Quotes by Spiritual Teachers - Page 4

The real challenge of compassion, nonviolence and mindfulness is to love in adverse situation.

Never let your desire to have an accepting heart towards others keep you from your strong boundaries. The hurricane may come blasting at our door; yet it doesn’t mean we have to invite it in for tea. Sometimes, it’s important to recognize that the hurricane is a powerful and damaging storm, not a light spring shower.

Our sorrows provide us with the lessons we most need to learn.

Yoga is not a religion. It is a science, science of well-being, science of youthfulness, science of integrating body, mind and soul.

No one can give you that which you can find within yourself.

In situations where I feel unclear or I do not know what to say or do, I turn my attention within myself. Then I listen to what my intuition and to what Existence within myself wants in this moment. Through listening within in this way, an answer often comes in the form of a creative and authentic impulse to say or do something or simply being silent until Existence is ready to respond.

Sermon of the MountsMatthew 5AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES, HE WENT UP INTO THE MOUNTAINS, AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM. The multitudes, the masses, the crowd, is the lowest state of consciousness. It is a deep ignorance and sleep. If you want to relate and communicate with the masses, you have to come down to their level. That is why whenever you go into the masses, the crowd, you start to feel suffocated. This suffocation is physical and psychological, beacuse you relate to people, who functions from a very low state of consciousness. They pull you down and you become physically and psychologically tired and drained. That is why a need for meditation and aloneness arises. There is a practice in the life of Jesus that he noves into the crowds of people, but after a few months he goes to the mountains. He goes away from the crowd, to be with God. When you are alone, you are with God. To relate to the masses brings you down to their level of consciousness, but only in the presence of God, you can fly.With the crowd, you can not fly, you become crippled, and the masses will not tolerate if you do not live according to them, according to their level of consciousness.To be able to work with the masses, to be able to help them, you have to relate to them according to their level fo consciousness - and this is tiring and draining.Both Jesus and Buddha moved to the mounatins, to a lonely place, just to be themselves, and to be with God to regain their vitality to be able to come back to the masses where people are thristy. The montain is where Jesus do not need to think about the masses, where he can forget the mind and the body. In that moment of aloneness and meditation, one simply is. This is the inner being, the source of life. And when you are full again, you can share again. AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM. To talk to the masses and to talk to disciples is two very different things. To talk to the crowd is to talk to people, who are indifferent. The crowd is resisting, defensive and argumentative. To talk to disciples means to talk to people, who have a basic thirst. It means that they are not defensive, they are open to listen to the heart of truth. AND HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, AND TAUGHT THEM, SAYING.Jesus escaped into the mountains from the crowd, but he did not escape from the disciples.He was available to the disciples.In his aloneness, Jesus is with God. And through Jesus, the disciples can feel God. The closer the disciple come to Jesus, the more they will see that Jesus is a silence and emptiness through which God can sing. And the more the disciple himself will become an emptiness, he will also be able to help other people. AND HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, AND TAUGHT THEM, SAYING. BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT, FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD. This is the most fundamental statement of Jesus.With this statement, Jesus has said everything. The "poor in spirit" is exactly what Buddha means with the term Shunyatta - "emptiness", no-self, nothingness.It is when the ego disappears, and you are a nobody, a silence. If you are a nobody, if you are nothing, you are God.

We are here not only to realize the truth of our being but to express it. If we realize who we are but still move from fear or a sense of obligation or cultural expectation, then the realization has not yet integrated into the whole of life.

When you allow yourself to remember that you truly are a multidimensional being, you will begin experiencing yourself in a much more expanded way. What previously was believed to be supernatural becomes natural. Then you come to a realisation that now you can see what has always been there yet it remained hidden to you who chose to see something else.

A new heaven is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness. And A New Earth is it's direct reflection in the physical realm.

Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.

Steam in an open space would just simply scatter in different directions. Steam contained in an engine can move a whole train. Success comes from One-pointedness and Constancy of Aim and Effort.

Mindful living is a conscious way of living – noticing the beauty of life in every moment.

Through mastering the means of perception, the promise of who you are in physical form is opened with an increasing opportunity for fulfilment.

Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now.Let it teach you Being.Let it teach you integrity — which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real.Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.

Presence is to meet another person in meditation. Presence is to invite another person in meditation. It is a meeting in love, joy, acceptance, sincerity, truth, silence and oneness.

If you are working inwardly, Nature will help you. For the man who is working, Nature is sister of charity; she brings him what he needs for his work. If you need money for your work, even if you do nothing to get it, the money will come to you from all sides.

Curiously enough, it seems that at times the spiritual side prevails, and then the materialistic side—in wave-like motions following each other. ...At one time the full flood of materialistic ideas prevails, and everything in this life—prosperity, the education which procures more pleasures, more food—will become glorious at first and then that will degrade and degenerate. Along with the prosperity will rise to white heat all the inborn jealousies and hatreds of the human race. Competition and merciless cruelty will be the watchword of the day. To quote a very commonplace and not very elegant English proverb, "Everyone for himself, and the devil take the hindmost", becomes the motto of the day. Then people think that the whole scheme of life is a failure. And the world would be destroyed had not spirituality come to the rescue and lent a helping hand to the sinking world. Then the world gets new hope and finds a new basis for a new building, and another wave of spirituality comes, which in time again declines. As a rule, spirituality brings a class of men who lay exclusive claim to the special powers of the world. The immediate effect of this is a reaction towards materialism, which opens the door to scores of exclusive claims, until the time comes when not only all the spiritual powers of the race, but all its material powers and privileges are centered in the hands of a very few; and these few, standing on the necks of the masses of the people, want to rule them. Then society has to help itself, and materialism comes to the rescue.

