Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

The song that starts with 'Neene Rama, neene Shama, neene Allah, neene Yesu,' is very profound. It exhorts people to stop looking for god everywhere and to instead look within themselves.

The wizard [of Oz] says look inside yourself and find self. God says look inside yourself and find [the Holy Spirit]. The first will get you to Kansas. The latter will get you to heaven. Take your pick.

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.

I'm always soul searching on a spiritual level.

Out of that aloneness - the experience of God. There is no other way; there has never been any and there is never going to be.

What does it mean when a man falls in love with a radiant face across the room? It may mean that he has some soul work to do. His soul is the issue. Instead of pursuing the woman and trying to get her alone, away from her husband, he needs to go alone himself, perhaps to a mountain cabin, for three months, write poetry, canoe down a river, and dream. That would save some women a lot of trouble.

My friend, you thought you lost Him; that all your life you've been separated from Him. Filled with wonder, you've always looked outside for Him, and haven't searched within your own house.

My greatest desire is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside myself.

If people have some sort of yearning, dissatisfaction or some itching irritability, then it might because they aren't looking in the right direction for a solution. They aren't looking within.

Every person, on coming to the knowledge of himself, is not only urged to seek God, but is also led as by the hand to find Him.

A genuine odyssey is not about piling up experiences. It is a deeply felt, risky, unpredictable tour of the soul.

Men talk of "finding God," but no wonder it is difficult; He is hidden in that darkest hiding-place, your heart. You yourself are a part of Him.

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.

Learn the lesson of your own pain--learn to seek God, not in any single event of past history, but in your own soul--in the constant verifications of experience, in the life of Christian love.

Meditation is a good starting point, or even a little bit of contemplative reflection, asking questions like: Who am I without my name or form? What is my purpose if there is one? What do I want out of my life? What am I grateful for? Just a little bit of reflection like that starts you on the journey.

The world - this shadow of the soul, or other me - lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly into this resounding tumult... So much only of life as I know by experience... The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power.

If you are on an honest journey to find yourself, you'll find God.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls.

Spiritual life is like living water that springs up from the very depths of our own spiritual experience. In spiritual life everyone has to drink from his or her own well.

You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God

Deeply I go down into myself. My god is Dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.

I was raised as a Christian but the transaction has to be made by yourself - you and God - at some point.

Introspection, or 'sitting in the silence,' is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents.

Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.