and formation as such? Can we who are called to be subject to the Lord of life really agree with the liberal Enlightenment notion of the autonomous self? Are we not above all called to subject ourselves to our Domine and conform to his image? Of course, we are called not to conform to the patterns of 'this world' (Rom. 12:2) or to our previous evil desires (1 Peter 1:14), but that is a call not to nonconformity as such but rather to an alternative conformity through a counterformation in Christ, a transformation and renewal directed toward conformity to his image. By appropriating the liberal Enlightenment notion of negative freedom and participating in its nonconformist resistance to discipline (and hence a resistance to the classical spiritual disciplines), Christians are in fact being conformed to the patterns of this world (contra Rom. 12:2). ~ James K.A. Smith

WOMEN preserve the culture of this country with greater tenacity and faith. They keep men on the moral path and inspire them to follow spiritual discipline. Their hearts are tender and full of compassion for the hungry and the distressed. That is why in this land, women are adored and revered. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

You speak of doing good to the world. Is the world such a small thing? And who are you, pray, to do good to the world? First realise God, see Him by means of spiritual discipline. If He imparts power you can do good to others; otherwise not. ~ Ramakrishna

It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God. ~ Henri Nouwen

A man's social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast, as he wouldlie on a hard bed. He must drink cold water for his only beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not warmed by the sympathy of friends. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not just in the moments when life seems easy. ~ Henri Nouwen

To make the mind obey you is a spiritual discipline. ~ Sivananda

A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action which places us in a position to receive from God the power to do what we cannot accomplish on our own ...
The deep waters of God's life are already flowing. We simply learn the strokes that will enable us more and more to be at home in them ...
The human body is our power-pack of mind-body-spirit
we discipline it in order to practice cooperation with God. (Life with God, p. 135-137) ~ Richard Foster

Without discipline in spiritual pursuits, the central nervous system doesn't have a chance to adjust and grow with the increased demand. It would be like putting a high voltage into a small bulb - it is bound to explode. ~ Sivananda Radha Saraswati

we keep company with Jesus by making space for him through a spiritual discipline. Our part is to offer ourselves lovingly and obediently to God. God then works within us doing what he alone can do. Our desires don't obligate the holy One. God is free to come to us in spiritual disciplines as he wills, not as we demand. But unless we open ourselves to him through spiritual practices, we will miss his coming altogether. ~ Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

One becomes bad himself when he sees or calls others bad. When others appear good to him, he will become good himself. ~ Dada Bhagwan

More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This (illness) is what I have wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God's hands. ~ Pedro Arrupe

I am Chandubhai' is an illusion itself and from that are karmas charged. When does 'charging' of new karmas stop? When one attains the exact awareness of 'who I am?'. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Making conclusions about life is a sure way to deny yourself the possibility of a human being transforming himself into the Divine. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

People are preoccupied only with money. They are looking to see where they can get it from. Hey, why are you looking for it in a 'cemetery'? This worldly life has become like a cemetery. There is no love to be seen in it. The way in which money comes to one is a natural thing. It is (by way of) scientific circumstantial evidences. Why do we have to run after it? If it were to free (liberate) us itself, then it would be very good, right? ~ Dada Bhagwan

Dance bravely into your own heart, and you will find the love of all. ~ Tehya Sky

Being on the spiritual path means you want to be a success in an existential sphere, not just on a social level. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

Racing is about discipline and intelligence, not about who has the heavier foot. The one who drives smart will always win in the end. ~ Garth Stein

If I had spoken to him out loud, he would have understood the tragic fate of those who came back, left over, living dead. You must look at them carefully. Their appearance is deceptive. They are smugglers. They look like the others. They eat, they laugh, they love. The seek money, fame, love. Like the other. But it isn't true; they are playing, sometimes without even knowing it. Anyone who has seen what THEY have seen cannot be like the others, cannot laugh, love, pray, bargain, suffer, have fun, or forget. Like the others. You have to watch them carefully when they pass by an innocent-looking smokestack, or when they lift a piece of bread to their mouths. Something in them shudders and makes you turn your eyes away. These people have been amputated; they haven't lost their legs or eyes, but their will and their taste for life. The things they have seen will come to the surface again sooner or later. And then the world will be frightened and won't dare look these spiritual cripples in the eye. ~ Elie Wiesel

