Spiritual Transcendence Quotes & Sayings

It is the rub that polishes the jewel," Enso Roshi says. "Nobody ever gets to nirvana without going through samsara. Nobody ever gets to heaven, without going through hell. The center of all things, the truth, is surrounded by demons. — T. Scott McLeod

A body is merely a vehicle. The deepest emotions are experienced through the soul. — Alexandra Adornetto

Our spiritual mission is not to ignore the darkness, but to bring light TO the darkness. Ignoring darkness does not dispel it; only the light does. That is the difference between denial and transcendence. — Marianne Williamson

A wise man lights a candle while fools are busy cursing the darkness — Seth Czerepak

I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all. — Anselm Kiefer

If you read the literature of the great religions, time and time again you come across descriptions of what is usually referred to as "spiritual experience." You will find that in all the various traditions this modality of spiritual experience seems to be the same, whether it occurs in the Christian West, the Islamic Middle East, the Hindu world of Asia, or the Buddhist world. In each culture, it is quite definitely the same experience, and it is characterized by the transcendence of individuality and by a sensation of being one with the total energy of the universe. — Alan W. Watts

Through transcendence of duality, we foster greater unity in our lives, which brings about inner peace and the sprouting of unconditional LOVE. — Alaric Hutchinson

As persons, so Mournier maintained, we possess both a spiritual and temporal dimension; we exist in history, in relationship with others, but open to transcendence and ultimately to God. This concept of the person, he believed, was denied as much by an atheistic totalitarianism of the Left as by the bourgeois materialism of capitalist society. To the extent that Christianity had become infected by the bourgeois spirit, it had become a prop in what he called, 'the established disorder. — Robert Ellsberg

Materialism is not fundamentally an economic problem, but a cultural one ... a spiritual issue. It runs to the depths of our souls, and, for this reason, needs to be understood less in terms of budgets or fiscal cycles and more in terms of where we locate the sacred, of where we search for meaning and transcendence, and of how we think about justice, equality, and the future of our world. — Robert Wuthnow

Scholars of religion refer to the current metamorphosis in religiousness with phrases like the "move to horizontal transcendence" or the "turn to the immanent." But it would be more accurate to think of it as the rediscovery of the sacred in the immanent, the spiritual within the secular. — Harvey Cox

Finding dominant strategies is considerably easier than finding the Holy Grail. (...) It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. In other words, love is a dominant strategy. — Avinash K. Dixit

Classical music is at odds with contemporary culture precisely because of its insistence on the tension between the bodily and intellectual, the material and the spiritual, the thinglike and its transcendence in thought. A culture that is merely sensuous and that denies the activity of the mind within sensuous materials risks becoming pornographic. — Julian Johnson

As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever got above, but they tower over us, and most in the moment when our interests tempt us to wound them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'd do a podcast about guys wearing shorts when it's too cold. — David Letterman

Nstead of Ralston saying any number of wonderful things that could have been appropriate for the precise situation in which they had found themselves -from You are the most unparalleled female I have ever known, to How can I ever live without you now that I've found heaven in your arms, to I love you, Callie, more than I had ever dreamed to even Shall we have another go?- he'd gone and mucked it up by apologizing. — Sarah MacLean

We live in a world of breathtaking material plenty. That has freed hundreds of millions of people from day-to-day struggles and liberated us to pursue more significant desires: purpose, transcendence, and spiritual fulfillment. — Daniel H. Pink

It was the ultimate celestial orgasm and I felt like a cup overflowing with plenty. The pulse of God moving through me brought such intense pleasure that I felt I might burst like the ripest berry in the sun. — Linda Cull

How's that? Do I look like Errol Flynn?" "You are a dashing motherfucker," she told him. She — Joe Hill

I believe that music is a spiritual language. My everyday self is pretty mundane and boring, but when I'm making music it allows for me to communicate a kind of transcendence that I can't communicate otherwise. — Sufjan Stevens

I've learned much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life, while Islam has taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me with the power of music. Here's to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly, and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength ... And most of all, I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine. — Sarah Macdonald

There is a yearning that is as spiritual as it is sensual. Even when it degenerates into addiction, there is something salvageable from the original impulse that can only be described as sacred. Something in the person (dare we call it a soul?) wants to be free, and it seeks its freedom any way it can ... There is a drive for transcendence that is implicit in even the most sensual of desires. — Mark Epstein

If our animosities are born out of fear, then confident generosity is born out of hope. One of the central lessons I have learned after a half century of working in the developing world is that the replacement of fear by hope is probably the single most powerful trampoline of progress. — Aga Khan IV

Two great appetites of the soul - the urge to independence and self-determination and the urge to self-transcendence - were fused with, and interpreted in the light of, a third - the urge to worship — Aldous Huxley

