Spirituality is all about inner journey. Over the period of time, different masters have shared their spiritual experiences and practices. Their teachings have inspired many to be more mindful, thoughtful and spiritual. Spirituality is mostly said to be an eastern philosophy but since past few decades western philosophy too emerged and inspired for spiritual growth and journey of many. Hope below spiritual quotes will help you awaken and be enlightened!

Spiritual Quotes

1. Coincidences are spiritual puns. – Gilbert K. Chesterton

2. Greatness is a spiritual condition. – Matthew Arnold

3. I believe joy is a spiritual practice. – Brené Brown

4. The aim of all spiritual practice is love. – Sathya Sai Baba

5. The spiritual is the parent of the practical. – Thomas Carlyle

6. Music is spiritual. The music business is not. – Van Morrison

7. Spiritual Practice involves being constantly aware. – Shri Radhe Maa

8. Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life. – Ludwig van Beethoven

9. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

10. Spiritual Awakening is awakening from the dream of thought. – Eckhart Tolle

11. The way you get more is by having a daily spiritual practice. – Iyanla Vanzant

12. Spirituality for me is the sum total of all the acts of my day. – Ari Goldman

13. The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. – John Muir

14. Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is. – James Broughton

15. People become depressed when they neglect their spiritual practice. – Dharma Mittra

16. Harmony is one phase of the law whose spiritual expression is love. – James Allen

17. Simplify your life. You don’t grow spiritual, you shrink spiritual. – Steve Maraboli

18. For me, the other thing is not just a strong sense of spirituality. – Peabo Bryson

19. Any spirituality can be enhanced with the practice or study of yoga. – Christy Turlington

20. One of the most spiritual things you can do is embrace your humanity. – Steve Maraboli

21. The way is not difficult; only there must be no wanting or not wanting. – Chao-Chou

22. Art is a spiritual practice. We may not, and need not, do it perfectly. – Julia Cameron

23. Always remember, joy is not incidental to spiritual quest. It is vital. – Rebbe Nachman

24. I have a spiritual practice which helps to keep me grounded and centered. – Grace Gealey

25. Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma. – Joseph Joubert

26. The universe is a single atom: the convergence of science and spirituality. – Dalai Lama

27. The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. – Robert M. Pirsig

28. You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. – G.K. Chesterton

29. Authentic spirituality… does not render the self content, it renders it undone. – Ken Wilbur

30. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. – Basho

31. Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

32. Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts too seriously. – Eckhart Tolle

33. All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion. – Ram Dass

34. Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way. – Florence Scovel Shinn

35. The main requirement for spiritual growth: A yearning to know who you really are. – Adyashanti

36. If the only prayer you ever said in your life was “thank you”, that would suffice. – Meister Eckhart

37. Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual. – Grace Lee Boggs

38. Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life. – Buddha

39. Above all, cancer is a spiritual practice that teaches me about faith and resilience. – Kris Carr

40. I’ve never seen service as separate from my spiritual practice or my spiritual teaching. – Marianne Williamson

41. Spiritual awakening is about waking up from your ego. It is not about awakening the ego. – Sampo Kaasila

42. We can no more do without spirituality than we can do without food, shelter, or clothing. – Ernest Holmes

43. You can have religion with spirituality. You can also have religion without spirituality. – Eckhart Tolle

44. Mindfulness is both a state of being and a daily spiritual practice, a form of meditation. – David Richo

45. Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. – Carl Sagan

46. We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. – Stephen Covey

47. I have an interest in spirituality, and it opens up so many different areas of Indian life. – Francois Gautier

48. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. – Shunryu Suzuki

49. We are not human beings trying to be spiritual. We are spiritual beings trying to be human. – Jacquelyn Small

50. Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. – Kripalvanand

51. Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction. – Edward O. Wilson

52. The source of your mind is love and whatever you do to go to that source, is spiritual practice. – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

53. We have a world that is searching for answers, that is searching for a way back to spirituality. – Moira Kelly

54. We should honor Mother Earth with gratitude; otherwise our spirituality may become hypocritical. – Radhanath Swami

55. Yet I knew that spiritual practice is impossible without great dedication, energy, and commitment. – Jack Kornfield

56. If you think of spiritual practice as unpleasant work – it is not spiritual practice as I know it. – Frederick Lenz

57. The new spirituality will step away from dogma, will step away from ‘We’re right and you’re wrong. – Neale Donald Walsch

58. Where we tended to be judgmental, we became more judgmental of ourselves in our spiritual practice. – Jack Kornfield

59. The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work. – Simone Weil

60. A simple but radical spiritual practice is to accept whatever arises in the Now, within and without. – Eckhart Tolle

61. It is a wonderful thing if one can use one’s place of work as a place of spiritual practice as well. – Dalai Lama

62. Attachment to spiritual things is… just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else. – Beverly Sills

63. All of spiritual practice is a matter of relationship: to ourselves, to others, to life’s situations. – Jack Kornfield

64. Attachment to spiritual things is … just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else. – Thomas Merton

65. Joseph Campbell, who when asked what spiritual practice he followed said, “I underline books.” Me too. – Eric Weiner

66. Spirituality is indeed the master key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinitive is native to it. – Sri Aurobindo

67. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

68. Most importantly, the meaning of spirituality lays the seeds for our destiny and the path we must follow. – Dennis Banks

69. I liked the humor of it, I’ve always enjoyed a sense of humor in God and in religion and in spirituality. – Amber Tamblyn

70. There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: Not going all the way, and Not starting. – Buddha

71. Fay has spirituality too, but she also has that very real sex appeal that takes hold of the hearts of men. – Erich von Stroheim

72. Creativity is God’s will for us and should be practiced like any other spiritual practice -a day at a time. – Julia Cameron

73. Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force – that thoughts rule the world. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

74. The real spiritual progress of the aspirant is measured by the extent to which he achieves inner tranquility. – Swami Sivananda

75. Spirituality is like a bird:If you hold it too closely, it chokes,And if you hold it too loosely, it escapes. – Israel Salanter Lipkin

76. I am sensitive to the value of faith and religion and spirituality in people’s lives because I’m a journalist. – Peter Jennings

77. The most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus. – Donald Miller

78. The key to success is to keep growing in all areas of life – mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical. – Julius Erving

79. Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

80. The special genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency. – Margaret Fuller

81. There is a spiritual hunger in the world today – and it cannot be satisfied by better cars on longer credit terms. – Adlai E. Stevenson

82. The first act of awe, when man was struck with the beauty or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience. – Henryk Skolimowski

83. The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it – exactly and completely. – Dainin Katagiri

84. Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love. – M. Scott Peck, M.D

85. Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness. – Shakti Gawain

86. He travels with whoever looks for Him,
and having taken the seeker by the hand,
He arouses him to go in search of himself. – Al-Ansari

87. The goal of spiritual practice is full recovery, and the only thing you need to recover from is a fractured sense of self. – Marianne Williamson

88. Spirituality lies in regarding existence merely as a vehicle for contemplation, and contemplation merely a vehicle for joy. – George Santayana

89. A life of reaction is a life of slavery, Intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction. – Rita Mae Brown

90. Know this also to be one of the spiritual practices, a discipline for God – realisation. Its aim also is Self – realisation. – Swami Vivekananda

