Meister Eckhart Quotes

We have to keep letting go, and slowly and surely the great full life of God will invade us in every part, and men will take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.

Blessed are the poor in spirit." Blessed are they who are stripped of every thing, even of their own wills, that they may no longer belong to themselves.

All that God asks you most pressingly is to go out of yourself … and let God be God in you

It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.

I have sought earnestly and with great diligence that good and high virtue by which man may draw closest to God... and as far as my intelligence would permit, I find that high virtue to be pure disinterest, that is, detachment from creatures. Our Lord said to Martha 'Unum est necessarium', which is to say; to be untroubled and pure, one thing is necessary and that is disinterest.

Our problem is that we assume prayer is something to master the way we master algebra or auto mechanics. But when praying, we come "underneath," where we calmly and deliberately surrender control and become incompetent.

Give up all self, all egotisms get out of anger, lust, give all to God. "I am not, but Thou art; the old man is all gone, only Thou remainest." "I am Thou." Blame none; if evil comes, know the Lord is playing with you and be exceeding glad.

Resignation is a quality of the saintly souls.

Strive to see God in all things without exception. Do not smother yourself...If you start smothering yourself with a host of cares and longings and wishes ... you will be disabling yourself from serving God with all your heart.

Try not to be concerned with it. It's a spiritual thing. Don't look for the results, don't live in the payoff. Live in the moment which is a spiritual principle. Live in the moment and let the results take care of themselves. It's in the hands of God. The rest is all ego. And I have learned, over the years, it's got nothing to do with me. As my life is none of my business.

Create an atmosphere for the Spirit. The Spirit must be present.

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

Give yourself entirely to God, enter and hide in the hidden ground of your soul.

One of the values of centering prayer is that you are not thinking about God during the time of centering prayer so you are giving God a chance to manifest. In centering prayer there are moments of peace that give the psyche a chance to realize that God may not be so bad after all. God has a chance to be himself for a change.

Desire nothing, give up all desires and be happy.

God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.

The success and the failure are not my concern, but His.

I know that some of the spiritual beliefs that I have are that if I come from a place of love, and I try to get out of my ego and my desire to want more and be selfish in any shape or form, then whatever I'm doing is not good.

You can either be a host to God, or a hostage to your ego. It's your call.

The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be.

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in 'renouncing' one's own self, by which I mean making up one's mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being 'happy' or 'unhappy' in the usual meaning of the words.

One of the tenets in Quaker meditation is that you 'go inside to greet the light.' I am interested in this light that's inside greeting the light that's outside.

We must be able to appreciate and enjoy the places where we tarry and yet pass on without anguish when we are called elsewhere. In our spiritual development we are often required to pull up roots many times and to close many chapters in our lives until we are no longer attached to any material thing and can love all people without any attachment to them.