Terry Tempest Williams Quotes

People are surprised at how down-to-earth I am. I like to stay home on Friday nights and listen to 'The Art of Happiness' by the Dalai Lama.

Gently resist the temptation to chase your dreams into the world; pursue them in your heart until they disappear into the Self, and leave them there.

Our prayers may be an index of how small and self-centered our world is.

As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.

If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.

Sannyas is only a declaration. The work is meditation. In one single word, my religion is complete, and that is meditation.

Meet the world with the fullness of your being, and you shall meet God. Of you wish to believe, love.

Self knowledge puts us on our knees, and it is very necessary for love. For knowledge of God gives love, and knowledge of self gives humility

Strength comes from solitude, a waiting, a communion with the best in us, which is at one with the divine spark.

Few find inner peace but this is not because they try and fail, it is because they do not try. . . When your life is governed by the divine nature instead of the self-centered nature you have found inner peace.

Solitude is not an absence of energy or action, as some believe, but is rather a boon of wild provisions transmitted to us from the soul. In ancient times, purposeful solitude was both palliative and preventative. It was used to heal fatigue and to prevent weariness. It was also used as an oracle, as a way of listening to the inner self to solicit advice and guidance otherwise impossible to hear in the din of daily life.

To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.

To believe a thing is to see the cool crystal water sparkling in the cup. But to meditate on it is to drink of it. Reading gathers the clusters; contemplation squeezes forth their generous juice.

In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of His reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with.

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

Learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.

Before entering the seminary, I had not encountered the life-changing potential of reading as a source of meaning, as a way of ordering one's inner life, and being rooted in the world.

Gently eliminating all obstacles to his own understanding, he constantly maintains his unconditional sincerity. His humility, perseverance, and adaptability evoke the response of the universe and fill him with divine light.

The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.

See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance , or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation - to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.

Meditation means to go beyond the limitations of body and mind.

Learn to live more in the Self. Come down a little bit to eat and talk as necessary.

Knowing the Self, God is known.

Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.