91. The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; By doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth. – Pierre Abelard

92. Selfliss giving rounds the edges in spiritual practice. Many people can meditate very well but they’re still very egotistical. – Frederick Lenz

93. Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul. – Mohandas Gandhi

94. Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one’s well-being. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

95. Spirituality lies in regarding existence merely as a vehicle for contemplation, and contemplation merely as a vehicle for joy. – George Santayana

96. The spiritual path – is simply the journey of living our lives. Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don’t know it. – Marianne Williamson

97. This bundle of ideas that we have held as being who we are is not actually the one who can make progress in the spiritual realm. – Alice Gardner

98. The spiritual path – is simply the journey of living our lives. Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don’t know it. – Marianne Williamson

99. To insist on a spiritual practice that served you in the past is to carry the raft on your back after you have crossed the river. – Gautama Buddha

100. This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we’re most sure that love can’t conquer all, it seems to anyway. – Anne Lamott

101. Spiritual practice is the capacity to offer your love even when you feel hurt, closed down, tense, angry, misunderstood, or hated. – David Deida

102. Tantra is for the advanced spiritual practitioner who is ready to push aside spiritual practice in the name of spiritual practice. – Frederick Lenz

103. In order to experience everyday spirituality, we need to remember that we are spiritual beings spending some time in a human body. – Barbara de Angelis

104. Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level, expect to grow spiritually. – Eileen Caddy

105. In relation to others, gratitude is good manners; in relation to ourselves, it is a habit of the heart and a spiritual discipline. – Daphne Rose Kingma

106. The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality, and the outward sinful act is the result. – Francis Schaeffer

107. You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul. – Swami Vivekananda

108. The person who constantly studies without doing spiritual practice is like the fool who attempts to live in the blueprint of a house. – Mata Amritanandamayi

109. An honorable spiritual practice recognizes the losses we have suffered, tells our story, and sheds our tears to free us from the past. – Jack Kornfield

110. The spiritual search is always rooted in a rejection of the present. The search of a lifetime was always a movement away from what is. – Jeff Foster

111. Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. – Alan Watts

112. If you don’t have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can’t expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis. – Doug Coupland

113. If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution. – M. Scott Peck

114. Zen is the fastest method I know of, aside from mysticism, of dissolving the fixations people have about spiritual practice and themselves. – Frederick Lenz

115. The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ. – Karen Armstrong

116. Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures. – Thomas Aquinas

117. With spiritual growth comes new creative potential, leading to the realization that you are pure potential, able to fill any creative impulse. – Deepak Chopra

118. Vanity, showing off, is an attitude that reduces spirituality to a worldly thing, which is the worst sin that could be committed in the church. – Pope Francis

119. Ever since I was young, I was always interested in exploring spirituality. I know that there are many paths to God, there is not just one path. – Kyan Douglas

120. There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment. – Stanislav Grof

121. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

122. By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive. – Albert Schweitzer

123. An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type. – Stanislav Grof

124. Search, no matter what situation you are in.
O thirsty one, search for water constantly.
Finally, the time will come when you will reach the spring. – Rumi

125. And how, you ask, are we to walk the spiritual path?We answer: Say little and love much; Give all; judge no man;Aspire to all that is pure and good. – White Eagle

126. Know that when you learn to lose yourself, you will reach the Beloved.
There is no other secret to be learned, and more than that is not known to me. – Al-Ansari

127. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in the future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now. – Swami Sri Yukteswar

128. The spiritual quest is a journey without distance. You travel from where you are right now To where you have always been. From ignorance to recognition. – Anthony DeMello

129. People don’t see this side of me. They don’t know I read, like, 800 million spiritual books. Lately I am just really getting into a lot of spirituality. – Jenny McCarthy

130. Shamanism is a kind of universal spiritual practice with indigenous cultures around the world, and one important element of it is taking care of spirits. – Daniel Pinchbeck

131. Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment. – Arthur Helps

132. There isn’t anything except your own life that can be used as ground for your spiritual practice. Spiritual practice is your life, twenty-four hours a day. – Pema Chodron

133. The spiritual path is one of falling on your face, getting up, brushing yourself off, turning and looking sheepishly at God and then taking the next step. – Sri Aurobindo

134. Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them. – Albert Schweitzer

135. 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

136. Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritualexperience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. – Denis Waitley

137. Spiritual practices help us move from identifying with the ego to identifying with the soul. Old age does that for you too. It spiritualizes people naturally. – Ram Dass

138. For those who seek to understand it, death is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate from the thought and study of death. – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

139. In all the areas within which the spiritual life of humanity is at work, the historical epoch wherein fate has placed us is an epoch of stupendous happenings. – Edmund Husserl

140. Through yoga, meditation and other spiritual practices, we can learn the ways of personal equanimity. We can also learn how to use language in beneficial ways. – Satish Kumar

141. In the end, all we have is the effort we’ve made to be the best we can be, in mind, body and in spiritual practices. I encourage you to make that longer trip. – Carell Zaehn

142. The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there. – Chanakya

143. Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. – Denis Waitley

144. Spirituality is deeply personal. Yet, society has to face the fact that certain faiths celebrate spirituality through an overt expression of inner convictions. – Randa Abdel-Fattah

145. If you spent one-tenth of the time you devoted to distractions like chasing women or making money to spiritual practice, you would be enlightened in a few years. – Ramakrishna

146. But to me the notion that spirituality is separate from the rest of life does not allow for a practical approach to living a life that has extraordinary quality. – Tony Robbins

147. By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life. – Thomas More

148. For the spiritual being, intuition is far more than a hunch. It is viewed as guidance or as God talking, and this inner insight is never taken lightly or ignored. – Wayne Dyer

149. If we win, someone else loses. But if someone else loses, we lose. Which is a point we’re not getting. The new spirituality will make this just painfully obvious. – Neale Donald Walsch

150. Education has to be welcomed as a Spiritual Practice for the establishment of Peace in the individual heart as well as in society including the human commonwealth. – Sai Baba

151. Play is one of the highest spiritual forms of being. When we’re in that state, we get lost in ourselves, which allows the mind to receive the message of the spirit. – Ellie Katz

152. Easy is right.
Begin right and you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy is to forget the right way,
and forget that the going is easy. – Chuang Tzu

153. Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice.
Better than knowledge is meditation.
But better still is surrender in love,
Because there follows immediate peace. – Bhagavad Gita

154. People who are meditating every day and involved in a serious spiritual practice don’t usually wake up in the morning and want to rush out to eat a bunch of junk food. – Marianne Williamson

155. See where your own energy wants to go, not where you think it should go. Do something because it feels right, not because it makes sense. Follow the spiritual impulse. – Mary Hayes-Grieco

156. The intellectual quest, though fine as pearl or coral, is not the spiritual search. That spiritual search is on another level. Spiritual wine is a different substance. – Rumi

157. The spiritual thirst that is latent in everybody can never come to a place of fulfillment unless people begin to think of each other as potential brothers and sisters. – Malidoma Some

158. Fortunately art is a community effort –a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavouring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh. – Allen Ginsberg

