Julia

“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

“Anything can become a spiritual practice once you are willing to approach it that way—once you let it bring you to your knees and show you what is real, including who you really are, who other people are, and how near God can be when you have lost your way.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“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 false self is based on two foundational pillars: one is the energy invested in the emotional programs for happiness and the other is the tendency to over-identify with the particular group from which we come or to which we belong.”
― Thomas Keating, On Divine Therapy