Gathering quotes – thoughts from people that are smarter than me and understand life better – and with time understanding them and learning from them is what made me so curious about spirituality in the first place. Being able to getting a glimpse of other people’s wisdoms is a gift. Therefore, I want to share a few quotes I found – the best spiritual quotes that are out there – that inspire me or make me question life in one or several ways – and how I interpret them 🙂
1. Dr. Jaiya John
“Daughter. Spend your life loving. Not seeking love. Ocean need not seek water.”
Looking for love is not what we should spend our lives doing. And it’s easy for me to say this when in reality this is exactly what I have been doing for way too long. When we find ways that we can give love away instead of trying to find it, we find ourselves spending our time wisely. I read in a different book that being there for and caring about others is the only way to feel truly happy.
2. Michelle Olak
“And then I learnt the spiritual journey had nothing to do with being nice. It was about being real, authentic. Having boundaries. Honoring my space first, others second. And in this space of self-care being nice just happened. It flowed not motivated by fear but by love.”
This quote resonated with me because personally I have been trying for far too long to overcome people-pleasing tendencies. Saying no to someone gives me the feeling that I’m hurting them when in reality I’m only hurting myself with this. Growing to build a stronger character, a version of you where your inner kid would feel safe in is far more important. This is what spirituality also consists of – caring enough about oneself to do what feels good. It’s your job to keep yourself healthy and safe.
3. Nikki Rowe
“I don’t belong on earth, my soul is from the stars, I’m visiting this planet for a while so I can help people listen to their hearts.”
This is exactly what Michael Newton wrote in ‘Journey of Souls’. Our homes are in the spirit world, somewhere in the universe. On this earth, we’re visitors. Each one with a unique set of tasks, traits and experiences. What we learn during our lives helps us to evolve as a soul. We each have personal missions to fulfill. For Nikki I guess it’s to ‘help people listen to their hearts’. What’s yours?
4. Frank Kafka
“Don’t bend, don’t water it down, don’t try to make it logical, don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow you most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
It’s your job to stay true to yourself. And again, I have failed a number of times trying to do so – it is not easy! But it is necessary. Sometimes, a lot of suffering comes with it. Franz Kafka for sure suffered. But he ended up becoming pretty wise about it. He had this insight, that now makes other people understand the matter a little more clearly. By the way, when we engage with things that feel good, we nurture our soul and are able to live a more fulfilled life – which in the end serves us more.
5. Michael A. Singer
“The mind is the place where the soul goes to hide from the heart.”
It is because of our big hearts that we sometimes end up suffering so much. The mind – which by the way is a completely separate part from our soul – is able to rationalize, rather than just be guided by intuition, or the heart eventually. It’s our mind that analyses patterns and experiences from the past to avoid pain in the future. According to Jordan Peterson, this is exactly the purpose of memories, to protect us from painful experiences that we already had to learn in the past. The mind, as cold as distant as it can make us act sometimes, it’s there to protect us when the heart is too soft.
6. Michael Newton
“We are divine but imperfect being who exist in two worlds, material and spiritual. It is our destiny to shuttle back and forth between these universes through space and time while we learn to master ourselves and acquire knowledge.”
His book (‘Journey of Souls’) is the one that probably had the biggest impact on me, spiritual-wise! I learnt so much from it and it felt like medicine for my soul reading it. He explained that – as said before – we are divine beings, at home in the universe, that come to earth to learn. At all times we are connected to the universe, to our loved one, to our spirit guides and to God (a higher power, one could also call it nature or the creator). When we die, we get to reflect and choose new, suitable bodies that allow us to make new experiences. It’s a game that we all engage in, and planet earth is our playground.
7. Deepak Chopra
“Awakening is not changing who you are but discarding who you are not.”
This again touches upon the phenomenon of staying true to ourselves! Not being able to let yourself be who you really are – or as Deepak Chopra says ‘discarding who we are’ breaks your soul in the long-term and is certainly to be avoided. Awakening is not something that we can force for us to happen. But it can never happen as long as we aren’t in touch with our nature. So, ‘discarding who you are not’ is certainly a step closer to awakening.
