journey

What the soul needs to make its journey home

Love, faith, and hope are the elements the soul needs to make its journey home. Love of truth motivates the soul to want to set out on the journey; faith sustains and supports it as it proceeds; and hope gives it the optimism that things will unfold in the right way.

I don't know who I am

I don't know who I am. And I don't think people ever will know who they are. We have to be humble enough to learn to live with this mysterious question. Who am I? So, I am a mystery to myself. I am someone who is in this pilgrimage from the moment that I was born to the day to come that I'm going to die. And this is something that I can't avoid, whether I like it or not...I'm going to die. So, what I have to do is to honor this pilgrimage through life. And so I am this pilgrim — if I can somehow answer your question — who's constantly amazed by this journey. Who is learning a new thing every single day...I am this person who is proud to be a pilgrim, and who's trying to honor his journey.

A journey of risk and renewal

For millennia, a genuine cri du coeur, cry of the heart — a longing for a taste of mystery, a touch of the sacred — the yearning to embark upon a meaningful journey has been answered by pilgrimage, a transformative journey to a sacred center. It calls for a journey to a holy site associated with gods, saints, or heroes, or to a natural setting imbued with spiritual power...always, it is a journey of risk and renewal. For a journey without challenge has no meaning; one without purpose has no soul.

The real work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

January 2015 (Vol. XXVIII, No. 1)

Greetings and happy new year! While the universe may exist within timeless cycles in an eternal now, we experience our individual lives as a linear journey with a beginning and an end...or perhaps a transition to another beginning. To awaken our spirits enough to be mindful of the longing for something we cannot always name but yearn for nevertheless is to set forth on an inner journey no less complex or real than the outer one. Shall we set forth anew on this path together?

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What the soul needs to make its journey home

A. H. Almaas Facets of Unity

Love, faith, and hope are the elements the soul needs to make its journey home. Love of truth motivates the soul to want to set out on the journey; faith sustains and supports it as it proceeds; and hope gives it the optimism that things will unfold in the right way.

The journey of each life

John O'Donohue

At its heart, the journey of each life is a pilgrimage through unforeseen sacred places that enlarge and enrich the soul.

Lost

David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

A journey of risk and renewal

Phil Cousineau The Art of the Pilgrim

For millennia, a genuine cri du coeur, cry of the heart — a longing for a taste of mystery, a touch of the sacred — the yearning to embark upon a meaningful journey has been answered by pilgrimage, a transformative journey to a sacred center. It calls for a journey to a holy site associated with gods, saints, or heroes, or to a natural setting imbued with spiritual power...always, it is a journey of risk and renewal. For a journey without challenge has no meaning; one without purpose has no soul.

An endless pilgrimage of the heart

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.

The journey into the world within

Lillian Smith

I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.

Going out I found was really going in

John Muir

I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until sundown, for going out, I found was really going in.

To journey and to be transformed by the journey

Mark Nepo

To journey without being changed is to be a nomad.
To change without journeying is to be a chameleon.
To journey and to be transformed by the journey
is to be a pilgrim.

The spiritual journey is one of continually falling on your face

Aurobindo

The spiritual journey is one of continually falling on your face, getting up, brushing yourself off, looking sheepishly at God and taking another step.

Those who wander

J.R.R. Tolkien
Not all those who wander are lost.

All life paths may be a movement toward the soul

Rachel Naomi Remen Kitchen Table Wisdom

The theory of karma suggests that life itself is in its essential nature both educational and healing, that the innate wholeness underlying the personality of each of us is being evoked, clarified, and strengthened through the challenges and experiences of our lifetime. All life paths may be a movement toward the soul.

The real work

Wendell Berry
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Our real journey in life is interior

Thomas Merton The Road to Joy

Our real journey in life is interior. It is a matter of growth, deepening, and an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.

I don't know who I am

Paulo Coehlo

I don't know who I am. And I don't think people ever will know who they are. We have to be humble enough to learn to live with this mysterious question. Who am I? So, I am a mystery to myself. I am someone who is in this pilgrimage from the moment that I was born to the day to come that I'm going to die. And this is something that I can't avoid, whether I like it or not...I'm going to die. So, what I have to do is to honor this pilgrimage through life. And so I am this pilgrim — if I can somehow answer your question — who's constantly amazed by this journey. Who is learning a new thing every single day...I am this person who is proud to be a pilgrim, and who's trying to honor his journey.

To be on a journey

Andrew Kopkind

To be on journey is to love your life enough to change it, to choose struggle instead of exile, to risk everything with only the glimmering hope you are on the right path.

When we refuse to journey

Charlene Sexton Geography of the Heart

Loneliness is the feeling we have when we refuse to journey... Turning to invite the quiet transforms the feeling by changing the faces and quality of our attention. We are secure enough to let go, and to embrace solitude where we hear our own voice, even in the silence. We are wholeheartedly in the company of our deepest thoughts and feelings, independent of human presence or our physical surroundings.

All journey have a secret destination

Martin Buber Tales of the Hasidim

All journeys have a secret destination of which the traveler is unaware.

Not leaving the past behind

Ray Simpson Exploring Celtic Spirituality

Frequently we do not leave the past behind. We clasp on to it. We dissect it, and let fears for the future, tempered by the past, unconsciously prevent us from taking up the task eternal.

July/August 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 7)

Summer Blessings, dear friends!  Vacation season is here and many of us are traveling in the literal sense during these months.  Opportunities for rest, relaxation, and fun are real gifts, and we enjoy visiting  new places and exploring unfamiliar surroundings.  As we travel in the world, our spiritual journey is ongoing as well, down at the heart of everything.  It's wonderful to have opportunities to  enjoy all we see and hear and taste and feel outwardly, but let us also be attentive to what is happening on the inner path.  Inner and outer often overlap, and we may become aware of marvelous cues and synchronicities in the outer world that offer opportunities for much growth and progress on our inner journey.

The path with heart is an inner one

Jean Shinoda Bolen Crones Don't Whine

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.
 

No glimse of the light without walking the path

Peace Pilgrim

There is no glimpse of the light without walking the path.  You can’t get it from anyone else, nor can you give it to anyone.  You take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps it will be easier to take a few more.
 

A God seeker is a person on a journey

James Fenhagen More Than Wanderers

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.
 

Charting a new path to the future

Joan Chittister Monasteries of the Heart

There is a time in every life
when the very act
of looking back and taking stock
becomes essential
to going forward.

Without the light
that shines out of the darkness
of the past,
we cannot chart
a new path
to the future.
 

A spiritual journey is not a competitive event

Kerry M. Olitzky, Carol Ochs Jewish Spiritual Guidance

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.
 

To journey hopefully

Chinese Proverb

To journey hopefully is better than to arrive.
 

The real journey in life is interior

Thomas Merton

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.
 

We come to a crossroad

Robert Wicks

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.
 

There comes a time in the spiritual journey

Angeles Arrien

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.
 

Completed the journey at last

Thomas Keating Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit

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.
 

I came to rest at the altar of the stars

Rabindranath Tagore The Borderlands - 9

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."
 

Our surface-level living is the symbolic acting out of a deep inward pilgrimage

S. T. Georgiou The Isle of Monte Christo

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.
 

There is no there anywhere

Marv and Nancy Hiles All the Days of My Life

There is no there anywhere, no destination, only ways through,
passages, resting spots, doors that swing open to where
a vision is hammered out, painted, written, sung or prayed
behind the facade of the common.
 

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