Quotes & Sayings About Receptivity

No one ... can live in this heightened state of reflective receptivity forever. Because this empathy's involuntary, there's terror here. Loss of control, a seepage. Becoming someone else or worse: becoming nothing but the vibratory field between two people. — Chris Kraus

If you are seeking for security, certainty, your eyes will become closed. And you will be less and less surprised and you will lose the capacity to wonder. Once you lose the capacity to wonder, you have lost religion. Religion is the opening of your wondering heart. Religion is a receptivity for the mysterious that surrounds us. Don't seek security; don't seek advice on how to live your life. — Rajneesh

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. — William James

It is the mission of the press to disseminate intellect and at the same time destroy receptivity to it. — Karl Kraus

And with listening, too, it seems to me, it is not the ear that hears, it is not the physical organ that performs the act of inner receptivity. It is the total person who hears. Sometimes the skin seems to be the best listener, as it prickles and thrills, say to a sound or a silence; or the fantasy, the imagination: how it bursts into inner pictures as it listens and then responds by pressing its language, its forms, into the listening clay. To be open to what we hear, to be open in what we say. — Mary Caroline Richards

Aristotle writes that persuasion is based on three things: the ethos, or personal character of the speaker; the pathos, or getting the audience into the right kind of emotional receptivity; and the logos, or the argument itself, carried out by abbreviated syllogisms, or something like deductive syllogisms, and by the use of example. — Randal Marlin

Be passive. In your passivity, God comes. Be feminine. In your femininity, God comes. Have you not watched it? Buddha looks very feminine, Krishna looks very feminine. Why? - because it is simply a metaphor. They have been depicted as feminine, graceful, to show that that is their inner quality - receptivity. When you are doing something you are being aggressive. When you are not doing anything you are non-aggressive. And God cannot be conquered; you can only allow him to conquer you. — Rajneesh

It is necessary for the birthing process to begin to move in its own organic time. It is necessary that the artist have this sense of timing, that he or she respect ... periods of receptivity as part of the mystery of creativity and creation. — Rollo May

We underestimated human potential, both the strength of man's intellect and the weakness of his flesh, and therefore his receptivity to satanic inspiration
but ultimately he is our creature, and so what we've really underestimated is our own creativity. What we made has turned out to be more than what we thought we had made. So ultimately in our failure there is a compliment to us: our creativity is greater than ourselves! — Harry Mulisch

You can convert this human system into absolute receptivity, where you can perceive life in ways that you have never believed possible. If you keep all your ideas, emotions and your nonsense aside, maybe you can take a step, move one inch. One little step existentially is worth more than all the scriptures that you can read on the planet. One little step is far more important than all the philosophies that you can spout. — Jaggi Vasudev

Education to independence demands that young people should be accustomed early to consult their own sense of propriety and their own reason. To regard study as mere receptivity and memory work is to have a most incomplete view of what instruction means. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Receptivity is the first requisite of the disciple, and of anyone who wants to learn anything. We can be anything else we like: we can be wicked, we can be stupid, we can be full of faults, we can backslide. In a sense, it doesn't matter. But we must be spiritually receptive; we have to be willing and ready to learn. When we know that we do not know, everything is possible. — Sangharakshita

But the same receptivity to experience that can make life difficult for the highly sensitive also builds their consciences. Aron tells of one sensitive teen who persuaded his mother to feed a homeless person he'd met in the park, and of another eight-year-old who cried — Susan Cain

Non-attachment is not the elimination of desire. It is the spaciousness to allow any quality of mind, any thought or feeling, to arise without closing around it, without eliminating the pure witness of being. It is an active receptivity to life. — Stephen Levine

Meditation is basically the process of witnessing: looking from your centre all that is happening. Many things are happening on the outside - the noise of the train far away; something is happening in you body - your knees are hurting - right? Your mind is churning many thoughts, that 'What am I doing here?' Your heart is feeling many emotions, you have waited for this moment for so long. There is joy in the heart, a certain ecstasy, a mood, a receptivity. All those things have to be watched very minutely. — Rajneesh

Language is not primarily informational but revelatory. The Holy Scriptures give witness to a living voice sounding variously as Father, Son and Spirit, addressing us personally and involving us personally as participants. This text is not words to be studies in the quiet preserves of a library, but a voice to be believed and loved and adored in workplace and playground, on the streets and in the kitchen. Receptivity is required. — Eugene H. Peterson

You'll forgive me for saying so, my dear, but I perceive very little aura around you. Very little receptivity to the resonances of the future. — J.K. Rowling

