Thomas Keating Quotes

If anyone steps on your ego, instantly, he becomes your enemy. But a Guru is a friend who constantly tramples your ego.

Discard yourself and thereby regain yourself. Spread the trap of humility and ensnare 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

I believe that is what the God experience does for us. It calls us beyond our limits into the fullness of life - into a capacity to love people we are not taught to love - and into an ability to be who we are.

You can't deny your limitations.

Sobriety has opened my mind and unlocked parts of me that I didn't even realize existed.

Heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the portals of humility.

You are your only hope, because we're not changing until you do. Our job is to keep coming at you, as hard as we can, with everything that angers, upsets, or repulses you, until you understand. We love you that much, whether we're aware of it or not. The whole world is about you.

Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.

The man who is deeply discontented with himself is probably growing fast into the full likeness of Christ.

Don't try to change people. It won't work, and they will end up resenting you. Only God can change people!

Enlightenment is not a complete remedy.

Grace only sticks to our imperfections. Those who can’t accept their imperfections can’t accept grace either.

The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.

The need is not to amputate the ego ... but to transcend it.

The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one's own ignorance concerning oneself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one?s self.

What is important is to realize that whether we understand fully who we are or what will happen when we die, it's our purpose to grow as human beings, to look within ourselves, to find and build upon that source of peace and understanding and strength that is our individual self. And then to reach out to others with love and acceptance and patient guidance in the hope of what we may become together.

This is something basic to be understood - the ego must come to a peak, it must be strong, it must have attained an integrity - only then can you dissolve it. A weak ego cannot be dissolved. And this becomes a problem.

I became my own only when I gave myself to Another.

Religion is meant to teach us true spiritual human character. It is meant for self-transformation. It is meant to transform anxiety into peace, arrogance into humility, envy into compassion, to awaken the pure soul in man and his love for the Source, which is God.

I came to love, I came into my own.

Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.

When I wrote Living in the Light, I wanted to share about how I live my own life and to encourage people to tap into their own inner wisdom.

I think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I've just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I've read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that.

It's neat to have finally reached a point where I can accept what I was and what I am.