Thomas Keating > Quotes

“Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation.”
― Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation

“God will bring people and events into our lives, and whatever we may think about them, they are designed for the evolution of His life in us.”
― Thomas Keating

“For human beings, the most daunting challenge is to become fully human. For to become fully human is to become fully divine.”
― Thomas Keating, Manifesting God

“St. Teresa of Avila wrote: 'All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.' This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general. It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey. This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.”
― Thomas Keating, Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit

“‎"Nothing is more helpful to reduce pride than the actual experience of self-knowledge. If we are discouraged by it, we have misunderstood its meaning.”
― Thomas Keating

“The false self is deeply entrenched. You can change your name and address, religion, country, and clothes. But as long as you don’t ask it to change, the false self simply adjusts to the new environment. For example, instead of drinking your friends under the table as a significant sign of self-worth and esteem, if you enter a monastery, as I did, fasting the other monks under the table could become your new path to glory.”
― Thomas Keating, The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation

“As St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) taught, whatever we say about God is more unlike God than saying nothing. If we do say something, it can only be a pointer toward the Mystery that can never be articulated in words. All that words can do is point in the direction of the Mystery.”
― Thomas Keating, On Prayer

“Only when we can accept God as he is can we give up the desire for spiritual experiences that we can feel.”
― Thomas Keating

“Hence, it's obvious to see why in AA the community is so important; we are powerless over ourselves. Since we don't have immediate awareness of the Higher Power and how it works, we need to be constantly reminded of our commitment to freedom and liberation. The old patterns are so seductive that as they go off, they set off the association of ideas and the desire to give in to our addiction with an enormous force that we can't handle. The renewal of defeat often leads to despair. At the same time, it's a source of hope for those who have a spiritual view of the process. Because it reminds us that we have to renew once again our total dependence on the Higher Power. This is not just a notional acknowledgment of our need. We feel it from the very depths of our being. Something in us causes our whole being to cry out, “Help!” That's when the steps begin to work. And that, I might add, is when the spiritual journey begins to work. A lot of activities that people in that category regard as spiritual are not communicating to them experientially their profound dependence on the grace of God to go anywhere with their spiritual practices or observances. That's why religious practice can be so ineffective. The real spiritual journey depends on our acknowledging the unmanageability of our lives. The love of God or the Higher Power is what heals us. Nobody becomes a full human being without love. It brings to life people who are most damaged. The steps are really an engagement in an ever-deepening relationship with God. Divine love picks us up when we sincerely believe nobody else will. We then begin to experience freedom, peace, calm, equanimity, and liberation from cravings for what we have come to know are damaging—cravings that cannot bring happiness, but at best only momentary relief that makes the real problem worse.”
― Thomas Keating, Divine Therapy and Addiction

“Don’t judge centering prayer on the basis of how many thoughts come or how much peace you enjoy. The only way to judge this prayer is by its long-range fruits: whether in daily life you enjoy greater peace, humility and charity. Having come to deep interior silence, you begin to relate to others beyond the superficial aspects of social status, race, nationality, religion, and personal characteristics. (OM, 114)”
― Thomas Keating, The Daily Reader for Contemplative Living: Excerpts from the Works of Father Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O

“The fact that we experience anxiety and annoyance is the certain sign that, in the unconscious, there is an emotional program for happiness that has just been frustrated.”
― Thomas Keating, The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation

“When the presence of God emerges from our inmost being into our faculties, whether we walk down the street or drink a cup of soup, divine life is pouring into the world.”
― Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel

“Perhaps 90 percent of its desires, psychologists say, are unconscious; in other words, many of our deepest commitments to symbols of security, power, and affection in the culture are rooted in desires that are absolutely impossible to achieve.”
― Thomas Keating, Divine Therapy and Addiction

“the deeper one's awareness of one's powerlessness and the more desperate, the more willing one is to reach out for help. This help is offered in the next two steps. You turn yourself over to a Higher Power who you believe can heal you and work with you in the long journey of dismantling the emotional programs for happiness. They are the root causes of all our problems. We try to squeeze gratification or satisfaction out of the symbols of those three emotional programs in the culture to which we belong.”
― Thomas Keating, Divine Therapy and Addiction

“The striking discoveries of contemporary science are continually telling us new things about how material creation came to be and how it continues to evolve. Although we do not have all the answers, we are clearly going in a direction that transcends the cosmology in which the great world religions came into existence. Our vision, understanding, and our attitudes about God inevitably must change.”
― Thomas Keating

“To live in the presence of God on a continuous basis can become a kind of fourth dimension to our three-dimensional world, forming an invisible but real background to everything that we do or that happens in our lives.”
― Thomas Keating, On Prayer

“life, you will fill me with joy in your presence.”
― Thomas Keating, The Daily Reader for Contemplative Living: Excerpts from the Works of Father Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O

“In the world that lies ahead, religious pluralism is going to penetrate all cultures. How we live together with different points of view is going to become more and more important. I don’t know whether we can make progress in such a project without a contemplative practice that alerts us to our own biases, prejudices, and self-centered programs for happiness, especially when they trample on other people’s rights and needs.”
― Thomas Keating, The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation

