spirit

The spirit is an inward flame; a lamp the world blows upon but never puts out. Margot Asquith

Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate department of
life, the penthouse of our existence.  But rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that
pervades all realms of our being.  Someone will say, "I come alive when I listen to music,"
or "I come to life when I garden," or "I come alive when I play golf."  Wherever we
come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual.  And then we can say, "I know at
least how one is spiritual in that area."  To be vital, awake, aware, in all areas
of our lives, is the task that is never accomplished, but it remains the goal.

David Steindl-Rast

When we expand our awareness, strengthen our center, clarify our
purpose, transform our inner demons, develop our will and
make conscious choices, we are moving toward
deeper connection with our spiritual self.

Molly Young Brown

Real spirituality is not up in the clouds--it is down on earth,
here and now.  Deep spirituality is seeing God every day in the common
things, and showing God your appreciation by doing common tasks.

Fred Van Amburgh

Alan Watts

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

Anne Wilson Schaef

The essence of who I am--my spiritual identity--never changes.
I am wise, healthy, flexible, and free through the spirit
of God within me.  I do not have to conform to trends and
fads--not the real person who I am.  And the real me never
shrinks from learning new things.  An awareness of my spirituality
is such a confidence booster that I live and learn
while remaining ever true to my spiritual
identity.  The real me is a free, spiritual being!

unattributed

Sarah Ban Breathnach

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

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

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

When you do things from your soul you feel a river
moving in you, a joy.  When action come from
another section, the feeling disappears.

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Khalil Gibran

One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be
enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine.  I only know
if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before
I let it get in again to that of any other.

Lord Byron

A spiritual retreat is medicine for soul starvation.  Through
silence, solitary practice, and simple living, we begin to fill
the empty reservoir.  This lifts the veils, dissolves the masks,
and creates space within for the feelings of forgiveness,
compassion, and loving kindness that are so often blocked.

David A. Cooper

One of them asked Rabbi Scheersohn starkly, "What are you good for?"
And the Rabbi said, "I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking
about what my Master was for me.  He was for me the
geologist of the soul.  There are great treasures in the soul:
there's faith, there's love, there's awe, there's wisdom,
all these treasures you can dig, but if you don't know
where to dig, you dig up mud.
   But if you want to get to the gold, which is the awe before God,
and the silver, which is the love, and the diamonds, which are
the faith, then you have to find the geologist of the soul who tells
you where to dig. . . . but the digging you have to do yourself."

Rodger Kamenetz

Marcus Aurelius

We may speak of love and humility as the true flowers
of spiritual growth; and they give off a wonderful scent,
which benefits all those who come near.

Teresa of Avila

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I believe the appearance that we're separate from God leads us
to think that we can control our life.  In truth, because our life is
the life of God, It can manage itself.  But we resist letting God
manifest through us because some part of us wants to stay the
same.  Rather than change ourselves, we want to change the world
and other people.  But spiritual growth is just the opposite.  It's
about letting go of opinion, false thought, and erroneous
perceptions so this other dimension can emerge.

Michael Beckwith

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

There is one spectacle grander than the sea,
That is the sky;
There is one spectacle grander than the sky,
That is the interior of the soul.

Victor Hugo

There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted ego-centered
version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing
spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.

Chogyam Trungpa

We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.   But when
we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.

Thomas Merton

I am learning to follow the spirit within me, wherever it wants to take
me.  Every time I check in, feeling the energy inside me and letting it
direct me, I find this a wonderful way to live.  When I do this, I
experience joy, power, love, peace, and excitement.

Shakti Gawain