159. The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth. – Ram Dass

160. I’m touched by the idea that when we do things that are useful and helpful – collecting these shards of spirituality – that we may be helping to bring about a healing. – Leonard Nimoy

161. The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everybody should follow one path. Listen to your own truth. – Baba Ram Dass

162. The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon. – Franz Kafka

163. Encountering sufferings will definitely contribute to the elevation of your spiritual practice, provided you are able to transform calamity and misfortune into the path. – Dalai Lama

164. Although natural farming – since it can teach people to cultivate a deep understanding of nature – may lead to spiritual insight, it’s not strictly a spiritual practice. – Masanobu Fukuoka

165. Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences. It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles. – David Suzuki

166. The new spirituality is that it will produce an experience in human encounters in which we become a living demonstration of the basic spiritual teaching ‘We are all one. – Neale Donald Walsch

167. The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one. – M. Scott Peck

168. To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. – Henri J. M. Nouwen

169. Spiritual life is like living water that springs up from the very depths of our own spiritual experience. In spiritual life everyone has to drink from his or her own well. – St. Bernard of Clairvaux

170. To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art – that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts. – Charles Baudelaire

171. What it means to live spiritually is to not participate in this struggle. It means that the events that happen in the moment belong to the moment. They don’t belong to you. – Michael A. Singer

172. The spiritual path wrecks the body And afterwards restores it to health. It destroys the house to unearth the treasure, And with that treasure builds it better than before. – Jellaludin Rumi

173. The spiritual test inherent in all our lives is the challenge to discover what motivates us to make the choices we do, and whether we have faith in our fears or the Divine. – Caroline Myss

174. When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. – Jack Kornfield

175. No man who has lived through a temporary spiritual experience is ever likely to forget it. His days will be haunted until he sets out to seek ways and means of repeating it. – Paul Brunton

176. To undertake a genuine spiritual path is not to avoid difficulties but to learn the art of making mistakes wakefully, to bring them to the transformative power of our heart. – Jack Kornfield

177. The new spirituality will bring about what I’m calling the ‘end of better.’ And that is in fact what is called for in the next of the series of books that I’ve been writing. – Neale Donald Walsch

178. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire. – Thomas Merton

179. Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins. – Jim Rohn

180. One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history. – Albert Schweitzer

181. Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling. – Vincent van Gogh

182. I think we have to be careful about what we label as a prerequisite for spirituality. I don’t think you have to know a lot to have a spiritual life, but knowing gives life richness. – Olympia Dukakis

183. If you really know how to live, what better way to start the day than with a smile?…Smiling helps you approach the day with gentleness and understanding. Smile with your whole being. – Thich Nhat Hanh

184. You should not delay the good things in life. Just do them. Whenever you get a chance to do spiritual practice or seva, don’t miss it. Those are the real precious moments of your life. – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

185. The first part of the spiritual journey should properly be called psychological rather than spiritual because it involves peeling away the myths and illusions that have misinformed us. – Sam Keen

186. Giving thanks is a key that opens a door to greater connectedness and greater participation in the life of the world. It is one of the most powerful spiritual practices available to us. – David Spangler

187. They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not. – Katherine Anne Porter

188. Adversity is a natural part of being human. It is the height of arrogance to prescribe a moral code or health regimen or spiritual practice as an amulet to keep things from falling apart. – Elizabeth Lesser

189. In our bodies, in this moment, there live the seed impulses of the change and spiritual growth we seek, and to awaken them we must bring our awareness into the body, into the here and now. – Pat Ogden

190. Spiritual practice involves, on the one hand, acting out of concern for others’ well-being. On the other, it entails transforming ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to do so. – Dalai Lama

191. The greatest discoveries will be along spiritual lines. This is the field where miracles are going to happen.Spiritual power is the greatest underdeveloped power and has the greatest future. – Thomas Alva Edison

192. There are things coming from me that I felt I wanted to talk about. My search for my own blend of spirituality, my acknowledgement of my sexuality, my being the single mother of a young man. – Ana Castillo

193. A text of Tibetan Buddhism describes the time of death as a unique opportunity for spiritual liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth and a period that determines our next incarnation. – Stanislav Grof

194. Spiritually elevate yourself, at least once a day, at a predetermined time, to contemplate and long for your own goal, in its broadest understanding and reaches, and in its highest perfection. – Louis Caputo

195. I always think that we live, spiritually, By what others have given us in the significant hours of our life.These significant hours do not announce themselves as coming, but arrive unexpected. – Albert Schweitzer

196. Disappointment often focuses on the failure of our own agenda rather than on God’s long-term purposes for us, which may use stress and struggle as tools for strengthening our spiritual muscles. – Luci Shaw

197. After all the black man has been through in this world, he can still often reach levels of spirituality the most pampered white man cannot touch. Maybe what he’s been through is the reason why. – Ben Stein

198. For the spiritual sense of the Word treats everywhere of the spiritual world, that is, of the state of the church in the heavens, as well as in the earth; hence the Word is spiritual and Divine. – Emanuel Swedenborg

199. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate, beyond the reach of, all political powers. – Seneca

200. The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another’s, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises. – Leo Buscaglia

201. While eating, our attention should not be focused just on the taste. Imagine our chosen deity or guru is present within us and that we are feeding Him. This will turn eating into a spiritual practice. – Mata Amritanandamayi

202. Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use. – Sai Baba

203. Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation. – Joseph Joubert

204. Make friends with the angels, who though invisible are always with you. Often invoke them, constantly praise them, and make good use of their help and assistance in all your temporal and spiritual affairs. – Saint Francis de Sales

205. A lot of times people do spiritual practice just for themselves. I try to turn that a little bit. I try to make spiritual practice more a part of the community. I write about infusing people with compassion. – Sakyong Mipham

206. One of the mot spiritual things you can do is acknowledge the human aspect of your life. Once you acknowledge the human aspect of your life you’ll recognize the spiritual fuel that ignites that human engine. – Steve Maraboli

207. As the new spirituality begins to become the pervasive spirituality of the planet, we’ll find that we have abandoned our philosophy of contradictions in which we say we’re all one but continue to try to win. – Neale Donald Walsch

208. As long as I was breathing with the contractions and not pushing against them, I felt better. That idea is fundamental-to feel pain and not to resist; to go towards it. It is an incredibly spiritual practice. – Christy Turlington

209. But the first differentiation of its reflection in the manifested World is purely Spiritual, and the Beings generated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has any relation to the one we conceive of. – H. P. Blavatsky

210. I feel that the essence of spiritual practice is your attitude toward others. When you have a pure, sincere motivation, then you have right attitude toward others based on kindness, compassion, love and respect. – Dalai Lama

211. Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer. Crying includes all the principles of Yoga. – Kripalvananda

212. Spiritual Work is not easy. It means the willingness to surrender feelings that seem, while we’re in them, like our defense against a greater pain. It means that we surrender to God our perceptions of all things. – Marrianne Williamson

213. If one is a true learner of the Way, one does not search for the faults of the world, but rather speedily applies oneself to attain genuine insight. If one only can see with perfect clarity, then all is completed. – Rinzai

214. Complete surrender usually happens through living. Your very life is the ground where that happens. There may be a partial surrender and then there may be an opening, and then you may engage in spiritual practice. – Eckhart Tolle