Writing, too, is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you wrote, it pours out of you. If you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don't only listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck.
Listening is receptivity. The deeper you can listen, the better you can write. You can take in the way things are without judgment, and the next day you can write the truth about the way things are."
...If you can capture the way things are that's all the poetry you ever need. — Natalie Goldberg

Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days. — A.W. Tozer

Everything is linked,' said an enraptured Baremboim on stage; 'everyone is linked, all our actions have ramifications, and music is a teacher of this interconnected reality.' There was, however, in the letter a mundane, prosaic footnote that nibbled at the very edges of possible understanding, since understanding must always be preceded by human curiosity. Perhaps it will vanish in the charged space between one suicide bomber and the next military bulldozer that buries human beings alive within the imagined security of their own homes; perhaps it will join other shards of recollected moments of curiosity and discovery, to weld into a vessel of receptivity and response. — Wole Soyinka

Most of us are only willing to call 5% of our present information into question any one point. — Ken Wilber

HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is our birthright. Receptivity is a superpower. — Rob Brezsny

Observing what is around us and registering errant impressions is a state not so much of passive inaction as of alert receptivity. Allowing ourselves to notice, to be open to our surroundings, is a way of awakening our curiosity in the world outside ourselves. The — Eva Hoffman

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul. — Josef Pieper

In order to reprogram the subconscious mind, you need to relax the body. Release the tension. Let the emotions go. Get to a state of openness and receptivity. You are always in change. You are always safe. — Louise Hay

Too many philosophers accept the idea that truth is best achieved by a marketplace of ideas conducted in the fashion of ultimate fighting. But aggressive styles that seek easy victories by harping on arcane counterexamples do not maximize truth...Sometimes, interestingly, the aim of truth is enhanced less by adversarial argument than by a receptivity that holds back on disagreement long enough to try out the new ideas on offer, push them further, see where they might go. — Linda Martin Alcoff

I do think there would be a receptivity to somebody who campaigned in a straightforward, cohesive way, supporting an increase in the minimum wage, being for universal health care for all Americans, and opposing trade agreements like NAFTA. — Russ Feingold

As their ties to social, political, and religious institutions loosened, they could increasingly fashion their work solely according to the dictates of their own consciences. Beholden to no higher authority than their creative imagination, the progressive composer could experiment at will, following the inclination of the age to pursue the unique and unusual at the expense of the conventional and accepted. This new artistic freedom went hand in hand with the period's overall esthetic orientation, for the music was able to follow an independent course, without concern for the comprehension and receptivity of a broadly based public, the more it was able to serve as a vehicle for personal expression and to assume it's new role as a symbol of individuality or, eventually, of open revolt. — Robert P. Morgan

Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a 'poetic mood'. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one's thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The fruit does not come from the outside, the fruit is created within you. Whatever you do, you develop receptivity for it inside yourself. Someone who wants love should give his love. Someone who wants bliss should start sharing his bliss. Someone who wants flowers to shower in his home should shower flowers in other people's homes. There is no other way. So compassion is an emotion that each person has to develop in order to enter into meditation. — Rajneesh

What can you give when there is no self, when you have no sensitivity, no receptivity, no warmth, nothing to contact others with? — Anais Nin

A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain. — Alain De Botton

Part of it has to do with the discipline of being actively receptive. At the core of this receptivity is a process that might be called soft eyes. It is a physical sensation. You are not looking for something. You are open, receptive. At some point you are in front of something that you cannot ignore. — Henry Wessel Jr.

Let us say it again: The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. The whole universe is alive with His life. And He is no strange or foreign God, but the familiar Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whose love has for these thousands of years enfolded the sinful race of men. And always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to His overtures. (And this we call pursuing God!) We will know Him in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect by faith and love and practice. — A.W. Tozer

Over against all this cloudy vagueness stands the clear scriptural doctrine that God can be known in personal experience. A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working, and manifesting Himself whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation. — A.W. Tozer

Of course, you can't spend all of your time listening to random inputs. But you should be open to them. As you keep doing it, you will develop a feel for whose views are apt to contain gems of information and a sense of who will take advantage of your openness to clutter you with noise. Over time, then, you can adjust your receptivity accordingly. — Andrew S. Grove

QBLH(qabbalah) which means to receive. The Qabbalah is not handed down from generation to generation but something which requires receptivity in those who are initiated into the mysteries. — Paul Foster Case

Nothing can be forced, receptivity is everything. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Things which we see are not by themselves what we see ... It remains completely unknown to us what the objects may be by themselves and apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them. — Immanuel Kant

God is beyond definition. But according to one's own vision or receptivity, one will define God in one's own way. Some will say that God is all Love. Others will say that God is all Power. Each one will see God according to his own necessity, his own receptivity and, finally, according to the way God wants him to see the ultimate Truth. — Sri Chinmoy