When we align our thoughts emotions and actions with the highest part of ourselves we are filled with enthusiasm purpose and meaning. . . . We are joyously and intimately engaged with our world. This is the experience of authentic power.

Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender

World needs positive energy. Put your happy energy into the universe.

In one equation you can solve all the puzzles of life. It is the equation of giving.

Yoga is the best tool for international peace, health, harmony and human dignity.

Good books are rare, and to have a really good library, a few shelves are all we need. When I was still on my campus in India, I was convinced, like many professors, that if the Lord was to be found anywhere, it was in the lower stacks of the library. But now - just as when I go into a big department store, I can say, "How many things I don't need! How many expensive suits I don't want!" - when I enter a big library I say, "What tomes I don't have to read again! What folios I will never open!" This feeling of freedom will come to all of us when we realise, in the depths of our meditation, that all wisdom lies within.

The more we practice mindfulness the more we understand the emotional dynamics of the self and others. Mindful emotions can create a positive climate leading to better outcomes.

Unconditional Love is the outer expression of Inner Peace.

Life becomes much more easier when we do what we say and when we say what we do. Having courage to be ourselves is a gateway to freedom and happiness.

Write it on your heart you are the most beautiful soul of the Universe. Realize it, honor it and celebrate the life.

When we ground ourselves in the present moment, we spontaneously connect better with others. We become more responsive and less reactive, listening more deeply and speaking with greater clarity.

When we let the energy of our existence flow freely, without being obstructed by fear, happiness finds its way into our daily lives.

Breathe out unwanted thoughts with your exhale and re-focus your attention directly on what is important right now, at this moment.

There’s no value in digging shallow wells in a hundred places. Decide on one place and dig deep. Even if you encounter a rock, use dynamite and keep going down. If you leave that to dig another well, all the first effort is wasted and there is no proof you won’t hit rock again. (52)

God, Beauty and Truth are synonymous. Take any one of the three paths and you will reach the goal.

Dance madly as if all of life is meant for dancing and celebrating.

Being under stress is like being stranded in a body of water. If you panic, it will cause you to flail around so that the water rushes into your lungs and creates further distress. Yet, by calmly collecting yourself and using controlled breathing you remain afloat with ease.

Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.

Fasting may not be as easy as feasting, but after a while it is not too different. Both are extremes. It is not hard to go the extreme way, but what is really difficult is neither to fast nor to feast, but to be moderate in everything we do.

Gods are always ready, their hands are always full with flowers. They simply watch and wait. Whenever somebody becomes a Subhuti, empty, whenever somebody is absent, suddenly the flowers start showering.

Blessed is the heart that does not collect resentments and often dwells on them.

but above all, i wish for you happiness, even though I'm aware you require my absence to find it.

Whatever comes, let it come, what stays let stay, what goes let go.

To live a life without awakening is to leave it as it was begun.

Meditation is listening to the song of the inner Soul, seeing the beauty of the inner Self, smelling the fragrance of the inner Spirit, experiencing the touch of the Divine inner energies and tasting the intense sweetness of the inner God.

Nobody ever reaches to God, God comes to you when you are open and receptive, when you are ready.

Human happiness is defined by the hardships and conflicts you have been through. The greater they are, the greater is your happiness.

Try giving up all the thoughts that make you feel bad, or even just some of them, and see how doing that changes your life. You don't need negative thoughts. All they have ever given you was a false self that suffers. They are all lies.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you will ever have.

Love for yourself is the key to loving other. Love begins with you

It’s all about reprogramming our minds to focus more on what brings us joy.

Courage is the hallmark of spirituality. Courage comes when you love yourself for who you are.

Love is the greatest flow energy on this earthly plane of existence. Love enables you to flow.

Half your life is spent in thinking of the past and the other half in thinking about the future. The journey never begins. Either you roam around the byways of your memory, which is a dead dream, or you wander in your imagination which is a dream of the future, which is still to come. You are divided in these two. The present is in the middle, and that is where life is – but you miss it!

The human mind is like a fertile ground were seed are continually being planted. The seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts. You plant a seed, a thought grows, and it grows. The word is like a seed and the human mind is so fertile!

...unless you value yourself, you won't have the motivation to exercise, get enough sleep, eat healthfully, and care for yourself.

There is a cosmic law which says that every satisfaction must be paid for with a dissatisfaction.

Life is your teacher no matter what. You can't have an experience that doesn't teach you something.

Your judgments about another person say more about your own character than the character of the person you’re pointing a finger at.

Spirituality is not creating boundaries but creating space for others to come into your life.

[C]ontinence is a very important part of yoga. If a handful of people come forward with strong wills, nothing is impossible. One Buddha changed half the globe; one Jesus, three quarters of the world. We all have that capacity. (140)

Illumination is remembering your identity as the eternal spirit and energy that animates all that is.