215. You create a path of your own by looking within yourself and listening to your soul, cultivating your own ways of experiencing the sacred and then practicing it. Practicing until you make it a song that sings you. – Sue Monk Kidd

216. When younger, I was thin as a rail. As I’ve grown older, I’ve put on weight. I have continued to love myself in all those roles. Part of my spirituality, I always tell people, is to accept yourself for who you are. – Troy Perry

217. For a person who cultivates wisdom or true knowledge, the results are inner peace, satisfaction, patience, respect for others, freedom from duplicity, compassion, joyfulness, and remembrance of his spiritual identity. – Chris Butler

218. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. – Walker Percy

219. Try to gather the strength to live as brother and sister after one or two children are born. This is essential for reaping the full benefit of spiritual practice and to make spiritual progress through mental restraint. – Mata Amritanandamayi

220. What is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It’s not the spirit in you, since that is already enlightened, and has no need to seek. No, it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher. – Ken Wilber

221. At different points in my life, I had grappled with the idea of going into the priesthood – in high school or law school. Where it ends, I’m not quite sure. Perhaps it ends with death, grappling with one’s spirituality. – James McGreevey

222. Qualities like love and compassion are not just abstract virtues that are the property of saints and adepts. Anyone can develop these qualities in themselves by doing spiritual practices. As the Buddha said, Come and see. – Joanna Macy

223. My personal opinion is that the neutral position on the mood spectrum—what I called emotional sea level—is not happiness but rather contentment and the calm acceptance that is the goal of many kinds of spiritual practice. – Andrew Weil

224. The new spirituality will also base itself on a third very large spiritual understanding, which is that life is eternal. Most religious people claim to believe that, but very few people actually live as if that were true. – Neale Donald Walsch

225. I’m concentrating on staying healthy, having peace, being happy, remembering what is important, taking in nature and animals, spending time reading, trying to understand the universe, where science and the spiritual meet. – Joan Jett

226. Look within. Within you is the hidden God. Within you is the immortal soul. Within you is the inexhaustible spiritual treasure. Within you is the ocean of bliss. Look within for the happiness which you have sought in vain. – Swami Sivananda

227. Spiritual practice is not just sitting and meditation. Practice is looking, thinking, touching, drinking, eating and talking. Every act, every breath, and every step can be practice and can help us to become more ourselves. – Nhat Hanh

228. Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process. Enthusiasm – from the Greek, filled with God’ – is an ongoing energy supply tapped into the flow of life itself. – Julia Cameron

229. On the path to love, impossibilities are resolved by turning non-love into love. With spiritual growth comes new creative potential, leading to the realization that you are pure potential, able to fill any creative impulse. – Deepak Chopra

230. A primary goal of the spiritual life is to learn to quiet the mind through prayer and meditation, through spiritual practice, so that we can hear what in both Judaism and Christianity, is called the small, still voice within. – Marianne Williamson

231. Climbing Jacob”s Ladder is a gutsy, glowing account of one man’s encounter with a potent spiritual practice and how it transformed his life. This is a precious book – that rare combination of solid wisdom and good literature. – Larry Dossey

232. When we understand clearly that inner peace is the real source of happiness, and how, through spiritual practice, we can experience progressively deeper levels of inner peace, we will develop tremendous enthusiasm to practice. – Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

233. I believe deeply that we must find a new spirituality… in such a way that all people of good will could adhere to it… We ought to promote this concept with the help of scientists… It could lead us to what we are looking for. – HH The Dalai Lama

234. I know some teachers say that you shouldn’t display the psychic powers and other powers referred to as the siddhas, but as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t really matter. There are no absolute rights or wrongs in spiritual practice. – Frederick Lenz

235. The heart of most spiritual practices is simply this: Remember who you are. Remember what you love. Remember what is sacred. Remember what is true. Remember that you will die and that this day is a gift. Remember how you wish to live. – Wayne Muller

236. Sometimes in churches somebody will discover a particular vein of spirituality and seek to recruit others into it, or assume a superior position because they have found certain techniques – but no one actually wants to become like them. – John Ortberg

237. To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to inaugurate new possibilities between spirituality and science that would shape the paradigms for culture, its institution, and its people. – Matthew Fox

238. The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of every man’s life; and until he has realized it, he is not a complete human being, has not entered into possession of all his powers. – Evelyn Underhill

239. When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves. – Albert Einstein

240. I was told to challenge every spiritual teacher, every world leader to utter the one sentence that no religion, no political party, and no nation on the face of the earth will dare utter: ‘Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way. – Neale Donald Walsch

241. I remember when we had to pick our major freshman year, I chose comparative religion. It came to me out of the blue. I am amazed at how interested I still am in those ideas, especially the way spirituality is expressed in the world and in art. – Amy Brenneman

242. Writing is a spiritual practice in that people that have no spiritual path can undertake it and, as they write, they begin to wake up to a larger connection. After a while, people tend to find that there is some muse that they are connecting to. – Julia Cameron

243. The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life. – Georg Simmel

244. We live in this thought web; we identify things and put them away and distance ourselves from them. But to be completely present? That is source, that is art, that is spirituality. And meditation is a way to defy fear and experience that source. – Ben Foster

245. The essence of humanity’s spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views? – E. O. Wilson

246. The children, each of those kids is in touch with nature and traditional aboriginal culture so a very important part of getting performances from them was just letting them be and trying to capture the unique spirituality that was in each of them. – Phillip Noyce

247. Spiritual teachers ultimately agree that true wisdom does not come from outside us, but from within. And it does not come from within simply because we want it. It comes when we live in a way that invites wisdom. It comes through direct experience. – Rabbi David A. Cooper

248. To me, spirituality is about two things: The liberation of consciousness from all illusion, so that the true nature can shine and an embodiment in life that is an alternative to the patterns of manipulation and greed that dominate our current culture. – Christian Opitz

249. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. – Albert Einstein

250. 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. – Neale Donald Walsch

251. As Carl Jung once said, ‘When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.’ When our boys become adults, we become their inner situation. We become inner voices they often hear in their work, relationships and spiritual practice. – Michael Gurian

252. There are many kinds of smiles, each having a distinct character. Some announce goodness and sweetness, others betray sarcasm, bitterness and pride; some soften the countenance by their languishing tenderness, others brighten by their spiritual vivacity. – Johann Kaspar Lavater

253. You can think of spiritual practice as a kind of spiritual re-parenting … You’re offering yourself the two qualities that make up good parenting: understanding – seeing yourself for who you truly are – and relating to what you see with unconditional love. – Tara Brach

254. Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who’d rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place. – Karen Armstrong

255. I’ve always thought of my writing as a spiritual practice. But I think that fiction is the most supernatural kind of writing that you can do because of the ways that the real and the unreal weave together to create something that feels more true than anything. – Elizabeth Gilbert

256. The human body is finite;
the spirit is boundless.
Before you begin to pray,
cast aside what limits you
and enter into the world of the Infinite.
Turn to God alone
and have no thought of self at all.
Nothing but God will exist for you
when self has ceased to be. – Dov Baer of Mezhirech

