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Listening Prayer Quotes

Browse 14 quotes about Listening Prayer.

Listening Prayer Quotes

“We all have two voices, perhaps, many more. Every day, if not every minute, we have to choose which one will get our attention. If we choose the higher one, our suffering will lessen and, quite often, completely disappear but it takes humility and trust. The longer we keep listening to the lower voice, the harder it is to drag ourselves away from it. Nevertheless, all it takes is one second. If we chose something else last week or yesterday or a minute ago, it doesn’t matter. We just need to make another choice right now.”

GrowthHumilityTrustListeningSpiritual WisdomChoices And ConsequencesChoice QuotesListening PrayerListening To Inner Self
Book:Circles of Separation
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“Into the midst of all this indistinguishable cacophony of life, the bell tower of every Benedictine monastery rings "listen." Listen with the heart of Christ. Listen with the lover's ear. Listen for the voice of God. Listen in your own heart for the sound of truth, the kind that comes when a piece of quality crystal is struck by a metal rod.”

SpiritualityListeningSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeSpiritual FormationListening Prayer
Author:Joan Chittister
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“Listening is, indeed, a fundamental value of Benedictine spirituality. More than that, Benedictine listening is life lived in stereo. The simple fact is that everybody lives listening to something. But few live a life attuned on every level. Benedictine spirituality doesn't allow for selective perception; it insists on breadth, on a full range of hearing, on total alert. We have to learn to hear on every level at once if we are really to become whole. The problem is that most of us are deaf in at least one ear.”

SpiritualityListeningSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeListening Prayer
Author:Joan Chittister
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“...good listeners have a humble perspective. Humility in listening means that we let go of preconceived opinions, we let go of the need to be right, we let go of our own insecurities, and we let go of the need to appear wise, good or spiritual. In short, we let go of ourselves in order to be present to the other. This is a high calling and a commitment we will need to return to again and again.”

Spiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionSelahListening Prayer
Book:Seeking God Together: An Introduction to Group Spiritual Direction
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“In spiritual direction, however, there has to be an ongoing awareness that anything can happen; that the Holy Spirit is already affecting the person; and that one must participate in this work through careful discernment and support. here again, it is necessary to walk the fierce path of free will and dependence. We must always claim the freedom we have been given; to do otherwise would devalue our humanity. But at the same time, we will increasingly recognize the extreme inadequacy of personal will and knowledge in figuring out what life is or how we should live it. As we grow in wisdom, we also grow in the realization of our utter dependence upon the Lord in all things. it seems to me, then, that in its purest human form spiritual direction is a journey towards more freely and deeply choosing to surrender to God.”

PrayerObedienceDiscernmentSpiritual DirectionSelahListening Prayer
Book:Care of Mind/Care of Spirit: A Psychiatrist Explores Spirtual Direction
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“Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him who has no voice, and yet who speaks in everything that is, and who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves are words of his. But we are words that are meant to respond to him, to answer to him, to echo him, and even in some way to contain him and signify him. Contemplation is this echo. It is a deep resonance in the inmost center of our spirit in which our very life loses its separate voice and re-sounds with the majesty and the mercy of the Hidden and Living One. He answers himself in us and this answer is divine life, divine creativity, making all things new. We ourselves become his echo and his answer. It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation he answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer.”

PrayerContemplationSpiritual DirectionSelahListening Prayer
Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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“The life of contemplation implies two levels of awareness: first, awareness of the question, and, second, awareness of the answer. Though these are two distinct and enormously different levels, yet they are in fact an awareness of the same thing. The question is, itself, the answer. And we ourselves are both. But we cannot know this until we have moved into the second kind of awareness. We awaken, not to find an answer absolutely distinct from the question, but to realize that the question is its own answer. And all is summed up in one awareness - not a proposition, but an experience: "I AM".”

PrayerContemplationDiscernmentSpiritual ExperienceSpiritual DirectionSelahListening Prayer
Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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“It was the recommendation of John of the Cross (in a manner similar to that of Gamaliel) that one should not pay particular attention to any phenomena or experiences. If an experience were truly and directly of God, he felt, its truth would become evident naturally in one's life. If it were of something "else," it would certainly not be worthy of attention. Therefore, no special attention was necessary.”

PrayerDiscernmentSpiritual ExperienceSpiritual DirectionSelahListening Prayer
Book:Care of Mind/Care of Spirit: A Psychiatrist Explores Spirtual Direction
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“It must be emphasized here that this movement of detachment and centeredness is not a flight from the world. Such a false asceticism is merely another means by which our religious false self identifies us over against the world. The detachment and centeredness is at the heart of a life of loving union with God is never a world-denying spirituality. It is only the detachment from our manipulative and possessive abuse of the world that enables the world to be the place of life with God, and our centering enables our lives to be in the world all that god has created them to be.”

PrayerSpiritual DirectionSelahListening Prayer
Book:The Deeper Journey: The Spirituality of Discovering Your True Self
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“Excessive preoccupation with psyche and evil - either from supportive or antagonistic standpoints - fosters a degree of self-consciousness and self-importance that is very likely to eclipse the ever-present mystery of God's truth. Discernments are essential, but it is not at all necessary or helpful to become attached to making them. If possible, it is best to see psychological phenomena such as dreams, fantasies, images, and thoughts as manifestations of God's potential in the same way that nature, art, relationships, and all other phenomena are. Gazing into an empty, blue sky, kneeling in prayer in a cathedral, and recalling memories associated with a dream can all be worthwhile spiritual explorations. The can also all be distractions from spiritual exploration. The beauty of the sky or the cathedral can create an absorption with sensate experience, just as dream analysis can create ego-absorption.”

PrayerSpiritual ExperienceSpiritual DirectionSelahListening Prayer
Book:Care of Mind/Care of Spirit: A Psychiatrist Explores Spirtual Direction
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“The importance of experiences lies not so much in their precise nature as in one's response to them. In part this represents a harkening back to an old principle of discernment...of evaluating an experience in relation to its fruits. More deeply, however, we are speaking of remaining attentive to the mystery and reality of God behind> all phenomena, refusing to allow superficial appearances to distract us from this central concern. We do a disservice to ourselves and others when we allow our interest in the nature of a phenomenon to obscure the mysterious wonder of the very existence of that phenomenon.”

PrayerDiscernmentSpiritual ExperienceSpiritual DirectionSelahListening Prayer
Book:Care of Mind/Care of Spirit: A Psychiatrist Explores Spirtual Direction
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