That still would hardly reduce all other religions to mere falsehood. More to the point, no one really acquainted with the metaphysical and spiritual claims of the major theistic faiths can fail to notice that on a host of fundamental philosophical issues, and especially on the issue of how divine transcendence should be understood, the areas of accord are quite vast. — David Bentley Hart

Inspiration and genius--one and the same. — Victor Hugo

The body, the mind, and the spirit don't form a pyramid, they form a circle. Each of them runs into the other two. The body isn't below the mind and the spirit; from the point of view it's between them. if you reside too much in the mind, then you get too abstract and cut off from the world. You long for the spiritual life, but you can't get to it, and you fall into despair. The exercise of the senses frees you from abstraction and opens the way to transcendence. — Jane Smiley

With all respect to the Buddha and to the early Christian celibates, I sometimes wonder if all this teaching about nonattachment and the spiritual importance of monastic solitude might be denying us something quite vital. Maybe all that renunciation of intimacy denies us the opportunity to ever experience that very earthbound, domesticated, dirt-under-the-fingernails gift of the difficult, long-term, daily forgiveness {...} Maybe creating a big enough space within your consciousness to hold and accept someone's contradictions - someone's idiocies, even - is a kind of divine act. Perhaps transcendence can be found not only on solitary mountaintops or in monastic settings, but also at your own kitchen table, in the daily acceptance of your partner's most tiresome, irritating faults. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You know, Mo, I've been thinking of the Elephantarium lately. You remember Atoul, the white elephant? Well, he taught me that all things need to change form to live. When we die, we change into ashes, gases, things like that. They carry on until they change. The ashes may help a tree grow, the gases could mingle with others and become ... something else! That means you and I are going to change and ... ah ... well ... " His voice stuck in his throat. He stopped, cleared his throat, turned, and walked to Mo. He rubbed the soft leathery skin on the underside of her ear. "and you ... You will become something greater and more wonderful than you can imagine! You will soar in the cosmos, become part of all things, you will sit at HIS side and help rule all of nature." Bram's whole being felt the impact ... The thought of not being with her. "I will be waiting for you, okay? I'll meet you there." pg 317 — Ralph Helfer

The world is more than black and white. Seeing everything in color helps me raise my spirit and find my happy. Life is meant to be lived in color! — Jodi Livon

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. — Viktor E. Frankl

When I speak of a religion of one's own, I'm not talking about a selfish, ego-centered, loosely patched together spiritual concoction. I'm recommending a courageous, deep-seated, fate-driven, informed, and intelligent life that has sublime and transcendent dimension. It can be shared in a community. It can be accomplished inside or outside a traditional religious organization. It is suitable for pious members of a religious group and for agnostics and atheists. To be religious even in a personal way, you have to wake up and find your own portals to wonder and transcendence. — Thomas Moore

No wonder that tantra is so popular today in the West: it offers the ultimate "spiritual logic of late capitalism" uniting spirituality and earthly pleasures, transcendence and material benefits, divine experience and unlimited shopping. It propagates the permanent transgression of all rules, the violation of all taboos, instant gratification as the path to enlightenment; it overcomes old-fashioned "binary" thought, the dualism of mind and body, in claiming that the body at its most material (the site of sex and lust) is the royal path to spiritual awakening. Bliss comes from "saying yes" to all bodily needs, not from denying them: spiritual perfection comes from the insight that we already are divine and perfect, not that we have to achieve this through effort and discipline. The body is not something to be cultivated or crafted into an expression of spiritual truths, rather it is immediately the "temple for expressing divinity. — Slavoj Zizek

You have the world at your feet if you have wisdom in your mind.
You have the world in your hands if you have joy in your heart.
You have the world in your bosom if you have love in your soul. — Matshona Dhliwayo

On television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment. Everything that makes religion an historic, profound, sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence. — Neil Postman

Many people who come to spiritual practice are frightened by their feelings. They hope meditation will help them to transcend the messiness of the world and leave them invulnerable to difficult feelings. But this is a false transcendence, a denial of life. It is fear masquerading as wisdom. — Jack Kornfield

When and why do we attribute a person's behavior to brain disease, and when and why do we not do so? Briefly, the answer is that we often attribute bad behavior to disease (to excuse the agent);never attribute good behavior to disease (lest we deprive the agent of credit); and typically attribute good behavior to free will and insist bad behavior called mental illness is a "no fault" act of nature. — Thomas Szasz

Whether you are aware of them or not, whether you recognize them as spiritual or not, you probably have had the experiences of silence, or transcendence, or the Divine-a few seconds, a few minutes that seem out of time; a moment when the ordinary looks beautiful, glowing; a deep sense of being at peace, feeling happy for no reason. When these experiences come ... believe in them. They reflect your true nature. — Ravi Shankar

You might have thought that a world such as ours, so hard-nosed and cynical and brash, would have very little time for transcendence, spiritual values of goodness and compassion, gentleness, and caring, but we actually do experience them. — Desmond Tutu