spirituality

The greatest and the best Christians when they are physically weak are more prone to an attack of spiritual depression than at any other time and there are great illustrations of this in the Scriptures.

The depression was not incapacitating. It made it hard to take a lot of my suburban life seriously, but that was inextricably mingled with a growing consciousness of the larger brutalities of the world. Ethiopian children were starving on the evening news and genocide was mushrooming in Cambodia. Was I truly depressed or just awakening to the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, the insight that samsaric life is misery? My melancholy seemed like simple realism; if you weren't depressed, you obviously didn't know what was going on.

One thing is certain, whatever choices we make: we will not miss out on some critical purgation by seeking treatment for depression or any other form of physical suffering. If we are ripe for what the dark night brings, God will find a way to bring the process to fruition no matter how hard we try to avoid it.

I remember a scared, young girl hiding in the guise of arrogance and rebellion. I remember feeling lost in a world where everyone else seemed to have it all figured out. I remember the tears of pain, the rants of anger and the hell that seemed to have swallowed me whole. Although I remember these things, it is now, over a decade later, more like a story that I find hard to believe. Did it all really happen? Even as I write this, my eyes begin to swell. It really did happen. I was that girl. And I__ sorry she had to suffer so. But, that is over now...

You don't need to retire to a cloister or the desert for years on end to experience a true dark night; you don't even have to be pursuing any particular "spiritual" path. Raising a challenged child, or caring for a failing parent for years on end, is at least as purgative as donning robes and shaving one's head; to endure a mediocre work situation for the sake of the paycheck that sustains a family demands at least as much in the way of daily surrender to years of pristine silence in a monastery. No one can know in advance how and where the night will come, and what form God's darkness will take.

It is human, to want to feel connected with others, to strive for a sense of belonging.Yet the ultimate hack is is to belong with yourself.Once you belong within,You belong with all.

Self-talk reflects your innermost feelings.

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.

The greatest book is one written by your pen, but not exactly from your mind.

When something happens to you that is beyond words, life is happening to you. When the Ultimate is happening to you, you are beyond words.

I never attempt to take away people__ God from them, because that God is associated with a lot of human sentiments in the human psyche that act as fuel in daily survival. If you try to take away some hungry man__ stale bread, he would fight back, but if you give him something healthier and more substantial than the bread, then he would throw away the bread himself and accept your better food. The same is for God.

If we read the Holy Scripture, we shall grow in our knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Saviour. And be filled with the fullness of God.

Little people make tall claims. As being this-that avatar or messiah. Some even say they're God. Well, if they are, I'm their grand-pop.

We are all one. Everything is meaningless, and yet at the same time meaningful. Everything matters and doesn__ matter just as much," Wisdom said and looked beyond time.(Nakoma, by Gala.J)

Cast your cares

Be gentle and forbearing with one another and, if one has a difference(a grievance or complaint) against another, readily pardoning each other; even as the Lord has [freely] forgiven you, so must you also [forgive]. ( Colossians 3:13 )

I want to be a woman who lives totally abandoned to the first commandment: to love my Lord, my God, with all my heart. I don__ want the reputation that I love God, I don__ want to write songs about loving God, I don__ want to talk about loving God. I want to actually love God. When I close my eyes, I want my heart to move. When I close my eyes and I look at Him, I want to feel alive on the inside. I want to look at Him with a fire in my heart and it__ real.