8. Rumi
“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”
Rumi was a Persian poet and writer who lived in the 13th century. It’s astonishing to me how knowledgeable and advanced some people were such a long time ago. Rumi is certainly one of the most influential and well-known spiritual leaders I know of. To me this quote was meaningful because it’s so calming and soothing. There is no way we can know where life takes us while we live it. So, by no means should it be our goal to have everything figured out all the time. Not knowing where life takes us, is what makes it so lovely. As we go trough life – as we walk on the way – life comes at us exactly the way it’s supposed to. Especially when we make mistakes is when we learn. Looking back, of course you can say that your life was painful or difficult, but hasn’t it taught you so much already? Hasn’t it gotten you to exactly the point you are now? And isn’t that great?
9. Buddha
“When you like a flower, you just pluck it. But when you love a flower, you water it daily.”
To me, the concept of love is really difficult and hard to understand. Personally, I have questioned several times if I have ever been in love. But I guess quotes like these make me understand that caring for someone, wanting the best for them, being happy for them when they succeed, wanting to be there for them when they need you, offering people a shoulder to cry on – in other words, watering them – is exactly that. And quoting Dr. Jaiya John again, this is what life should consist of mostly. Picking a flower is very easy, you don’t really have to care deeply. But when you love it, you water it. Personally, I find this a beautiful metaphor.
10. Robin Williams
“Business, law, medicine, these are all noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
Dead Poet’s society
Reading ‘Dead poet’s society’ by N.H. Kleinbaum was a painful, yet beautiful experience. But then seeing Robing Williams, this great actor, portray the most important character in the play, especially when he said these lines in the movie of the same name, was really heart-warming. There is more to life than just studying, working, and functioning as a useful member of society. It is the things outside of our productive parts of life – poetry, beauty, romance, love, etc., I would add a few things like passion to that list – that make life worth living. Without such things we wouldn’t grow as much – spiritually talking – either. Don’t be ashamed for wanting love in your life. It’s your nature as a human being and as a soul!
11. Paulo Coelho
“I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
The Alchimist
Honestly, ‘The Alchimist’ by Paulo Coelho is my favorite book I have ever read! It provides so much wisdom about our purpose in life, our unique journey, about love and destiny. It proved to me again and again why I love to read. And Paulo Coelho is one of those people who has truly profound and meaningful things to say. I love learning from other people’s minds, they provide much more knowledge than our own minds can! This quote specifically touched me. It explains perfectly how destiny works. By a chain of events, whether we like them or not, we get to the point in life where we’re exactly meant to end up. Looking back we might understand why certain things had to happen. And that’s when we – as far as humanly possible – understand how destiny works, and most of the time we’re grateful for how our lives turned out. So did the Andalusian shepherd Santiago in the ‘Alchimist’ by the way. His difficult journey led him to his Soulmate, Fatima :))
12. Albert Einstein
“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”
It’s easy to consider spirituality as something esoteric. I dislike this word by the way. Because it’s more than just something some people might or might not believe in. Spirituality is also physics, confirmed by the great mind of Albert Einstein. Dr. Joe Dispenza explains it using quantum physics as well. The concept of energy and frequencies – which in the end is all we’re made of – is not something that exists in our minds and hearts, but in a natural law. In this quote especially, Einstein basically explains manifestation – the fact that the same energy attracts itself. By matching our frequencies to the things we want, demands us receiving it. It’s like the law of gravity. It cannot not exist…
13. Thich Naht Hanh
“Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean.”
I love how this quote seems so short and small when in reality it explains so much. Of course, a wave cannot realize it’s the ocean. It doesn’t have the awareness necessary to do so. Rather, it’s a metaphor for how big we actually can be, compared to how insignificant we think we are. In the end, we’re all made of the same stuff – star dust, atoms. We are energy. During our lifetime – for very short amounts of time – we are trapped in a closed off space, our human bodies. But in reality we are connected to the entire universe. Which is endless, if I need to remind you. We have power we can never be aware of. It would be wrong to make ourselves feel small and insignificant. Imagine what a waste of time it is to talk down on ourselves, on our bodies, the way we look, our abilities – or inabilities – when in reality we are everything that has ever been created, when we are the sun, the stars, the sea.