“Gregory the Great (sixth century), summarizing the Christian contemplative tradition, expressed it as “resting in God.” This was the classical meaning of Contemplative Prayer in the Christian tradition for the first sixteen centuries.”
― Thomas Keating, On Prayer

“The great treasure that interreligious dialogue among the world religions could unlock is to enable people to get to know and love other religions and the people who practice them. The”
― Thomas Keating, Consenting to God As God Is

“The spiritual journey can be a lonely road in the beginning. Later God will give us new friends. God does not take anything away except to give us something better.”
― Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation

“The Kingdom is most powerful where we least expect to find it. God does not take away our problems and trials but rather joins us in them. Such is the profound meaning of the incarnation: God becoming a human being. The Kingdom will manifest itself, not because of our efforts to keep trying, even when all effort seems hopeless, but because God loves us so much that God won't be able to stand seeing us struggle and always failing. God will do the impossible. He will give us a new attitude toward suffering. Such is the heart of the Christian ascesis, or self-discipline, and the mystery of transformation. It is the meaning of the Gospel as Therese perceived it.”
― Thomas Keating, St. Therese of Lisieux: A Transformation in Christ

“The Divine Therapy is designed to enable us to negotiate this healing process according to genetic and temperamental factors, our personality and the circumstances of our lives. An enormous Intelligence is guiding us through this process with a love that is unconditional and determined to bring about this healing, whatever the cost to Itself.”
― Thomas Keating, On Divine Therapy

“As soon as we notice we are annoyed or angry about something, we tend to protect ourselves by projecting the cause of our upsetting emotion onto a situation or another person: “They” did this to me. “They” are always a problem. But, in fact, the real problem is not “them” but us. All biases and prejudices are the attitudes of a child from ages four to eight. If they are present in us, we are still functioning at the level of a preadolescent.”
― Thomas Keating, The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation

“If our value system doesn't allow us to enjoy anything without putting a price on it, we miss a great part of the beauty of life. When we bring this value system into the domain of prayer, we can never enjoy God. As soon as we start enjoying Him, we have to reflect, "Oh boy, I'm enjoying God!" And as soon as we do that, we are taking a photograph of the experience. Every reflection is like a photograph of reality. It isn't our original experience; it is a commentary on it.”
― Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel

“Dryness and the Dark Night”:2 A certain scientist devoted his life to developing a strain of butterfly that would be the most beautiful combination of colors ever seen on this planet. After years of experimentation, he was certain that he had a cocoon that would produce his genetic masterpiece. On the day that the butterfly was expected to emerge, he gathered together his entire staff. All waited breathlessly as the creature began to work its way out of the cocoon. It disengaged its right wing, its body, and most of its left wing. Just as the staff were ready to cheer and pass the champagne and cigars, they saw with horror that the extremity of the left wing of the butterfly was stuck in the mouth of the cocoon. The creature was desperately flapping its other wing to free itself. As it labored, it grew more and more exhausted. Each new effort seemed more difficult, and the intervals between efforts grew longer. At last the scientist, unable to bear the tension, took a scalpel and cut a tiny section from the mouth of the cocoon. With one final burst of strength, the butterfly fell free onto the laboratory table. Everybody cheered and reached for the cigars and the champagne. Then silence again descended on the room. Although the butterfly was free, it could not fly. . . The struggle to escape from the cocoon is nature’s way of forcing blood to the extremities of a butterfly’s wings so that when it emerges from the cocoon it can enjoy its new life and fly to its heart’s content. In seeking to save the creature’s life, the scientist had truncated its capacity to function. A butterfly that cannot fly is a contradiction in terms. This is a mistake that God is not going to make. The image of God watching Anthony has to be understood. God holds back his infinite mercy from rushing to the rescue when we are in temptation and difficulties. He will not actively intervene because the struggle is opening and preparing every recess of our being for the divine energy of grace. God is transforming us so that we can enjoy the divine life to the full once it has been established. If the divine help comes too soon, before the work of purification and healing has been accomplished, it may frustrate our ultimate ability to live the divine life.”
― Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation

“If you want to be free, he suggests, if you want to heal your relationship with God, with others and yourself, enter your inner room—the office, where the Divine Therapy takes place. Close the door so you don’t run away. Quiet your interior dialogue so that you can listen to what the Spirit is saying to you.”
― Thomas Keating, On Divine Therapy

“In a crisis of choice when you are perplexed and do not know which way to go, it might be good to consult several persons.”
― Thomas Keating, Spiritual Direction

“God is available through many sources besides the religious quest. I don’t mean to imply that psychology replaces the work of religion, but it seems to me that it greatly supports religion and brings a certain clarity to areas of the human condition, especially the discovery of the unconscious.”
― Thomas Keating, The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation

“Einstein believed that science was directed toward discovering God’s thoughts. Quantum physics itself is a kind of spirituality insofar as it is always looking farther into the unknown to see what is beyond the known. It is a search for ultimate reality.”
― Thomas Keating, The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation