Brennan Manning Quotes

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion. God's love for you and his choice of you constitute your worth. Accept that, and let it become the most important thing in your life.

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

The secret is to have a sense of yourself, your real self, your unique self. And not just once in a while, or once a day, but all through the day, the week and life.

The truth is that we are a part of God. God could not have created anything except out of his own consciousness. We're all his dream, and our duty in life that God has assigned to us, that the universe has placed squarely in our laps, is to find out who we really are. "Gnothi seauton," as the Greeks used to say. "Know thyself." But to know thyself, if you trace it back, to the deeper and deeper levels, you discover that that self is not your body or your ego or your personality or your country or anything, that's just a sack of self-definitions that you carry around with you

Be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which and be pointed out by your finger.

The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead we live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather

We are not our bodies, our possessions, or our careers. Who we are is DIVINE LOVE and that is INFINITE.

The spirit is the true self.

Although our package of skin and bones looks very convincing, it is a mask, an illusion, disguising our true self, which has no limitations.

Our eternal spiritual self is more real than anything we perceive in this physical realm, and has a divine connection to the infinite love of the Creator.

When your ego is no more, only then will you know who you are.

We are not what other people say we are. We are who we know ourselves to be, and we are what we love. That's okay.

Love is who we are without our stories.

Our culture is almost entirely prepared to not just help you create your false self, but to get very identified with it and attached to it. So, without some form of God experience, which teaches you who you are apart from that - we would say in the religious world, who you are "in" God, in the mind and heart of God - there's almost no way to get out of it.

You are what you are most profoundly thankful for, and what you love.

Your real identity is your spiritual being. And every problem, if you're a spiritual being, every problem has a spiritual solution.

It’s not the body that people love, but the soul. The body is a temporary vehicle. Without the soul, the body is like a car without a driver. I see through my eyes, smell through my nose, taste through my tongue, hear through my ears, feel through my skin, think through my brain, and love through my heart. But who am I? Who is the witness, enjoyer and sufferer that activates my body?

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.

If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to cease. And if any one loves me for my judgment or my memory, does he really love me? No; for I can lose these qualities without ceasing to be.

That’s what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is....Most people love you for who you pretend to be....To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretense...It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act...

Love will come find you, just to remind you of who you are.

The search "Who am I"...ends in the annihilation of the illusory "I" and the Self which remains over will be as clear as a gooseberry in the palm of one's hand.

The all-embracing vast being which is there behind the play of the universe and with which you will have to identify yourself - for this is your true self.