The blessed and inviting truth is that God is the most winsome of all beings and in our worship of Him we should find unspeakable pleasure.
True salvation is freedom from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need.
The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.
Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don't take your thoughts too seriously.
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.
All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.
Stop looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love - you have a treasure within that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.
Think what a great world revolution will take place when. . . [there are] millions of guys all over the world with rucksacks on their backs tramping around the back country.
The intellectual development of man, far from having get men away from war, has, rather, on the contrary, bring them to a refinment always more perfected in the art of killing. They even came to raise the methods of slaughter to the rank of "science". . . We would not (On ne saurait", Fr. ) imagine a more extraordinary moral blindness!
I've always seen the Olympics as a place where you could act out your differences on the athletic field with a sense of sportsmanship and fairness and mutual respect.
But I have no desire for fame and power anymore. I crawled out of the swamp and I'm not crawling back in.