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The Love of Devotion

Book by Donna Goddard · 22 quotes · Spirituality, Love, Healing

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The Love of Devotion Quotes

“If one is interested in spiritual seeing, takes pleasure from reading or hearing uplifting and truthful spiritual ideas, and desires peace, love, and happiness, then one is bound to find it. The very desire is proof that one is already on a clear spiritual path that can ultimately go nowhere else but to the Divine. With sincerity and wisdom, it can be all the more direct.”

“In many cases, under the guise of righteousness or entitlement or supposed care for another’s well-being, people will seek their own perceived victory. It may be driven by the desire for money, power-seeking, or jealousy. Silent but poisonous jealousy compares itself to another, comes out worse, and then seeks to undermine the other in order to make itself feel better about its own mistakes and shortcomings. Of course, in most people, all this is entirely unconscious and rarely acknowledged. They are ugly qualities and few will face and seek to eliminate them. What seems sweet to the ego is poison to the fulfilment of one’s soul and to true happiness. If people knew this, they would not be so tempted to betray that which is truly good for short-term gains which have the smell of sickness and duplicity.”

“No one has to be a martyr. On the contrary, everyone should be entirely selfish; not selfish in the normal sense of the word but selfish in the way of knowing that the spiritual path means we value everything which adds to our own well-being. When we love, we live with connectedness. When we forgive, we feel stress-free. When we create, we live with inspiration. When we follow our inner direction, we feel alive. Is that even a choice?”

“Of all the qualities that make for a happy, healthy life and a progressive spiritual path, forgiveness is one of the most basic and important. Genuine forgiveness is not a common attitude of heart. It requires too much honesty and too little ego for the average person. It is a deep and solitary process known to the individual and God. Its ramifications are highly beneficial and, sometimes, miraculous. To have an ongoing practice of forgiveness is to extend one’s health, beauty, and agelessness; ever increasing one’s ability to face life with freshness and energy as one grows in wisdom and loses the burden of resentment. If one learns to become aware of hidden resentments and releases them then one will glow with lightness all through the years. The passing of years will have minimal effect as it is the accumulation of hurt, not the passing of years, which ages people most rapidly.”

“To forgive oneself does not negate the need to undo mistakes. True forgiveness desires to make things right. Making things right is not equivalent to guilt. The need to undo mistakes cannot be replaced by guilt. In fact, being immobilised by guilt is an avoidance of fixing things up. It makes one powerless and gives one an excuse to remain passive and negligent. To continuously feel guilty over wrong doing is both ego-confirmatory and ineffective in correcting bad karma. Guilt is the initial spur to action. Then we act in order to correct both our thoughts and the karma, and we leave the guilt behind.”

“Nonduality is a term which reflects devotion to and love of a spiritual Good which has no opposite. It is a realisation of the tremendous power of the invisible life-force of the Divine. God and man are not seen as separate entities, but as One. Both are held with an attitude of devotional love and this devotion unfolds as a sincere and unrelenting walk towards greater self-realisation. Nonduality is a system of thought which sees the essence of the human soul as indistinguishable from the Absolute. It does not make sense to the human mind. We have to open the door to a different realm and then we begin to experientially and spiritually feel it. Understanding nonduality naturally leads to healing because life is seen in a way that is spontaneously elevating.”

“Forgiveness is one of the most basic and vital qualities that make for a happy, healthy life and a progressive spiritual path. Genuine forgiveness is not a typical attitude of the heart. It requires too much honesty and too little ego for the average person. It is a deep and solitary process known to the individual and God. Its ramifications are highly beneficial and sometimes miraculous. To have an ongoing practice of forgiveness is to extend our health, beauty, and agelessness. It increases our ability to face life with freshness and energy. We grow in wisdom and glow with lightness throughout the years. The passing of time will have minimal effect on us as it is the accumulation of hurt, not the passing of years, which ages people most rapidly.”

“As spiritual beings, to some extent, we are ever a stranger to normal human life. We are in the world but not of it. When the humanness has diminished enough and the human karma worked through enough, the alone feeling evaporates, never to return. In fact, it becomes apparent that it would be impossible to ever feel alone again as one is intimately connected to a thriving life-force. We feel intrinsically related to everyone. We have a deep solitariness but we can never be lonely because there can no longer be any separation from God. We are more a part of humanity than ever before because we see all as of God. We are all here together, joined irrevocably in the evolution of humanity both individually and collectively.”

