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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.
Sep 17, 2025
All of spiritual practice is a matter of relationship: to ourselves, to others, to life's situations.
I believe joy is a spiritual practice we have to work at.
Art is a spiritual practice. We may not, and need not, do it perfectly.
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.
Spiritual people are not those who engage in certain spiritual practices; they are those who draw their life from a conversational relationship with God.
Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don't take your thoughts too seriously.
People become depressed when they neglect their spiritual practice.
We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.
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.
An honorable spiritual practice recognizes the losses we have suffered, tells our story, and sheds our tears to free us from the past.
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.
I have a spiritual practice which helps to keep me grounded and centered.
The goal of spiritual practice is full recovery, and the only thing you need to recover from is a fractured sense of self.
There is a push and a pull almost like an isometric stretch. Our literal flexibility and our physical, psychological and spiritual practices are more important now than ever to balance the boat.
In my path, three things are really important. One is associating with people who inspire us with their positive influence. The company we keep is very important. Number two is our spiritual practice. Putting aside sacred time every day to make that journey within, to tune into the frequency of our true nature and the love and the grace that is within us. Number three is to try living with ethical, moral and spiritual values, which culminates in unselfish service.
A woman recently told me a story about her descent into chronic fatigue. She was sleeping sixteen, eighteen hours a day, and feeling more tired when she woke up than when she went to bed. She really wanted to go to a workshop and she went anyway. And when she was there, she felt much less tired. So she decided, "Maybe if I continue to follow what I really want to do at all times, I will feel less tired." This was her spiritual practice - - to only do the things that she wanted to, and to not make choices based on anything else. That is an embracing of pleasure, of joy, of good feelings.
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.
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
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.
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.
Here are two dichotomies here. In the West it is a very physical practice, and even meditation is a practice to become productive and more at peace. In the East, you think of the deep spiritual practices as a journey of complete dissolution of the self, the ego.
When we don't nourish ourselves with fresh, healthy food, restful sleep, regular exercise, a daily spiritual practice such as meditation or journaling, and other mind-body healing habits, we will inevitably feel tired, out of balance, irritable, and sometimes even depressed.
Mindfulness is both a state of being and a daily spiritual practice, a form of meditation.
The way you get more is by having a daily spiritual practice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Children, those who are unmarried should conserve their vital energy by maintaining celibacy. 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.
Above all, cancer is a spiritual practice that teaches me about faith and resilience.
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.
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.
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.
Something I wrote quite a few years ago was, "The voices in my head, they don't care what I do, they just want to argue the matter through and through." It is a common mistake, to think you're going to go into some kind of spiritual practice and you're going to be relieved of the human burdens, from human crosses like thought, jealousy, despair - in fact, if anything, these feelings are amplified.
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.
Here, the certain temple rule, this seems to me to have a certain responsibility to look after the well-being of society and look after Buddhism and culture. I consider these part of the practice of spirituality. There is no competition between spiritual practice and party politics. That is outdated. We already, since 2001, have elected political position. My position is semi-retired. I am looking forward to complete retirement.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
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.
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.
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.
Many people hope a spiritual practice will let them avoid what they are ashamed of. But when you hide something from yourself, you are going to project it onto your world. You continually find it in others and it becomes the source of prejudices and dogmatic views. On top of that, you feel bad about yourself, because you aren't the loving, open-minded, "spiritual" person you'd like to be.
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.