I thought of that while riding my bicycle. ~ Albert Einstein

Surrender and living in the present are one and the same. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

A natural man hath no such thing as free-will at all, if you take it for a power of doing that which is good and well-pleasing unto God in things spiritual. ~ John Owen

War and Peace is many things. It is a war novel, a family saga, a love story. But at its core it is a book about people trying to find their footing in a ruptured world. It is a novel about human beings attempting to create a meaningful life for themselves in a country being torn apart by war, social change, and spiritual confusion. Russian ~ Leo Tolstoy

All beliefs are equally valid. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

The only things that really need to be accomplished in the home are daily scripture study and prayer and weekly family home evening. ~ Linda S. Reeves

Beyond its practical aspects, gardening - be it of the soil or soul - can lead us on a philosophical and spiritual exploration that is nothing less than a journey into the depths of our own sacredness and the sacredness of all beings. After all, there must be something more mystical beyond the garden gate, something that satisfies the soul's attraction to beauty, peace, solace, and celebration. ~ Christopher McDowell

The whole world believes that performing good deeds is dharma (religion). Performing good deeds is known as laukik dharma (worldly religion, that religion which does not lead us to self-realization but binds merit karmas). ~ Dada Bhagwan

[Spiritual] Practices are not for know-it-alls. Practices are for those who feel the need for change, growth, development, learning. Practices are for disciples. ~ Brian D. McLaren

As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don't bother to brush it off.
Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance.
Having a sense of humor saves you. ~ Joseph Campbell

Even if work were not an economic necessity, it is a spiritual necessity. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

I have a great belief in spiritual force, but I think we have to realize that spiritual force alone has to have material force with it so long as we live in a material world. The two together make a strong combination. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

We see Serbs as our spiritual brothers. And that is what is at the base of our relations today and in the future. ~ Vladimir Putin

To the extent to which your consciousness is limited or expanded, is the extent to which you experience being divided or divine. ~ Erin Fal Haskell

Man was designed in a way in which he must eat in order to give him a solid reason to go to work everyday. This helps to keep him out of trouble. God is wise. ~ Criss Jami

Let your courage mount with difficulties. There would be no will if there were no resistance. ~ Nilakanta Sri Ram

Collaboratition: the art of working with our competitors. ~ Holly Duckworth

Adversity begets spirituality. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Health depends on being in harmony with our souls ~ Edward Bach

When you accept Islam, you don't cease to be the person you were before in your identity and culture,' he told me. 'The only thing that Islam does is make you stronger in your identity in terms of actualising your personality, and in understanding who you are, what you're supposed to do and what the purpose and meaning of your life is. ~ Kristiane Backer

There are 3 levels of compatibility in intimate relationships that connect the most subtle realm of spirit to the most outer, dense form of body. There must be alignment in heart, through life view and spiritual intention; mind, through clear, open communication; and body, through physical chemistry. Compatibility on all 3 levels of heart, mind, and body is the ultimate love relationship, which everyone is seeking! ~ John Friend

Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life ... We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him. ~ Henri Nouwen

Breaketh Thy oyster shell of silence, as Love shalt rise in its effulgence limpid pure tenderness to quench the spirit of Thy mind, as the fervent sublime oyster of Thy Beloved soul shalt submerge in the depth of Attainment in the Ocean of Divine Love to rescue pure Hearts to form a Blissed Pearl Of Divine Unity. ~ Dr. Tony Beizaee

If we really are spiritual beings living a physical existence, then we have incredible power. ~ Sue Fitzmaurice

Only when there is dharmadhyan (auspicious contemplation; to not hurt anyone, to give happiness to others) in the body, then there is shukladhyan in the Self (contemplation as the Self, the Soul). ~ Dada Bhagwan

Certainly, I approve of it. Our culture has sunk into a bog of materialism. Men have lost all spiritual values in their pursuit of material production and technological trickery. They're too comfortable. They will return to a nobler life if we teach them to bear privations. So we ought to place a limit upon their material greed. ~ Ayn Rand