From Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization (May 1991) at page 15:
We have within us inner forces that will lead to spontaneous growth and healing if freed from the “tyranny of the shoulds”. We do not need the “whip of inner dictates to drive us to perfection” because our natural growth imperative will lead us to actually “outgrow” destructive forces if liberated.”
From John Hicks, An Interpretation of Religion:
(Gifford Lectures)(his magnum opus)(on exclusivism):
Hicks allies his eschatological views with his Kantian model of the relations between the religions. He urges what he calls a Copernican revolution” away from exclusivism and even inclusivisms toward pluralism.
The experienced and conceptualized God-figures in the religious traditions (e.g., Yahweh, the Blessed Trinity, Allah, Vishnu) as well as the non-personal absolutes (e.g., Brahmin, the Tao, the Dharmakaya), are the various “phenomena” (ways in which the thing is known) of the religious “nuomenon” (the thing itself), which Hick calls “the real”. We can know virtually nothing of the Real itself. So the various religions of the world are the ways that the Real appears to different people, given their histories and cultures. Potentially, at least, all major religions are equally effective paths toward salvation-liberation.
From Hesychius of Jerusalem, On Sobriety, c. 425:
He who has no prayer free from his thoughts has no weapon for battle. By prayer I mean the prayer which is constantly active in the innermost secret places of the soul.”
From Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sigh, at page 9:
But there is a wider voluntary entrance to prayer than sorrow and despair – the opening of our thoughts to God. We cannot make Him visible to us, but we can make ourselves visible to Him. So we open our thoughts to Him – feeble our tongues, but sensitive our hearts. We see more than we can say. The trees stand like guards of the Everlasting: the flowers like signposts of his goodness – only we have failed to be testimonies to His presence, tokens of His trust. How could we have lived in the shadow of greatness and defied it?
Mindfulness of God rises slowly, a thought at a time. Suddenly we are there. Or is he here, at the margin of our soul? When we begin to fell a qualm of diffidence lest we hurt what is holy, lest we break what is whole, then we discover that He is not austere. He answers with love our trembling awe. Repentant of forgetting him even for a while, we become sharers of gentle joy; we would like to dedicate ourselves forever to the unfoldment of His final order. To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live. Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time? Amidst the meditation of mountains, the humility of flowers – wiser than all alphabets – clouds that die constantly for the sake of His glory, we are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly we feel ashamed of our clashes and complaints in the face of the tacit glory in nature. It is so embarrassing to live! How strange we are in the world, and how presumptuous our doings! Only one response can maintain us; gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the gift of our unearned right to serve, to adore, and to fulfill. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great. However, we often lack the strength to be grateful, the courage to answer, the ability to pray…. We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub, but the spoke of the revolving wheel. In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender. God is the center toward which all forces tend. He is the source, and we are the flowing of his force, the ebb and flow of his tides. ….Prayer takes the mind out of the narrowness of self-interest, and enables us to see the world in the mirror of the holy. For when we betake ourselves to the extreme opposite of the ego, we can behold a situation from the aspect of God…
From Abraham Joshua Heschel, Quest for God:
About a hundred years ago, Rabbi Isaac Meir Alter of Ger pondered over the question of what a certain shoemaker of his acquaintance should do about his morning prayer.
We, too face this dilemma of wholehearted regret or perfunctory fulfillment. Many of us regretfully refrain from habitual prayer, waiting for an urge that is complete, sudden, and unexampled. But the unexampled is scarce, and perpetual refraining can easily grow into a habit. We may even come to forget what to regret, what to miss./// We do not refuse to pray. We merely feel that our tongues are tied, our minds inert, our inner vision dim, when we are about to enter the door that leads to prayer. We do not refuse to pray; we abstain from it. We ring the hollow bell of selfishness rather than absorb the stillness that surrounds the world, hovering over all the restlessness and fear of life – the secret stillness that precedes our birth and succeeds our death. Futile self-indulgence brings us out of tune with the gentle song of nature’s waiting, of mankind’s striving for salvation. Is not listening to the pulse of wonder worth silence and abstinence from self-assertion? Why do we not set apart an hour of living for devotion to God by surrendering to the stillness? We dwell on the edge of mystery and ignore it, wasting our souls, risking our stake in God. …. Accepting surmises as dogmas, and prejudices as solutions, we ridicule the evidence of life for what is more than life. Our mind has ceased to be sensitive to the wonder. Deprived of the power of devotion to what is more important than our individual fate, steeped in passionate anxiety to survive, we lose sight of what fate is, of what living is. Rushing through the ecstasies of ambition, we only awake when plunged into dread or grief. In darkness, then, we grope for solace, for meaning, for prayer.///….///God is not alone when discarded by man. But man is alone. To avoid prayer constantly is to force a gap between man and God which can widen into an abyss. But sometimes, awakening on the edge of despair to weep, and arising from forgetfulness, we feel how yearning moves in softly to become the lord of a restless breast, and we pass over the gap with the lightness of a dream.
From Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets:
Israelite prophets taught that man might defy God and justice might be defeated in the short term (Heschel, 168), but God’s word would inevitably accomplish that which [He] purpose[s].” Isa.
55:11.
From Alasdair I. C. Heron, The Holy Spirit; The Holy Spirit in the Bible, the History of Christian Thought, and Recent Theology, at 3-4:
The root meaning of ruach probably had to do with the movement, but from this beginning it acquired a whole variety of other senses, including, wind, breath and life . It then came to be applied to the human spirit or self and also to what we would describe as mood or temper. 2. There are only two specific references to a holy Spirit in all of the Old Testament: Psalm 51:11 and Isaiah 63:10f. RefMgr field[22]: 2
From HEM Spiritual Reflection:
Praying as part of this morning’s meditation and I had a sense of a conversation with God regarding H.P. There seemed a sense that I was asking God to bring new life and hope into H.P.’s life and a sense of reluctance by God. But then God responded by clearly assenting, and I could feel God moving off to bring love, power, hope to H.P.