spirit 2
for the purposes of these pages, "soul" and
"spirit" are treated as synonyms.

Whether you know it or not, one of the most important relationships in
your life is with your Soul.  Will you be kind and loving to your Soul,
or will you be harsh and difficult?  Many of us unknowingly damage
our Souls with our negative attitudes and actions or by simple neglect.
By making the relationship with your Soul an important part of your
life, however, by honoring it in your daily routine, you give your life
greater meaning and substance.  Use your experiences--all of
them--as opportunities to nourish your Soul!

Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
our current e-zine - the people behind the words - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     
Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

I believe that humans will not merely endure:  they will prevail.
They are immortal, not because they alone among creatures have
an inexhaustible voice, but because they have souls,
spirits capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

William Faulkner

Everything science has taught me--and continues to teach me--
strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual
existence after death.  Nothing disappears without a trace.

Wernher von Braun

All you need is deep within you waiting to unfold
and reveal itself.  All you have to do is
be still and take time to seek what is within,
and you will surely find it.

Eileen Caddy

Delve within; within is the fountain of good,
and it is always ready to bubble up, if you always delve.

Marcus Aurelius

   
spirit 2 

Spirituality is an inner fire, a mystical sustenance that feeds our souls.
The mystical journey drives us into ourselves, to a sacred flame
at our center.  The purpose of the religious experience is to develop
the eyes by which we see this inner flame, and our capacity to live
its mystery.  In its presence, we are warmed and ignited.
When too far from the blaze, we are cold and spiritually
lifeless.  We are less than human without that heat.
Our connection to God is life itself.

Marianne Williamson

It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life
that ultimately nourish our souls.  It's the knowing that we can
be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth,
that the bedrock of our very being is firm.

Fred Rogers
The World According to Mr. Rogers

We can bring our spiritual practice into the streets, into our
communities, when we see each realm as a temple, as
a place to discover that which is sacred.

Jack Kornfield

Spirituality doesn't look like sitting down and meditating.  Spirituality
looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the
people in the family even though you've had a rough day.

Sylvia Boorstein

The soul—your soul—knows all there is to know all the time.
There’s nothing hidden to it, nothing unknown.  Yet knowing is
not enough.  The soul seeks to experience.  You can know
yourself to be generous, but unless you do something which
displays generosity, you have nothing but a concept.  You can
know yourself to be kind, but unless you do someone a kindness,
you have nothing but an idea about yourself.  It is your soul’s only
desire to turn its grandest concept about itself into its greatest experience.

Neale Donald Walsch
Conversations with God

My whole attitude to life is spiritual--a feeling of identification with all nature,
all mankind, all life, the whole of the past, the whole of the future.

Fenner Brockway

Our spirit is a being of nature quite indestructible and its activity continues
from eternity to eternity.  It is like the sun, which seems to set only
to our earthly eyes, but which, in reality, never sets,
but shines on unceasingly.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When I use the word spirituality, I don't necessarily mean religion;
I mean whatever it is that helps you feel connected to something
that is larger than yourself.

Dean Ornish

The balance and peace we seek for ourselves and our society won’t be achieved
through mental effort alone.  Mind and spirit are meant to travel together,
with spirit leading the way.  Until we make a conscious commitment to understand
and embrace our spiritual nature, we will endure the ache of living without
the awareness and guidance of the most essential part of ourselves.

Susan L. Taylor

We collect data, things, people, ideas, "profound experiences,"
never penetrating any of them. . . But there are other times.
There are times when we stop.  We sit still.  We lose ourselves
in a pile of leaves or its memory.  We listen and breezes
from a whole other world begin to whisper.

James Carroll

Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself.  I mean, do not
be disturbed because of your imperfections, and always rise up
bravely from a fall.  I am glad that you make a daily new beginning;
there is no better means of progress in the spiritual life than to be
continually beginning afresh, and never to think
that we have done enough.