I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity. Something in them was open to heaven, something which urged them Godward. Without attempting anything like a profound analysis I shall say simply that they had spiritual awareness and that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing in their lives. They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. As David put it neatly, "When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek" (p. 67). — A.W. Tozer

Angelo is a brilliant jazz talent. His receptivity, seriousness, his ability to execute ideas simple or complex, combined with his love and feel for the substance of jazz reveal why he is an exceptional artist. — Mulgrew Miller

That is, tapping in to the essence of originating Spirit, emulating the attributes of the creative force of intention, and manifesting into your life anything that you desire that's consistent with the universal mind - which is creativity, kindness, love, beauty, expansion, abundance, and peaceful receptivity. — Wayne W. Dyer

I find a tremendous receptivity among the public for the subject matter of, 'Where did we come from and how did we get here?' People are thirsty and hungry for information on our origins. I feel a responsibility as a major figure in the area ... to convey to the public the knowledge of human origins in a way that is understandable to them. — Donald Johanson

Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Parmenides all state or suggest that thinking the right kinds of thoughts positively transforms our relationship to our environment. If thoughts are the right kind, it is presumably because they build on the particular receptivity of human nature to true knowledge about the nature of things, knowledge that, in turn, brings the person into greater harmony with the world around him. Thought is thus a uniquely transformative encounter with reality. — Brooke Holmes

It seems to me, as time goes on, that the only thing that is worth seeking for is to know and to be known by Christ
a privilege open alone to the childlike, who, with receptivity, guilelessness, and humility, move Godward. — Charles Brent

Fearlessness requires attention and receptivity-it takes focus to stand in the still eye of a tornado and not be swept away by it. — Susan Piver

Recreational development is a job not of building roads into the lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind. — Aldo Leopold

Real love is a humble receptivity of a silent heart that is prepared to melt and merge ... — Banani Ray

By surrendering, you create an energy field of receptivity for the solution to appear. — Wayne Dyer

Sadhana You can experiment: arrange the best possible meal for yourself, get angry with something, curse the whole world, and then eat it. You will see that day how food behaves within you. At the next meal, approach your food with the reverence that the life-making material deserves and eat it. You will now see how it will behave within you. (Of course, if you're sensible, you'll ignore the first and only do the second!) Most people can bring down the quantum of food they are eating to a third and be much more energetic and not lose weight. It is just a question of how much receptivity you have created within yourself. Accordingly your body receives. If you can do the same amount of work, maintain all the bodily processes, with thirty percent of the food that you eat, that definitely means you are running a much more efficient machine. — Sadhguru

Active receptivity is needed, not a passive agitation. — Ravi Ravindra

Design that mimics the sensual continuity of nature's subtle connections of color, light and texture invite the viewer's receptivity. — Maggie Macnab

The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations. — Margaret Mead

A low capacity for getting along with those near us often goes hand in hand with a high receptivity to the idea of the brotherhood of men. — Eric Hoffer

The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will had sincerely tried many of them. He was not excessively fond of wine, but he had several times taken too much, simply as an experiment in that form of ecstasy; he had fasted till he was faint, and then supped on lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium. Nothing greatly original had resulted from these measures; and — George Eliot

Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent. — Sogyal Rinpoche

The search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where God wants him to be a pupil. What he wants from the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise- does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going. — C.S. Lewis

Receptivity and sensitiveness are what makes one's behaviour endearing and enriching. Do not try to thrust your likes and dislikes on others. Try instead, to find out what those around would expect from you and where you can possibly contribute. Rather than feeling conflict or confrontation every time, look for and generate greater notes of harmony. — Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

Poetry requires deliberate movement in its direction, a filament of faith in its persistence, receptivity to its fundamental worthwhileness. Within its unanesthetized heart there is quite a racket going on. Choices have to be made with respect to every mark. Not every mistake should be erased. Nor shall the unintelligible be left out. Order is there to be wrenched from the tangles of words. Results are impossible to measure. A clearing is drawn around the perimeter as if by a stick with a nail on the end. — C.D. Wright

Purity is receptivity, the ability to sit and wait patiently, for as long as necessary, for the coming of the light. — Frederick Lenz

In general, however, grand opera, by more and more deadening our musical receptivity through its three-hours duration and at the same time putting our patience to the test through the snail's pace of what is usually a very trite action, is in itself intrinsically and essentially boring; which failing can be overcome only by the excessive excellence of an individual achievement: that is why in this genre only the masterpieces are enjoyable and everything mediocre is unendurable. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Tolerance of Cruelty in any form is a degraded state of mind and soul. When we freely allow the massacre and prolonged torture of defenseless creatures, it increases our receptivity to human cruelty and war and steals our humanity, peace and soul. Very little speeds and greases your way to Hell, like animal cruelty. — Russell Boyd

