Quotessence
Home / Topics / Contemplative Prayer Quotes

Contemplative Prayer Quotes

Browse 37 quotes about Contemplative Prayer.

Contemplative Prayer Quotes

“Perhaps the small, elderly brother mutely splitting firewood and stacking it in a buckling, corrugated-iron water tank was heard in Heaven more compellingly than the rest of us put together. Maybe there comes a time when the one who lives to pray at last steps over an invisible threshold and into a place where liturgical form, word and gesture dissolve. Where feeding scraps of stale bread to a young magpie translates into intercession that is as fervent as it is unobserved, as effective as it is inexplicable.”

PrayerSilenceMindfulnessWorshipContemplationContemplative PrayerContemplative LivingPractice Of Presence Of God
Book:The Abbot’s Shoes: Seeking a Contemplative Life
Create image

“When we really want to hear, and be heard by, someone we love, we do not go rushing into noisy crowds. Silence is a form of intimacy. That’s how we experience it with our friends and lovers. As relationships grow deeper and more intimate, we spend more and more quiet time alone with our lover. We talk in low tones about the things that matter. We do not shout them to each other. We may shout about them to others, but quietness is the hallmark of love.”

LoveSpiritualityPrayerSilenceMeditationDevotionContemplationContemplative PrayerQuakersSociety Of Friends
Book:Holy Silence: The Gift Of Quaker Spirituality
Create image

“Deep inquiry leads to contemplation, or prayer. Through dedicated contemplation we can attune to consciousness, the light which constitutes all phenomena. This light is our intrinsic nature. Our being is always shining. Our real nature is openness, listening, release, surrender without producing or will. Prayer or contemplation is welcoming free from projection and expectation. It is without demand and formulation. It invites the object to unfold in you and reveals your openness to you. Live with this opening, this vastness. Attune yourself to it. It is love. Ardent contemplation brings you to living meditation so ultimately they are one.”

LoveSilenceOnenessStillnessNondualityPresenceVedantaContemplative PrayerPure PrayerPrayerfulness
Book:Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest
Create image

“Listening. It's not something for which Protestants are usually well known. In our activist piety we have tended toward prophetic pronouncements rather than quiet listening. As Father Guy, one of the first monks I met, put it, "Samuel said, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant is listening'; we more often say, 'Listen, Lord, for thy servant is speaking.”

GodSpiritualityWaitingPrayerListeningPatienceContemplativeContemplative Prayer
Book:Monk Habits for Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality for Protestants
Create image

“Through conscious moments of connecting with our Soul, we can see our path and purpose more clearly. Over time, we begin to realize that it is our very own Soul that guides and directs us, in harmony with God.”

Life PhilosophySpiritual WisdomGods GraceSoul JourneyMindfulness MeditationContemplative PrayerBreathworkAwakening The ConsciousnessGo WithinSpirituality Energy Realisation
Book:Soul Sutras: The Magnum Opus of Meditative, Spiritual Prose within Heart Consciousness
Create image

“My principal purpose here is to point out again, yet more insistently, that one cannot meaningfully consider, much less investigate, the reality of God except in a manner appropriate to the kind of reality God has traditionally been understood to be. Contemplative discipline, while not by any means the only proper approach to the mystery of God, is peculiarly suited to (for want of a better word) an 'empirical' exploration of that mystery. If God is the unity of infinite being and infinite consciousness, and the reason for the reciprocal transparency of finite being and finite consciousness each to the other, and the ground of all existence and all knowledge, then the journey toward him must also ultimately be a journey toward the deepest source of the self. As Symeon the New Theologian was fond of observing, he who is beyond the heavens is found in the depths of the heart; there is nowhere to find him, William Law (1686–1761) was wont to say, but where he resides in you; for Ramakrishna (1836–1886), it was a constant refrain that one seeks for God only in seeking what is hidden in one’s heart; (...) The practice of contemplative prayer, therefore, is among the highest expressions of rationality possible, a science of consciousness and of its relation to the being of all things, (...)”

SelfGodRealityPrayerConsciousnessTheologyContemplationMysticismContemplative Prayer
Book:The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss
Create image

“(Mother Teresa) said one must have great love to take up her cross every day and follow in faith her Beloved Jesus. Only such love can make the life possible. Attraction for the religious life is not sufficient. Any girl who comes “to seek peace” is to be carefully and seriously tested, as is one who “loves solitude”. Aptitude also was rated far below the supreme test of love and determination to strive for perfection. Aptitude, or general fitness for the life, is absolutely necessary, but aptitude without a personal love of Our Lord is not sufficient. … And she always added that a person who chooses marriage is not by any means barred from the life of Christian perfection, for there are many saints in the kitchens, factories and offices of the world. Not all the contemplatives are found in the cloister; among the priests and nuns engaged in the active apostolate, there are contemplatives and there are contemplatives in the world.”