257. I think everything we do, on one level or another, as writers, most of our writing is informed by our world view. It’s informed by our own understanding of spirituality; things that matter, things that are important to us. I write about things that matter for me. – Ted Dekker

258. A quest for knowledge is not a war with faith; spirituality is not usually an infelicitous amalgam of superstition and philistinism; and moral relativism, taken outside midfield, leads inexorably both to heresy and to secular wickedness, which are often identical. – Conrad Black

259. The rise of community among cultures and religious traditions makes possible what we can call ‘interspirituality’: the assimilation of insights, values, and spiritual practices from the various religions and their application to one’s own inner life and development. – Wayne Teasdale

260. Syncronistic meetings are like mirrors that reflect something of ourselves. If we want to grow spiritually, all we have to do is take a good look. Synchronicity holds the promise that if we want to change inside, the patterns of our external life will change as well. – Jean Shinoda Bolen

261. Broadway is such a diverse community. Everybody knows how I believe, and everyone believes, and it’s not a big deal. But in Hollywood, if you talk about politics – especially if you’re a Republican – or spirituality, it’s just not something people want to hear about. – Kristin Chenoweth

262. Human beings will continue to deceive and overpower one another. Basically, everyone exists in the very nature of suffering, so to abuse or mistreat each other is futile. The foundation of all spiritual practice is love. That you practice this well is my only request. – Dalai Lama

263. Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake. If material poverty is to be avoided, spiritual poverty is to be abhorred. For it is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering. – Paramahansa Yogananda

264. We can remove the blocks to realizing our Higher Power by experiencing (including living in the Now), remembering, forgiving and surrendering (these five realizations can be viewed as being ultimately the same). Regular spiritual practices help us with this realization. – Charles L. Whitfield

265. Moreover, no one is judged from the natural man, thus not so long as he lives in the natural world, for man is then in a natural body; but everyone is judged in the spiritual man, and therefore when he comes into the spiritual world, for man is then in a spiritual body. – Emanuel Swedenborg

266. Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there. – Meister Eckhart

267. All spiritual growth takes place as a gradual harmonious unfolding. It happens automatically. As you live up to your highest light, acting on your inspirations, more and more light comes to you. There is no hurry or impatience to get anything; it comes as you are ready. – Cheryl Canfield

268. Children, everyone should try to wake up before five in the morning. The ideal time for spiritual practices like meditation and chanting is Brahma Muhurta. During this period, sattvic qualities are predominant in nature. Moreover, the mind will be clear and body energetic. – Mata Amritanandamayi

269. Nearly all spiritual practices are based on attention. In fact, whenever you think you have lost the path, or whenever you feel confused by esoteric terminology or technique, remember that all these techniques or teachings are various ways to help you learn to pay attention. – Rick Fields

270. Inward spiritual practices such as meditation, breathing techniques and self-analysis generate insights and enhance abilities, but none are so useful as learning to live harmoniously in a committed relationship, being a skillful parent, or juggling the demands of daily life. – Dan Millman

271. Tantra is the hot blood of spiritual practice. It smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness; a thunderbolt path, swift, joyful, and fierce. There is no authentic Tantra without profound commitment, discipline, courage, and a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon. – Chogyam Trungpa

272. Each of us is here to discover our true self…that essentially we are spiritual beings who have taken manifestation in physical form…that we‘re not human beings that have occasional spiritual experiences…that we’re spiritual beings that have occasional human experiences. – Deepak Chopra

273. Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating – the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to – you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. – Sogyal Rinpoche

274. All spiritual experiences are sensations in the body. They are simply a graded series of sensations, beginning with the solidity of earth and passing gradually, in full consciousness, through liquidness and the emanation of heat to that of a total vibration before reaching the Void. – Sri Anirvan

275. Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention. – Deepak Chopra

276. The understanding of “evolutionary consciousness” is perhaps the most important thing lacking in spiritual practices today. Evolution means growth and development. This means that there are aspects of reality that have not yet arisen in our consciousness. But they will arise if we grow. – Ken Wilber

277. Meditation and spiritual practice are good, but also action. It’s very important to be clear about who you are, and also about your relation to the Earth. Develop yourself according to your own tradition and the call of your heart. But remember to respect differences, and strive for unity. – Carlos Barrios

278. You’ve traveled up ten thousand steps in search of the truth.
So many days in the archives, copying, copying.
The gravity of the Tang and the profundity of the Sung make heavy baggage.
Here! I’ve picked you a bunch of wild flowers.
Their meaning is the same but they’re much easier to carry. – Hsu Yun

279. Spirituality does two things for you. One, you are forced to become more selfless, two, you trust to providence. The opposite of a spiritual man is a materialist. If I was a materialist I would be making lots of money doing endorsements, doing cricket commentary. I have no interest in that. – Imran Khan

280. In my own spiritual journey, I became a swami on the Hindu path of Bhakti. In the Hindu tradition, a swami is a monk who forgoes regular family life for the purpose of making the whole world his family and channels his full energy into spiritual practice, devotion to God and service to humanity. – Radhanath Swami

281. You impose limits on your true nature of infinite being. Then you get displeased to be only a limited creature. Then you begin spiritual practices to transcend these non-existing limits. But if your practice itself implies the existence of these limits, how could they allow you to transcend them. – Ramana Maharshi

282. You impose limits on your true nature of infinite being. Then you get displeased to be only a limited creature. Then you begin spiritual practices to transcend these non-existing limits. But if your practice itself implies the existence of these limits, how could they allow you to transcend them. – Maharshi

283. A revolution is to bring on change and we’re spiritual people trying to bring on spiritual change. It might sound like I’m a dreamer, but economic models have reached their height of evolution. Technology has evolved. What hasn’t evolved is mankind’s spirituality; everything is from 3,000 years ago. – Damian Marley

284. Be still. it takes no effort to be still; it is utterly simple. When your mind is still, you have no name, you have no past, you have no relationships, you have no country, you have no spiritual attainment, you have no lack of spiritual attainment. There is just the presence of beingness with itself. – Gangaji

285. It is never a good practice to continue to sleep after sunrise. We should not think of staying in bed once we are awake; it increases laziness and dullness. Those who cannot decrease the amount of sleep quickly may do it in gradual stages. Those who do regular spiritual practice do not need much sleep. – Mata Amritanandamay

286. The kind of spirituality I value is one in which you get great joy out of contributing to life, not just sitting and meditating, although meditation is certainly valuable. But from meditation, from the resulting consciousness, I would like to see people in action creating the world they want to live in. – Marshall Rosenberg

287. Giving up attachment to the world does not mean that you set yourself apart from it. Generating a desire for others to be happy increases your humanity. As you become less attached to the world, you become more humane. As the very purpose of spiritual practice is to help others, you must remain in society. – Dalai Lama

288. Children, those who are unmarried should conserve their vital energy by maintaining ceibacy. To turn what we gain by this in to ojas (vitality), we also need to do spiritual practice. With increase in ojas, our intelligence, memory, health and beauty will also increase. We will gain lasting mental quietude. – Mata Amritanandamay

289. Most pointedly, nature-based people manifest the very qualities that contemporary psychotherapy, the recovery movement, and spiritual practices continually aim for: a visible sense of inner peace, unselfconscious humility, an urge to communal cooperation, and heartfelt appreciation for the world around them. – Chellis Glendinning