13. Dr. Joe Dispenza
“Most people wait for something outside of them to change how they feel inside.”
Dr. Joe Dispenza is the king of modern spirituality. I have read some of his things, like ‘Becoming Supernatural’. He has this unique ability to explain the whole entire world based on physics. Energy is such a big part of spirituality, yet still quite difficult to understand. However, he understands it all. When we are able to change the way we perceive the world, the world will drastically change for us. It didn’t change from the outside though, it was our perception that shifted our awareness of how the world works. It’s a skill we have to learn. Dispenza is the master of it…
14. Eckhart Tolle
“You are the universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while.”
This goes hand in hand with what I said before. We are not just people! We have a thousands of years old spirit inside us. This spirit is much more important than the body, the body is just a tool for us to make human experiences and move around on this planet. It’s what you take from life, what you make of it, that matters. We’re only here for a little while.
15. Ram Dass
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
This one I would say highlights the importance of listening more than speaking, of taking in rather than giving away. It’s astonishing what we could learn if we were just able to shut up for a moment and enjoy the moments we’re in. This is why meditation – and yoga too – is such a useful tool. It helps as quiet down the busy world within and around us and just sit back and observe. We should do it more often.
16. Khalil Gibran
“And God said ‘Love your enemy’, and I obeyed him and loved myself.”
I used this quote before when I wrote about the concept of self-hatred and self-love. It stuck out to me because I know how many people there are who beat themselves up for who they are and what they look like. And I also know how it feels. As I said, what we look like doesn’t really matter anyway, what’s inside is much more important. Self-love is a favor that you can do for yourself that makes you enjoy life more. There is no point in hating yourself, so do the opposite and love yourself, even if you are your own biggest enemy. Souls are namely not set out to hate themselves.
17. Shakti Gawain
“The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.”
I interpret this deep quote in the sense that the better you are – so, the more love you’re willing to share, the more you’re there for others and care about them, the more you care about animals and nature, etc. – the kinder the world is to you too. The souls itself is not bad, it is the human body that can be evil, I’ve written about this before. The more disconnected to our higher divine self we are, the more evil is able to get to us. Being someone spiritual – meaning, being inclined with your own endless spiritual self within you – makes you able better to resist the evil. The brighter you let the goodness in you shine, the better you’re able to carry it out in the world as well. And vice versa!
18. Hermann Hesse
“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.”
To me, it’s an art form to truly be able to listen to your inner self, and be inclined to what’s within us. It’s not always easy to so. Instead, I would say, it’s very hard. But allowing your pure soul to shine through, without hiding it behind a wall from the painful world, helps you recreate. Treat yourself – your mind, your body, your heart and your soul – as a sanctuary and you will feel the best you can about yourself – you can be yourself.
19. John Newton
“God often takes a course for accomplishing his purposes directly contrary to what our narrow views would prescribe. He brings a death upon our feelings, wishes, and prospects when he is about to give us the desire of our hearts.”
I would say, this quote is definitely very difficult to interpret. It takes a lot of thinking to understand the meaning behind it in a manner that makes sense to you! Personally, I’d say that it’s not that important to how we perceive life – whether we get mad at someone for breaking our heart, or being disappointed that we didn’t up where we thought we would. Because in the end there’s always a higher good and deeper meaning behind all our experiences. And eventually, all ends up like it’s supposed to, without us even having to understand it all. What we want now – taking our feelings, wishes and prospects into consideration – is not always what’s meant for us where destiny will bring us. But where we end up, in the end, is where it serves us the most.
20. Rainer Maria Rilke
“The only journey is the one within.”
The journey a soul goes through is actually astonishing. It’s tens of thousands of years and hundreds of lifetimes that we experience. There are younger souls and older souls. When we’re home, we have eternal and endless knowledge and understanding. When we’re alive, we don’t understand almost anything at all. But that’s not what matters at all, as long as we never stop growing and learning. This is the journey within us that Rainer Maria Rilke is talking about. And our journey is not restricted to the years we’ve lived, the number of people we’ve loved, or the number of places we have travelled to in this life either. It’s all a huge journey we’re not even aware of. But our soul knows of it. Which is why our spiritual part is actually so hugely important and so divine!
