Teresa of Avila Quotes

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention.

Choose a single, sacred word or phrase that captures something of the flavor of your intimate relationship with God. A word such as Jesus, Abba, Peace, God or a phrase such as "Abba, I belong to you." . . . Without moving your lips, repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly, and often.

Renew every day your conversation with God: Do this even in preference to eating. Think more often of God than you breathe.

I resolved to move just a little bit more slowly through the world, to look around myself with greater care, and to try to remain conscious of all that was going on around me at all times.

May our prayers today, and every day, be from our hearts and with the focus of our whole being.

Be aware, and wine becomes water. Be aware - sex becomes love. Be aware - love becomes prayer. Be aware - prayer becomes meditation. Simply one thing has to be remembered: do whatsoever you like, but do it with full consciousness, and then you will not go astray.

They who pray not, know nothing of God, and know nothing of the state of their own souls.

If you don't take the lamp of awareness with you, you are going to create a hell around you. Light your lamp wherever you gocourting, not courting, that is not the point. Wherever you go, whatsoever you do, always do it in the inner light, with awareness.

Pray on all occasions." Unlocked page 38.

The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed.

Rather, Spirit, and enlightement, has to be something that you are fully aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now... We are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don't recognize it. We have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition.

The inattentive, slovenly way we drift into the presence of God is an indication that we are not bothering to think about Him. Whenever our Lord spoke of prayer, He said, "Ask." It is impossible to ask if you do not concentrate.

No time is so well spent in every day as that which we spend upon our knees.

Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.

Make time for prayer and reflection; try to understand your value as a man on earth but see, too, your proper place in the scheme of things. It may sound funny to say this, but I have come to see that we are all far more important and less important than we think.

Praying with eyes wide open is the only way to pray without ceasing.

We have been moving along at such a fast pace that we no longer know what we are doing. Now we have to wait until our soul catches up with us.

We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

I pray before everything. When I wake up, before I eat, before I perform, before I go to sleep, in the moments I need guidance.

Mind only thinks, meditation lives.

My ability to notice that kind of thing, the sanctity of the bubble that you create, has not been so good in a way, in that I notice it concurrently with actually doing the thing. I always notice it in retrospect.

Rediscover the Rosary in the light of scripture, in harmony with the Liturgy, and in the context of your daily lives.

If your life is rushing in many directions at once, you are incapable of the kind of deep, unhurried prayer that is vital to the Christian walk.

Never lose perspective on where you are and what you've got. And how you got it.

At night always carry in your heart something from Holy Scriptures to bed with you, meditate upon it like a ruminant animal, and go softly to sleep; but this must not be too much, rather a little that may be well pondered and understood, that you may find a remnant of it in your mind when you rise in the morning.