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“Any act, if in accordance with the will, is an act of magic.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice

“On the value of the renunciation that we should practise inwardly and outwardly. You should know that no one has ever renounced themselves so much in this life that there was nothing left of themselves to renounce. But there are few people who are properly aware of this and who remain constant in their efforts. It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else. People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works. However holy our works may be, they do not in any way make us holy in so far as they are works, but it is we, in so far as we are holy and possess fulness of being, who sanctify all our works, whether these be eating, sleeping, waking, or anything at all. Little comes from the works of those whose being is slight. This teaches us then that we should make every effort to be good, and should worry not so much about what we do or the character of our actions, but we should be concerned rather about their ground.”
― Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings

“... the ego is entirely a product of the past, and spirit entirely outside linear time. The first is completely deterministic, the second is completely nondeterministic. The first is an emergent property of matter, the second a permanent condensation of consciousness. The two have impulses that are often diametrically opposed, one pulling toward materiality, the other toward spirituality. Our daily consciousness, also known as the lower self, is a blending of both, namely the portion of spirit that shines through the mask of ego and identifies with it, analogous to a driver so absorbed in the act of driving that for him the car has become an extension of his body.

Now the soul, in residing between body and spirit and mediating between them, is influenced by both. It takes on its organization and function according to impulses from both spirit and the body. For instance, the astral body would respond both to a chemical drug inducing a feeling of euphoria through the body, and the spirit volitionally invoking a lofty feeling of spiritual joy, although the effects on the astral are not identical.

Likewise, the etheric body could have its structure altered by some injury to the physical body, or from some blockage or abnormality in the astral body percolating its influence down to the etheric level. Whatever influences are exerted upon the soul by body and spirit, their effects continue to linger in the soul, like tea continuing to circulate after having been stirred. This is why I said the ego runs on both neural and etheric hardware. Despite originating in the physical, the ego imparts the momentum of its conditioning upon the etheric.”
― Tom Montalk

“I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was human,
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.
As a human, I will die once more,
Reborn, I will with the angels soar.
And when I let my angel body go,
I shall be more than mortal mind can know.”
― Rumi Jalal ad'Din