Henry Van Dyke Quotes

Our greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.

Spirituality is not about what you know. It is about growing, deepening, evolving and becoming a living reflection of your spiritual identity.

The pains that you suffer, the loneliness that you encounter, the experiences that are disappointing or distressing, the addictions and seeming pitfalls of your life are each doorways to awareness. Each offers you an opportunity to see beyond the illusion that serves as the balancing and growth of your soul.

Human beings are on a journey of awareness, which has momentarily been interrupted by extraneous forces.

Self-knowledge is not the knowledge of a dead self, self-knowledge is the knowledge of the process of the self. It is an alive phenomenon. The self is not a thing, it is an event, it is a process. Never think in terms of things, the self is not there inside you just like a thing waiting in your room. The self is a process: changing, moving, arriving at new altitudes, moving into new planes, going deeper into new depths. Each moment much work is going on and the only way to encounter this self is to encounter it in relationship.

'Narnia' has opened my eyes to a lot of things. I feel lucky that I'm able to travel; I'm not stuck in my hometown, meeting the same kind of girls and saying hi to the same people, week after week. There are so many interesting, intelligent girls out there.

After I finished high school I went to Hong Kong and Thailand and spent some time there. Just to get that whole experience of being out of the bubble that I was in from high school in Vancouver, to be able to travel around and be on your own was an amazing experience.

No great inner event befalls those who summon it not.

Yes, now I understood for the first time that my soul was not so poor and empty as it had seemed to me, and that it had been only the sun that was lacking to open all its germs, and buds to the light.

And we're seeing a higher level of consciousness and many more opportunities for people to challenge their present ways of thinking and move into a grander and larger experience of who they really are.

The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.

We are all capable of so much more than the narrow confines of our regular behavior and our personality. So it's interesting to play different notes on your keyboard.

I wasn't perfect, although during the '60s, I may have appeared to be. After all, I was partying away there for awhile. From age 17 to 25, I worked only on the outer man, and I did pretty well, but I needed to go back and work on the inside.

Spirituality means to put your evolutionary process on fast-forward.

When you realize that the real breakthroughs come from levels of higher consciousness, then you also realize that the achievement of maturity and wisdom is the most powerful generator of new beginnings possible.

Everyone's got consciousness.. . Grow that ball of consciousness and all avenues of life improve. Your work just blossoms.

Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.

I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.

In many cases, a bout with sickness stretches your soul, opens your eyes, and introduces you to a world of unimagined grandeur, possibility and joy.

In love lies the seed of our growth. The more we love, the closer we are to the spiritual experience.

Any desire to grow is following the flow of love

Soul development should take precedence over all things.

A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated. And it can only be freely assimilated in two ways: one spiritual and internal, the other experimental and external.

Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others.

... consciousness is an ever-unfolding, deepening, and expanding process with no end point. We are infinite and complex beings, and our human journey involves not just a spiritual awakening, but the development of all levels of our being - spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical - and the integration of all these aspects into a healthy and balanced daily life.