290. Every night before I go to sleep I say out loud three things that I am grateful for, all the significant, insignificant, extraordinary, ordinary stuff of my life. It is s small practice and humble, and yet, I find I sleep better holding what lightens and softens my life every so briefly at the end of the day. – Carrie Newcomer

291. Our practices – our most spiritual practices – are hanging laundry on the line, raising children, building strong relationships, practicing kindness as much as we can, striving for excellence in the workplace, and developing deeper self-knowledge. I wrote The Four Purposes of Life to assist in these endeavors. – Dan Millman

292. As I study both the exoteric and the esoteric schools of Buddhism, they maintain that human beings are endowed with Dharma-nature by birth. If this is the case, why did the Buddhas of all ages – undoubtedly in possession of enlightenment – find it necessary to seek enlightenment and engage in spiritual practice? – Dogen

293. The nature of the mind is such that if certain mental qualities are developed on a sound basis, they not only remain, but they also increase. In fact, once properly developed, the mind’s good qualities eventually increase indefinitely. Therefore spiritual practice brings us long-term happiness and inner strength. – Dalai Lama

294. Our compassion is the fruit of our spiritual lives; it actually arises spontaneously when formed by intention in our spiritual practice. Love and compassion are always the goods of the spiritual journey, and they are guided by divine wisdom, which then shapes compassion in the concrete situations of our existence. – Wayne Teasdale

295. Writing a diary every evening before going to bed is a good habit. We can record in the diary how much time we have devoted to our spiritual practice. The diary should be written in a way that helps us see our mistakes and correct them. It should not be a mere document of other peoples’ faults or our daily transactions. – Mata Amritanandamayi

296. Stripped of all its outer encrustations, spirituality emerges as a science, as scientific as any other, as verifiable in its results. Let any seeker take it up and let him create in the laboratory of the soul the conditions that are prerequisite; as sure as the day follows the night shall he rise into the Kingdom of God. – Sant Kirpal Singh

297. I think Islam has been hijacked by the idea that all Muslims are terrorists; that Islam is about hate, about war, about jihad – I think that hijacks the spirituality and beauty that exists within Islam. I believe in allowing Islam to be seen in context and in its entirety and being judged on what it really is, not what you think it is. – Aasif Mandvi

298. I’m asked that a lot: ‘James, is there really a continuing spiritual renaissance occurring on this planet? Look at all the conflict, look at the wars.’ And I believe, yes, we’re still moving toward a deeper spirituality. It’s personal. It’s grassroots. It’s everybody trying to get their own connection made, and from there it grows out. – James Redfield

299. The main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego’s constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort, or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking. One must step out of spiritual materialism. – Chogyam Trungpa

300. I do not believe that an individual may gain spiritually and those who surround him suffer. I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, of all that lives. Therefore, I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him and, if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent. – Mohandas K. Gandhi

301. Millions of people are joined in the knowledge that writing brings insight and calm in the same way that prayer, meditation, or a long walk in the woods does. They have discovered that writing allows the racing mind to move at the pace of pen and paper or the pace of typing on the waiting screen – that journal writing is a spiritual practice. – Christina Baldwin

302. There is a saying that ‘the psychotic drowns in the waters that the mystic swims in.’ The health and structural integrity of the ego means the difference between spiritual emergence, the unfolding of a transpersonal identity; and a spiritual emergency a crisis brought on by the same unfolding, during which the foundations of sanity can be shaken. – Jason Kirkey

303. We have in us a divine spark that you can see. It’s a Light that shines in the human being. It’s our direct access to truth, our direct access to God. The purpose of all the spiritual practices that exist are to awaken that sparkto give it life, to give it energy, so that it can transform you. One of the energies that comes from that spark is Love. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

304. I could characterize nearly any spiritual practice as simply this: identify and quit, identify and quit, identify and quit. Identify the myriad forms of limitation and delusion we place upon ourselves, and muster the courage to quit each one. Little by little, deep inside us, the diamond shines, the eyes open, the dawn rises, we become what we already are. – Bo Lozoff

305. I am running on fumes, so it’s time to get centered again. I start with eating healthier and cutting out caffeine – at least cutting back on caffeine. I exercise and get outside to play. I reconnect with my spiritual practice, which is daily meditation and prayer. Most importantly, I reconnect with my family and friends. If all else fails, a few deep breaths. – Amber Vallett

306. When you look at what is happening to our world-and it is hard to look at what’s happening to our water, our air, our trees, our fellow species-it becomes clear that unless you have some roots in a spiritual practice that holds life sacred and encourages joyful communion with all your fellow beings, facing the enormous challenges ahead becomes nearly impossible. – Joanna Macy

307. Only by spiritual practice can we break through our karma and the effects of the causes we have made. Only then can we escape from them. It matters not whether you have acquired any merit. Merit is merit. Karma is karma. Nonetheless, if one practices the Quan Yin Method, one can be liberated regardless of having any merit or not. It is so logical, so scientific. – Ching Hai

308. When you have an empty mind, you are prepared for the next thing that happens. It’s like to be part of a spiritual practice for me simply means that you are there now. Not waiting for the next moment, or not living in the moment before, but you’re there now. And it’s there now which can only be really breathed and lived if the mind is empty enough to receive it. – George Ogilvie

309. Each time the losses and deceptions of life teach us about impermanence, they bring us closer to the truth. When you fall from a great height, there is only one possible place to land: on the ground-the ground of truth. And if you have the understanding that comes from spiritual practice, then falling is in no way a disaster, but the discovery of an inner refuge. – Sogyal Rinpoche

310. We can stop struggling with what occurs and see its true face without calling it the enemy. It helps to remember that our spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything – not about winning or losing – but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is. That is what we are doing when we sit down to meditate. That attitude spreads into the rest of our lives. – Pema Chodron

311. We are living in a very exciting and powerful time. On the deepest level of consciousness, a radical spiritual transformation is taking place. I believe that on a worldwide level, we are being challenged to let go of our present way of life and create an entirely new one. We are, in fact, in the process of destroying our old world and building a new one in its place. – Shakti Gawain

312. Many of us incorrectly assume that a spiritual life begins when we change what we normally do in our daily life. We feel we must change our job, our living situation, our relationship, our address, our diet, or our clothes before we can truly begin a spiritual practice. And yet it is not the act but the awareness, the vitality, and the kindness we bring to our work that allows it to become sacred. – Wayne Muller

313. Children, daily practice of yoga or sun salutations (surya-namaskara) is very good for health and for spiritual practice. Lack of proper exercise is the cause of many of today’s diseases. If we can get somewhere in time on foot, always walk instead of taking a vehicle. It is good exercise. Only if we have to go far should we depend on vehicles. Use a bicycle, whenever possible. This will save money, too. – Mata Amritanandamayi

314. Whether you are aware of them or not, whether you recognize them as spiritual or not, you probably have had the experiences of silence, or transcendence, or the Divine—a few seconds, a few minutes that seem out of time; a moment when the ordinary looks beautiful, glowing; a deep sense of being at peace, feeling happy for no reason. When these experiences come…believe in them. They reflect your true nature. – Ravi Shankar