PrayerContemplative PrayerCloister
Book:My Beloved: The Story of a Carmelite Nun
Create image

“There are three stages of spiritual development,' a teacher taught. 'The carnal, the spiritual, and the divine.' 'What is the carnal stage?' the disciple asked. 'That's the stage,' the teacher said, 'when trees are seen as trees and mountains are seen as mountains.' 'And the spiritual?' the disciple asked eagerly. 'That's when we look more deeply into things. Then trees are no longer trees and mountains are no longer mountains,' the teacher answered. 'And the divine?' the disciple said breathlessly. 'Ah,' the teacher said with a smile. 'That's enlightenment - when the trees become trees again the and the mountains become mountains.' We pray to see life as it is, to understand it, and to make it better than it was. We pray so that reality can break into our souls and give us back our awareness of the Divine Presence in life. We pray to understand things as they are, not to ignore and avoid and deny them. We pray so that when the incense disappears we can still see the world as holy.”

SpiritualitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionContemplative PrayerRule Of LifeSacramental Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“The story is told of Mother Theresa that when an interviewer asked her. "What do you say when you pray?" she answered, "I listen." The reporters paused a moment, then asked, "Then what does God say?" and she replied, "He listens." It is hard to imagine a more succinct way to get at the intimacy of contemplative prayer.”

PrayerListeningSpiritual DisciplinesContemplative PrayerMother TheresaMarilyn Chandler Mcentyre
Book:Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies
Create image

“If he hadn’t become a Buddhist monk, Sawaki Roshi would have been successful in a worldly sense in business, politics, or the military. Instead, he devoted his life to wholeheartedly practicing Dogen Zenji’s just sitting, or shikantaza, which according to him was good for nothing. For him, social climbing in pursuit of fame and profit was meaningless. The Japanese expression for “waste” is bonifuru, which means “sacrifice,” “lose all,” or “ruin.” So when we say he wasted his life, we use the expression in a paradoxical way—like saying that zazen is good for nothing.”

MeditationZen BuddhismZazenContemplative PrayerShikantaza
Book:The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo
Create image

“We remain free, however, to listen to God's communication or not to listen, and free to respond or not to respond to what we hear. When we speak of contemplative prayer, we are speaking at the same time of awareness of this communication by God and of a willingness to listen and respond. Conscious relationship begins when I choose to listen to or to look at what the other is doing. After I have made this choice, I then freely decide whether to respond or not. Thus, by contemplative prayer we mean the conscious willingness and desire to look at and listen to God as God wishes to be for me and to respond. I may accept or reject God's initiative. in either case I have responded. When this process occurs, the person has the 'foodstuff' for beginning spiritual direction." (p. 34”

PrayerSpiritual DirectionContemplative Prayer
Author:William A. Barry
Create image

“Meditation has nothing to do with achieving a result. It is not a matter of breathing in a particular way, or looking at your nose, or awakening the power to perform certain tricks, or any of the rest of that immature nonsense…. Meditation is not something apart from life. When you are driving a car or sitting in a bus, when you are chatting aimlessly, when you are walking by yourself in a wood or watching a butterfly being carried along by the wind—to be choicelessly aware of all that is part of meditation.”

MeditationAwarenessMindfulnessContemplationNondualityAdvaitaPresenceContemplative PrayerPure Prayer
Book:The Book of Life: Daily Meditations With Krishnamurti
Create image

“The spiritual journey is a constant interplay between moments of awe, followed by a general process of surrender to that moment. We must first allow ourselves to be captured by the goodness, the truth, or beauty of something beyond and outside ourselves. Then we universalize from that moment to the goodness, truth, and beauty of the rest of reality, until our realization eventually ricochets back to include ourselves. This is the great inner dialogue we call prayer.”

PrayerWonderMysteryAweContemplative PrayerPure PrayerSacramental Worldview
Book:Just This
Create image

“This is the path of prayer-contemplative prayer, that is, as distinct from simple prayers of supplication and thanksgiving-which is a specific discipline of thought, desire, and action, one that frees the mind from habitual prejudices and appetites, and allows it to dwell in the gratuity and glory of all things. As an old monk on Mount Athos once told me, contemplative prayer is the art of seeing reality as it truly is; and, if one has not yet acquired the ability to see God in all things, one should not imagine that one will be able to see God in himself.”

IfsShouldMindArtRealityAbleActionDesirePrayerSimpleAbilityPathImagineSeeingDisciplineGloryAll ThingsPrejudiceAppetiteImagine ThatMonkHabitualContemplativeAbility To SeeSupplicationContemplative PrayerGratuity
Author:David Bentley
Create image

“They were creating a program on contemplative prayer called Be Still. They asked me to be a part of this project that was designed to help Americans see the importance of spending time before God in stillness. I knew immediately that God wanted me to be a part of the project.”

StillsHelpingWantedPrayerProjectsCreatingProgramImportanceSpendingStillnessSpending TimeContemplativeContemplative Prayer
Book:Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When God Speaks
Create image

“The Protestant wing of the western church, which is a tiny percentage of the Body of Christ, is nearly completely (98%) unaware that the Holy Spirit is restoring contemplative prayer-center stage-to the church The Holy Spirit is restoring this precious jewel (contemplative prayer) to the body of Christ. This is the God ordained means of attaining the fullness of God.”

MeanBodySpiritChristChurchPrayerStageHolyWingsWesternTinyHoly SpiritJewelsPercentagesFullnessProtestantsContemplativeRestoringBody Of ChristContemplative PrayerPrecious JewelsCenter Stage
Author:Mike Bickle
Create image