Love is the emotional and spiritual energy that ties you to those who have hurt you. The issues that seem to defy forgiveness are always aligned in some way with love: the love you never received, the love that you offered and others rejected or betrayed, the love that was used to manipulate or control you. Love is the basis of your life's well-being, but in tying your spiritual energy reserves to old hurts you are severely limiting the energy of lovfe available to you in the present moment. Perhaps this is the time to search your heart for those you still need to forgive more fully.
Much of life…is about awakening to the interior experience. In our day-to-day living, we come to see how all of our physical journeying is not simply a temporal exercise, a transitory, earthly trek, but increasingly points to a shared and liberating inner passage . . . As Christianity and all the great religious traditions of the world testify, our surface-level living is the symbolic acting out of a deep inward pilgrimage leading to -- and beyond -- the gates of the heart.
~ from THE ISLE OF MONTE CHRISTO by S. T. Georgiou
There comes a time in the spiritual journey when you start making choices from a very different place . . . And if a choice lines up so that it supports truth, health, happiness, wisdom, and love, it’s the right choice.
The real journey in life is interior. It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative love and grace in our hearts.
Everything we need for growing into a full, rich relationship with God is already available in our lives. We need to pray, stay open, and not become discouraged. A spiritual journey is not a competitive event; we can all be on a spiritual quest. God comes to each of us in the native language of our soul. Gradually the language grows and expands, but no one grows in just the same way as someone else. We need to accept ourselves as we are and keep ourselves open to being changed and shaped by a life lived in growing intimacy with God.
~ from JEWISH SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE by Carol Ochs and Kerry M. Olitzky
The outer path we take is public knowledge, but the path with heart is an inner one. The two come together when who we are that is seen in the world coincides with who we deeply are. As we grow wiser, we become aware that the important forks in the road are usually not about choices that will show up on any public record; they are decisions and struggles to do with choosing love or fear; anger or forgiveness; pride or humility. They are soul-shaping choices.
~ from CRONES DON’T WHINE by Jean Shinoda Bolen, thanks to Liz Stewart
With each discovery of truth about ourselves, we come to a crossroad on our journey toward God. One path leads to denial and despair . .. the other to holiness.
From the forest branches fading birdsong offered Self-sacrifice to a huge silence. Dark formlessness settled over all diversity Of land and water. As shadows, as particles, my body Fused with endless night. I came to rest At the altar of the stars. Alone, amazed, I stared Upwards with hands clasped and said, "Sun, you have removed Your rays: show now your loveliest, kindlier form That I may see the Person who dwells in me as in you."
We may enjoy an experience of God that is so delightful that we may think all our troubles are over and we have at last completed the journey. Then after a few hours or a few days we find ourselves on the spiral staircase again and cannot even remember the pleasures of that transient experience of divine union. The whole purpose of this alternation is to bring the soul to the total transformation of love.
~ from FRUITS AND GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT by Thomas Keating
A God seeker is a person on a journey. When the thirst has been awakened, we are no longer persons wandering aimlessly about, but persons who have begun to discern the bare outlines of a path. We become more than wanderers. It is a journey based upon the assumption that there is more to life than meets the eye.