315. This is the real and urgent reason why we must prepare now to meet death wisely, to transform our karmic future, and to avoid the tragedy of falling into delusion again and again and repeating the painful round of birth and death. This life is the only time and place we can prepare in, and we can only truly prepare through spiritual practice: This is the inescapable message of the natural bardo of this life. – Sogyal Rinpoche

316. For the rest of your life to be as meaningful as possible, engage in spiritual practice if you can. It is nothing more than acting out of concern for others. If you practice sincerely and with persistence, little by little, step by step you will gradually reorder your habits and attitudes so as to think less about your own narrow concerns and more about others’ – and thereby find peace and happiness yourself. – Dalai Lama

317. A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself. . . It is only the full emergence of the soul, the full descent of the native light and power of the Spirit and the consequent replacement or transformation and uplifting of our insufficient mental and vital nature by a spiritual and supramental Supernature that can effect this evolutionary miracle. – Sri Aurobindo

318. We all want to live a happy life and have a right to do so, whether through work or spiritual practice. I’m subject to destructive emotions like anger and jealousy the same as you, but we all have potential for good too. However, our existing education system is oriented towards material development; neglecting inner values. Consequently we lack a clear awareness of the inner values that are the basis of a happy life. – Dalai Lama

319. Whether or not enlightenment is a plausible goal for us is a vital question for our lives. If it is possible for us to attain such perfect enlightenment ourselves, our whole sense of meaning and our place in the universe immediately changes. To be open to the possibility is to be a spiritual seeker, no matter what our religion. Enlightenment is not meant to be an object of religious faith. It is an evolutionary goal. – Robert Thurman

320. In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us. – Jack Kornfield

321. I’d like to say is that we shouldn’t have an idea that the goal of spiritual practice is to annihilate ones ego, that would be a mistake. In the early years of enlightenment, psychologists were afraid of Hindus and Buddhists meditating because they thought they were going to shatter their egos and then they’d have to wear diapers or something, like they’d lose their toilet training or what have you. They were really afraid of it. – Robert Thurman

322. Spiritual Love is born of sorrow. For men love one another with spiritual love only when they have suffered the same sorrow together, when through long days they have ploughed the stony ground buried beneath the common yoke of a common grief. It is then that they know one another and feel one another and feel with one another in common grief. It is then that they know one another and feel one another and feel with one another in. – Miguel de Unamuno

323. Our life crises tell us that we need to break free of beliefs that no longer serve our personal development.
These points at which we must choose to change or to stagnate are our greatest challenges.
Every new crossroads means we enter into a new cycle of change – whether it be adopting a new health regimen or a new spiritual practice.
And change inevitably means letting go of familiar people and places and moving on to another stage of life. – Caroline Myss

324. Life is the most precious and wondrous thing that any of us have. Along the way, one of the real miracles occurs when we realize that what really matters is to deepen our relationship to ourselves and that to do this we have to enter a spiritual journey. We have to discover anew, or for the first time, our own relationship to the Infinite. We must begin to risk trusting a whole new level of intimacy with ourselves, life and the people whose lives we touch. – Richard Moss

325. Image consciousness and gardening don’t mix. Image consciousness and any enterprise where the soul is involved don’t mix. But isn’t that the beginning of understanding spirituality. To be image conscious keeps our guard up. It keeps our judgments – about ourselves, others, and God – sharply defined, for we want to make sure we play the right notes. Thus, we are unable to hear the music, which is another way of saying we are unable to receive, to welcome, to embrace. – Soul Gardening , p. 99 – Terry Hershey

326. When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply memory, and love in the future is fantasy. Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world. – Jack Kornfield

327. I don’t want to be looking inside my ego, my stuff, my achievements, my me, me, me, me, I hate that stuff. I just want to be out there eh to the last day of my life ah interested in the world, in causes, in helping other people. Um that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a spiritual practice, that I don’t look at my own soul, that I don’t prepare myself for the that transition that death is but I cannot sit in meditation to contemplate my navel for the rest of my life. That would be boring for me. – Isabel Allende

328. Escaping from ourselves is not all bad and is even essential to the flowering of some of our highest ideals. Spirituality and love are both based on the urge to escape the self, to melt I into Thou, to experience transcendence. The term “ecstasy,” so common to the literature of love and religion, means to stand outside oneself. But transcendence and ecstasy are not to be confused with avoidance and feeling relief. The benefits of the former are substantially different from those of the latter. – Gregg Levoy

329. Do you hold your beliefs lightly or tightly? When I hold them tightly, I arrogantly believe everyone should believe as i do. When I hold them lightly, I appreciate other’s perspectives/points-of-view, even if they may not be mine. The spiritual path is not about trying to get rid of or not have beliefs. It is about holding them lightly because you know that they are simply one perspective among billions. When we cling to a belief, we are stuck. When we hold it lightly we are not stuck… we are free. – Michael Jeffreys

330. If the majority of the “spiritual market” is drawn to prerational magic and myth, how do you reach the small group who are involved in genuine, laborious, demanding, transrational spiritual practice? This is very difficult, because both markets are referred to as “spiritual,” but these two camps really don’t get along very well-one is mostly translative, the other is mostly transformative, and they generally disapprove of each other-so how do you put them into one magazine without alienating them both? – Ken Wilber

331. If you want to love, take the time to listen to your heart. In most ancient and wise cultures it is a regular practice for people to talk to their heart. There are rituals, stories, and meditative skills in every spiritual tradition that awaken the voice of the heart. To live wisely, this practice is essential, because our heart is the source of our connection to and intimacy with all of life. And life is love. This mysterious quality of love is all around us, as real as gravity… Yet how often we forget about love. – Jack Kornfield

332. If you want to draw near to God, seek him in the hearts of those around you.
Speak well of all, present or absent. If you would be a light for others, be like the sun: show the same face to all. To bring joy to a single heart is better than building countless shrines for worship;
to capture one heart through kindness is better than setting a thousand free.
This is the true lover of God, who lives with others, rises and eats and sleeps like others, gives and takes with others in the bazaar, yet never forgets God even for a moment. – Abu Sai’d

333. When you approach spirituality as an adventure of being alive, you start as you would any adventure–with a sense of mystery and not-knowing. Instead of searching for answers that make you feel safe, you set out into the vastness of life and death, with a willingness to continually grow. You open up to the possibility that your ordinary life is an extraordinary adventure, and that your joys and sorrows have meaning. Spiritual practice becomes your rudder, offering direction and insight and discretion as you venture into the unknown. – Elizabeth Lesser

334. Many people meditate in order that a third eye may open. For that they feel they should close their two physical eyes. They thereby become blind to the world. But the fact is that the third eye will never open. We can never close our eyes to the world in the name of spirituality. Self-realization is the ability to see ourselves in all beings. This is the third eye through which you see, even while your two eyes are open. We should be able to love and serve others, seeing ourselves in them. This is the fulfillment of spiritual practice. – Mata Amritanandamayi

335. Walking the spiritual path means that we are trying to learn to love consciously. We put a certain emphasis on the word “trying” because that’s what we are doing – loving to the best of our ability. I think that seekers sometime tend to beat themselves up because they haven’t fully mastered unconditional love… [as if] “it’s not really love until [we] love like God loves.” But who is able to love like God loves?! We’re human beings trying to understand and cultivate what it means to feel divine love. We have to start with small, realistic goals. – Lama Surya Das, Awakening to the Sacred

336. Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean do not be disheartened by your imperfections, But always rise up with fresh courage. I am glad you make a fresh beginning daily. There is no better means of attainment to the spiritual life Than by continually beginning again, And never thinking we have done enough. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbors faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own? He who is fretted with his own failings will not correct them.All profitable correction comes from a calm, peaceful mind. – St. Francis de Sales

337. A garden is the place millions of people go to touch the earth, to smell flowers – to use some of that fabled human brain power in the cause of better participating with natural processes in the place they call home. It serves as an art project, an organic produce market, a spiritual practice, a pharmacy. It offers ongoing lessons in ecology, biology, chemistry, geology, meteorology. Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time. It bestows on its practitioners a genuine sense of admiration for the plants, the soil, the sun, the water. – Jim Nollman

338. Someone may first take interest in spiritual practice to improve her life. But practice doesn’t just improve your life — it also newly defines the meaning of your life…. When anyone, anywhere, learns to abide in such loving wisdom, they generate a zone of refuge and protection that encircles all those around them. They become a force to remake this world into a place of deep mutual reverence and appreciation. To learn to embody such wise love, and to act from there for the sake of all, is the greatest gift we can give to our families, communities and world. – John Makransky

339. The plan of spiritual evolution is marked not only by God’s will that we move ever in the direction of love, nut also by another of God’s creative principles: that humanity has free will. What that means is that in any given moment, it is our choice whether we move toward love or retreat from it. What is not love is fear. But in the larger scheme of things, there is a limit past which lovelessness cannot remain. Fear is not life-giving enough to sustain itself. We can move in the direction of fear only so long before it brings us to our knees, or to our end. – Marianne Williamson

340. Concentration is not thinking of one thing. On the contrary, it is excluding all thoughts, since all thoughts obstruct the sense of one’s true being. All efforts are to be directed simply to removing the veil of ignorance. Concentrating the mind solely on the Self will lead to happiness or bliss. Drawing in the thoughts, restraining them and preventing them from straying outwards is called detachment (vairagya). Fixing them in the Self is spiritual practice (sadhana). Concentrating on the heart is the same as concentrating on the Self. Heart is another name for Self. – Ramana Maharshi

341. It’s odd that after thousands of years of great spiritual examples and literature we have to remind ourselves that spirituality is to be found in everyday life. The world’s sacred poetry, ritual, prayer and art are filled with images of incarnated divinity…that lies, admittedly sometimes hidden, in the temporal, or the transpersonal that animates our personal lives. Hundreds of times painters have taken up the theme of the “Annunciation” and have pictured that moment, that eternal moment that is in all our lives, when the angel says: “You, mortal person, have divinity in you. – Thomas Moore

342. The garden reconciles human art and wild nature, hard work and deep pleasure, spiritual practice and the material world. It is a magical place because it is not divided. The many divisions and polarizations that terrorize a disenchanted world find peaceful accord among mossy rock walls, rough stone paths, and trimmed bushes. Maybe a garden sometimes seems fragile, for all its earth and labor, because it achieves such an extraordinary delicate balance of nature and human life, naturalness and artificiality. It has its own liminality, its point of balance between great extremes. – Thomas Moore

343. One of the most commonly overlooked spiritual practices is daring to be completely honest with everyone you encounter. Some may say others cannot handle their honesty, but true honesty is not a strategy or a weapon of any kind. It is the willingness to be open and absolutely transparent in sharing how any moment feels in your heart. It has nothing to do with confrontation, accusation, or any form of blame. True honesty is the willingness to stand completely exposed, allowing the world to do what it may, and say what it will, only so you may know who you are – beyond all ideas. – Matthew Kahn

344. One of the most commonly overlooked spiritual practices is daring to be completely honest with everyone you encounter. Some may say others cannot handle their honesty, but true honesty is not a strategy or a weapon of any kind. It is the willingness to be open and absolutely transparent in sharing how any moment feels in your heart. It has nothing to do with confrontation, accusation, or any form of blame. True honesty is the willingness to stand completely exposed, allowing the world to do what it may, and say what it will, only so you may know who you are – beyond all ideas. – Matt Kahn

345. You might tell me that you have been engaging in some deep questioning and theological rethinking.1 You can no longer live with the faith you inherited from your parents or constructed earlier in your life. As you sort through your dogma and doctrine, you’ve found yourself praying less, less thrilled about worship, scripture, or church attendance. You’ve been so focused on sorting and purging your theological theories that you’ve lost track of the spiritual practices that sustain an actual relationship with God. You may even wonder if such a thing is possible for someone like you. – Brian D. McLaren

346. Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know ~ all mystics… are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well.Strange paradox, to be sure.But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep.They are having a nightmare. – Anthony DeMello

347. Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know ~ all mystics… are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. ‘Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare. – Anthony DeMello

348. Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you’re not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn’t someplace else; it’s the naturally occurring human state. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn’t in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it’s there too in the vastness of who we are. – Suzanne Segal

349. Back on typical schedule. I awaken between three and five, meditate for one or two hors, go straight to my desk and work till one or two P.M. The type of meditation I do varies, but the basic form is “the practice of the morning.” or “ultimate guru yoga,” where the true nature of one’s own mind is the ultimate guru. The practice is: Upon waking, or upon passing from dream state to the waking state, look directly into the mind, inquire directly into the source of consciousness itself–inquire “Who am I?” if you like, or practice looking directly into the looker. Upon inquiring into the self, the self disappears, dissolving back into radiant Emptiness, and consciousness rests as absolute Freedom and Fullness, unbounded and unlimited, unborn and undying, unseen and unknown. – Ken Wilber

350. And that’s only the minimum level of spirituality. But when true spiritual life is begun, one becomes concerned with much more than his own growth. As growth takes place in the spiritual realm, in the realm of consciousness, a person widens his concerns ~ not just to his limited family, but to society and the entire sentient world. Even if he is not in a position to do anything, at least he has a moment when he has this sense that, oh, God, there are so many suffering beings, and I have the potential to develop my spiritual strength and vision and power so that one day I may become one of those great masters who can help others. This vision has to do with the dharma. Dharma is my source of spiritual growth. Eventually it opens out into universal concern and compassion. That is the heart of spirituality. – Lobsang Lhalungpa

351. Even before I could speak, I remember crawling through blueberry patches in the wild meadows on our hillsides. I quickly discovered Nature was filled with Spirit; I never saw any separation between Spirit and Nature. Much later I discovered our culture taught there was supposed to be some kind of separation – that God, Spirit and Nature were supposed to be divided and different. However, at my early age it seemed absolutely obvious that the church of the Earth was the greatest church of all; that the temple of the forest was the supreme temple. When I went to the sanctuary of the mountain, I found Earth’s natural altar – Great Spirit’s real shrine. Years later I discovered that this path of going into Nature, bonding deeply with it, and seeing Spirit within Nature – God, Goddess, and Great Spirit – was humanity’s most ancient, most primordial path of spiritual cultivation and realization. – John P. Milton