“The commitment to forgive everyone, in all situations, without exception, including ourselves, is an intensely transformative commitment. The nature of forgiveness is such that it cannot be pretended or intellectualised. It is a practice which involves deep surrender to God and sincere humility. Surrender and humility are the two qualities which will advance our evolution most significantly. The practice of forgiveness brings quietness, stillness, peace, and happiness. If we want to be happy, we must be willing to let go of that which is most painful to us. The ego will put up a vicious fight, reminding us of how justified we are in holding onto all those things. The ego gets its life force from such resentments and so it is hardly going to co-operate with its own demise. However, with a sincere desire for happiness and peace, one finds the ability to let things go. The end result more than compensates for any temporary discomfort.”

“Within our daily spiritual practices, we cultivate a desire to bring forgiveness to everything which comes up as a sticking point. All annoyances and resentments are brought to the table of forgiveness. In this way, we not only relieve ourselves of the burden of angry, resentful thoughts but we progress in our soul’s development. Our consciousness becomes more refined. This is the way to God. Reading books and doing courses is well and good at certain stages of our development. However, it alone will never get us very far. The true practice is very inward, individual, moment-by-moment. It is transformative, radical, reaching deep into every corner of our very being. Nothing is left hidden. Nothing is withheld.”

“Although simple, peace is a highly evolved state of consciousness. It cannot live side-by-side with the ego. We choose one or the other. Peace is the predominant quality of spiritual advancement. The unassuming quality of peace wins the day when it comes to the soul’s progression. To choose peace means that we give up the rantings and ravings, demands and hurts, wants and cravings of the personal mind. The personal self feeds off injustices, imagined injustices, complaining, conflict, excitement, drama, and all the goings-on of normal human life. At some point, when we have suffered enough or have enough wisdom, we tire of the whole thing. We sincerely prefer peace.”

“When one commits to a spiritual teacher, one automatically benefits from the energetic field of that teacher. All one has to do is to sincerely say to oneself that one is a student of a certain person and it is so. One is then entitled to that teacher’s energetic field. Likewise, if one wishes to extricate oneself from a particular teacher, all one has to do is to sincerely say so to oneself and it is so. The energetic bond is then broken. It does not matter if the teacher is living or deceased. It does not matter if one physically sees the teacher or not. Such things are invisible, beyond space and time, and are nonmaterial.”

“Most spiritual teachers do not consciously and intentionally deceive. However, ignorance of the ego does not make a saint. Good questions to ask about spiritual teachers are: Are there rules and regulations? Does the teacher need or want certain things back? Is the teacher asking for a lot of money? Does this teacher’s presence or writing transform me? Do I feel closer to God by listening to this teacher? We want the attention to be drawn not to the personal teacher but to the impersonal divinity of those listening. The focus is not on the teacher but on the true spirit within each of us. We want to feel God rising within. Otherwise, the capacity of the teacher to aid our long-term transformation will be limited. Genuine teachers quickly divert attention away from themselves. They do this so that the focus is on the needs of the student and not on themselves. If they have outgrown the desire for personal attention, they will do this very naturally.”

“Everyone is a 'spiritual student' doing 'spiritual work' because everyone is here and has to cope, one way or another, with life. The difference is that an aware person learns from their pain and they eventually create a happy life. An unaware person also has pain. However, as they do not know (or do not want to know) how to help themselves, they learn little or nothing from their pain. Thus their journey to happiness is long and indirect.”

“The motive of the ego is always self-centred. The love of less-developed teachers is not as unselfish as it may, sometimes, seem. Teachers can love our dedication to them rather than our dedication to the Truth. We dedicate ourselves to Truth, not to a material personality. We learn to lean on the sustaining Infinite and, in this way, we trust not human persons but we trust the goodness of the Divine presence. A true teacher will encourage this. The spirit of the teacher is everything. Words are cheap. Many teachers who have large followings are internally misaligned.”