The chief characteristics of the [liberal] attitude are human sympathy, a receptivity to change, and a scientific willingness to follow reason rather than faith. — Chester Bowles

The only way to teach focus is to present the eye with opportunities for steady perception - best supplied by the contemplation of art. Looking at art requires stillness and receptivity, which realign our senses and produce a magical tranquillity. — Camille Paglia

Reading teaches us receptivity ... It teaches us to receive, in stillness and attentiveness, a voice possessed temporarily, on loan ... And as we grow accustomed to receiving books in stillness and attentiveness, so we can grow to receive the world, also possessed temporarily. — Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Youth is the season of receptivity, and should be devoted to acquirement; and manhood of power
that demands an earnest application. Old age is for revision. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Generosity is not limited to the giving of material things. We can be generous with our kindness and receptivity. Generosity can mean the simple giving of a smile or extending ourselves to really listen to a friend. Paradoxically, even being willing to receive the generosity of others can be a form of generosity. — Gil Fronsdal

The sense organs experience the external light, sound, etc. with difficulty; the different sense organs only have a so-called specific receptivity for particular stimuli. — Johannes P. Muller

A man shouldn't claim to know even himself as he really is by knowing himself through inner sensation - i.e. by introspection. For since he doesn't produce himself (so to speak) or get his concept of himself a priori but only empirically, it is natural that he gets his knowledge of himself through inner sense and consequently only through how his nature appears and how his consciousness is affected. But beyond the character of his own subject, which is made up out of these mere appearances, he necessarily assumes something else underlying it, namely his I as it is in itself. Thus in respect to mere perception and receptivity to sensations he must count himself as belonging to the sensible world; but in respect to whatever pure activity there may be in himself (which reaches his consciousness directly and not by affecting the inner or outer senses) he must count himself as belonging to the intellectual world - though he doesn't know anything more about it. — Immanuel Kant

A really wise man is feminine, receptive, passive. That's why Buddha looks so feminine. That quality of passiveness, that quality of receptivity ... He is just a receptacle. He reflects life: he allows life to reflect in him, to be reflected through him. He sings the song that existence wants to sing through him. He has no ideas of his own; he does not hinder. — Rajneesh

Mary, mother of Jesus, pays for her maternity by giving up her body, almost entirely: she foregoes both (hetero) sexual pleasure (Christ's birth is a virgin and "spiritual" birth) and physical prowess. She has no direct worldly power but, like her crucified son, is easily identified with by many people, especially women, as a powerless figure. Mary symbolizes power achieved through receptivity, compassion, and a uterus. (There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a consciously willed "receptivity" to the universe; on the contrary, it is highly desirable, and should certainly include "receptivity" to many things other than holy sperm and suffering.) — Phyllis Chesler

Receptivity requires a nimbleness, a fine-honed sensitivity in order to let one's self be the vehicle of whatever vision may emerge. — Rollo May

The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. — Adolf Hitler

Jesus doesn't call people to childish behavior but to childlike faith. The qualities of humility, trust, receptivity and a lack of self-sufficiency all characterize the person of faith. The kingdom of God is not earned by human effort but is received in childlike trust as a gift of the mercy and grace of God. — Anonymous

Culture' means a long receptivity to things of the mind and the spirit. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Moon is associated with, astrologically speaking: feelings, emotions, mothers, parenting, memories, femininity, the Goddess, witches, women, childhood, cycles, nourishment, heritage, habits, sensitivity, moods, fluctuations, subconscious, receptivity, domestic life, the public, feeding, nurturing, home, needs, and more. — Yasmin Boland

It is not a pumping-in from the outside that gives wisdom; it is the power and extent of your inner receptivity that determines how much you can attain of true knowledge, and how rapidly. You can quicken your evolution by awakening and increasing the receptive power of your brain cells. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Meditation is like the moon: it transforms the energy of lust into love, anger into compassion, greed into sharing, aggressiveness into receptivity, ego into humbleness. — Rajneesh

In fact, the advocates of People's Park had asserted another version of what is probably America's oldest and most cherished fantasy: a daily reality of harmony between man and nature based on an experience of the land land as essentially feminine - that is not simply the land as mother, but the land as woman, the total female principle of gratification - enclosing the individual in an environment of receptivity, repose, and painless and integral satisfaction. — Annette Kolodny

The receptivity of the artist must never be confused with passivity. — Rollo May

Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts). — Immanuel Kant

At root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data, skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth. Admittedly, ingenuity can help too. — Willard Van Orman Quine