Thomas Keating Quotes

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

And if, happy in the lot of no created thing, he withdraws into the center of his own unity, his spirit, made one with God, in the solitary darkness of God, who is set above all things, shall surpass them all.

The heart that knows God can find God anywhere.

I believe the only way we can reach the Kingdom of Heaven is to have the Kingdom of Heaven in our hearts.

Listen to the inner light; it will guide you. Listen to inner peace; it will feed you. Listen to inner love; it will transform you, it will divinise you, it will immortalise you.

In my own life I know that my state of cheerfulness is a reliable gauge of my level of spiritual enlightenment at that moment. The more cheerful, happy, contented, and satisfied I am feeling, the more aware I am of my deep connection to Spirit.

In a state of grace, the soul is like a well of limpid water, from which flow only streams of clearest crystal. Its works are pleasing both to God and man, rising from the River of Life, beside which it is rooted like a tree.

Seek on earth what you have found in heaven.

Prayer opens the heart to God, and it is the means by which the soul, though empty, is filled by God.

Love God and find him within - the only treasure worth finding.

Heaven is the day of which grace is the dawn; the rich, ripe fruit of which grace is the lovely flower; the inner shrine of that most glorious temple to which grace forms the approach and outer court.

It is astonishing, how many difficulties clear up without any effort when the inner life gets straightened out. If half the time we spend trying to fix up outward things were spent in getting our hearts right, we would be delighted with the result. Strange as it may seem, harmony within our hearts depends mostly upon our getting into harmony with God.

When in such sadness I earnestly elevated my spirit into God and locked my whole heart and mind along with all my thoughts and will therein, ceaselessly pressing in with God's Love and Mercy, and not to cease until he blessed me? then after some hard storms my spirit broke through hell's gates into the inmost birth of the Godhead, and there I was embraced with Love as a bridegroom embraces his dear bride.

The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations.

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.

Not everyone who has made peace with God has realized the peace of God.

That his prayer was nothing else but a sense of the presence of GOD, his soul being at that time insensible to everything but Divine love: and that when the appointed times of prayer were past, he found no difference, because he still continued with GOD, praising and blessing Him with all his might, so that he passed his life in continual joy; yet hoped that GOD would give him somewhat to suffer, when he should grow stronger.

Try to cultivate love of God. You are born as a human being only to attain divine love.

As you accept the responsibility to seek after truth with an open mind and a humble heart, you will become more tolerant of others, more open to listen, more prepared to understand, more inclined to build up instead of tearing down, and you will be more willing to go where God wants you to go.

When your ethnicity is heaven, then all adversity offers the gift of intimacy, driving you into the home of His heart.

As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action.

Only in love can I find you, my God. In love the gates of my soul spring open, allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom and forget my own petty self. In love my whole being streams forth out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion, which make me a prisoner of my own poverty emptiness. In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward you, wanting never more to return, but to lose themselves completely in you, since by your love you are the inmost center of my heart, closer to me than I am to myself.

Godliness is the fragrance of the man who has attained enlightenment.

God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.

To see everything in God and to see God in everything normally takes a lifetime of practice.