St. Francis de Sales

The spiritual life is, at root, a matter of seeing.  It is all of life seen from a certain
perspective.  It is waking, sleeping, dreaming, eating, drinking, working, loving,
relaxing, recreating, walking, sitting, standing, and breathing. . . . spirit suffuses
everything; and so the spiritual life is simply life, wherever and whatever,
seen from the vantage point of spirit.

John Shea

Because we reside within God’s spirit and God’s spirit resides within us,
we are, quite literally, surrounded by and infused with the divine—though
we may frequently fail to recognize God’s presence.  And this surrounding,
infusing spirit of God is fully and irreversibly committed to the well being
of creation and to its ongoing transformation.  Furthermore, the divine spirit
is intimately and actively involved in your life, in my life, and in every life.

Gary Egeberg

In this noisy, restless, bewildering age, there is a great need for quietness
of spirit.  Even in our communion with God we are so busy presenting our
problems, asking for help, seeking relief that we leave no moments
of silence to listen for God’s answers.
  By practice we can learn to submerge our spirits beneath the turbulent
surface waves of life and reach that depth of our being where all is still,
where no storms can reach us.  Here only can we forget the
material world and its demands on us.

Alice Hegan Rice

It’s tempting, when faced with a flaw of the spirit or other growth issue,
to pray for and expect immediate change.  Sometimes it happens.  But how lost
and confused we feel if our prayers don’t bring the instant relief we seek.
During such times, it’s good to remember that all facets of our nature—whether
traits we love about ourselves or those we want to improve—are part of our
God-created being.  Even our less-than-desirable parts are there for a reason
and contain His lessons for us.  When change seems to come slowly, don’t
give up hope.  Consider that the timetable for your growth is in the Lord’s hands.
Continue your daily communion with God and trust your spirit to be healed in His time.

unattributed

The spirit of the human being is an inward flame, a lamp
the world blows upon but never puts out.

Margot Asquith
Autobiography

Spirit understand adversity as opportunity.  Spirit is able to work for the
good in all things.  As I encounter difficult transitions in which I doubt the
good that is unfolding, I remind myself there is a higher plan in motion with
which I can consciously cooperate.  As I face my resistance to change, as
I choose to align myself with events as they are unfolding, I find in my
acceptance a sense of tranquility, a promise of safety.
Change embraces me as I myself embrace change.

Julia Cameron
Transitions:  Prayers and
Declarations for a Changing Life

No one can give a definition of the soul.  But we know what it feels like.
The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that
stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of
goodness, truth and beauty.  The soul is a burning desire to breathe in
this world of light and never to lose it--to remain children of light.

Albert Schweitzer
Reverence for Life

The consciences of religious leaders and religious media people can
be sensitive to the physical starvation of people around the world, for
which they are to be commended, but they seem so often to be
totally insensitive to the much more devastating spiritual starvation
of people in their neighborhood, for whom they are immediately
responsible.  Rarely do you hear clergy talk about spirituality, or
teach their people the ways of prayer and how to develop a deeper
intimacy with God. . . . The world of the spirit is the substance of religion
and the pilgrim's path through that world is devoid of expert guides.

Joseph F. Girzone
Never Alone

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
our current e-zine - the people behind the words - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     
Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not
completely our own.  For they belong also to our friends, to humankind,
to the universe, and the Ground of all being, the aim of our life.

Paul Tillich
The Shaking of the Foundations

Let a person only approach his or her own self with a deep respect, even
reverence for all that the creative soul, the God-mystery within us, puts forth.
Then we shall all be sound and free. . . . The creative spontaneous soul
sends forth its promptings of desire and aspiration in us.  These promptings
are our true fate, which is our business to fulfill.  A fate dictated from outside,
from theory or from circumstance, is a false fate.

D.H. Lawrence
Phoenix II

For all my good intentions, there are days when things go wrong or I fall
into old habits.  When things are not going well, when I'm grumpy or mad,
I'll realize that I've not been paying attention to my soul
and I've not been following my best routine.

Robert Fulghum
Handbook for the Soul

Let there be many windows in your soul,
That all the glory of the universe may beautify it.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox