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God is the great mystery…

• God is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified. Albert Einstein
• I believe God is a name we give to the mystery of the world that is beyond our capacity to understand. I believe that the energy of the universe is ordered by forces I cannot comprehend. Robert Jensen
• I believe in God, but I’m not too clear on the other details. Bill Veeck
• It’s a mystery. That’s the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it’s mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously. Stephen King
• The mind of God is a mystery, and none can understand it. Rae Carson
• We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. Albert Einstein
• God – the John Doe of philosophy and religion. Elbert Hubbard
• There are many paths to God,  Divine love,  Trust in God,  Religion,  Spirituality,  Devotion,  Worship,  Atheism

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… beyond conception…

• Don’t think of God in terms of forms, because forms are limited and God is unlimited. C. S. Lewis
• God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that. Joseph Campbell
• God is that, than which nothing greater can be conceived. St. Anselm
• God transcends all conceptuality. Only ego presumes that the All Pervading Divine Presence could be reduced to words. Leland Lewis

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… beyond description and explanation…

• It is easy to understand God as long as you don’t try to explain him. Joseph Joubert
• Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description. Anthony de Mello
• God can never be a definition. He is more than even the entirety of the dictionary. Terri Guillemets
• Man demands that God prove Himself in terms of symbols and paradigms or be considered as non-existent. Richard Rose
• The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. Rob Bell

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… beyond understanding of the mind

• If you understood him, it would not be God. Augustine of Hippo
• It is easy to understand God as long as you don’t try to explain him. Joseph Joubert
• God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.  Saint Augustine
• I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God — I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least. Walt Whitman
• Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to. Dan Brown
• I believe in the incomprehensibility of God. Honore de Balzac
• Understanding

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We can see evidence of God all around us …

• “How do you know,” a Bedouin asked, “that there is a God?” “In the same way,” his friend replied. “that I know, on looking at the sand, when a man or beast has crossed the desert – by his footprints in the world around me. Henry Parry Liddon
• In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness… I see what people call God in all these things. Pablo Casals
• Human experience is already experience of God. Our journey on earth is already a journey to heaven.  Seeing a sunrise or a flower is already seeing God.  Carlo Carretto
• God is to me that creative Force, behind and in the universe, who manifests Himself as energy, as life, as order, as beauty, as tought, as conscience, as love. Henry Sloane Coffin
• The world is God’s language to us. Simone Weil
• We are all born with a belief in God. It may not have a name or face.  We may not even see it as God.  But it is there.  It is the sense that comes over us as we stare into the starlit sky, or watch the last fiery rays of an evening sunset.  It is the morning shiver as we wake on a beautiful day and smell a richness in the air that we know and love from somewhere we can’t quite recall.  It is the mystery behind the beginning of time and beyond the limits of space. It is a sense of otherness that brings alive something deep in our hearts.  Kent Nerburn
• Divinity is not something supernatural that ever and again invades the natural order in a crashing miracle. Divinity is not in some remote heaven, seated on a throne.  Divinity is love. . . . Wherever goodness, beauty, truth, love, are– there is the divine.  Harry Emerson Fosdick
• There is in all our strivings a profound homesickness for God. When we touch another, we touch God.  When we look at a flower, its radiance, its fragrance, its stillness is another moment’s experience of something deeper within.  When we hold a baby, when we hear extraordinary music, when we look into the eyes of a great saint, what draws us is that deep homesickness for our true nature, for the peace and healing that is our birthright.  This homesickness for God directs us toward the healing we took birth for.  Stephen Levine
• When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash – at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. Thomas Merton
• Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass; I find letters from God dropped in the street, and everyone is signed by God’s name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever. Walt Whitman

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… in the beauty of nature …

• I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. George Washington
• The closer we are to Nature, the closer we are to God. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. Frank Lloyd Wright
• Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be
• Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you. Werner Heisenberg
• If God had wanted to be a big secret, He would not have created babbling brooks and whispering pines. Robert Brault
• Whether one sees the world as God’s creation or as a secular mystery that science is on the way to figuring out, there is no denying the beauty and majesty of everything from mountain ranges, deserts, and rain forests to the exquisite details in the design of an ordinary mosquito. Robert C. Solomon
• God’s beneficence streams out from the morning sun, and his love looks down upon us from the starry eyes of midnight. It is his solicitude that wraps us in the air, and the pressure of his hand, so to speak, that keeps our pulses beating. O! it is a great thing to realize that the Divine Power is always working; that nature, in every valve and every artery, is full of the presence of God. H. Chapin
• The closer we are to Nature, the closer we are to God. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking- places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature. Henry David Thoreau
• Little flower, but if I could understand, what you are, root and all in all, I should know what God and man is. Alfred Lord Tennyson
• Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. Albert Einstein
• The dearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. John Muir
• He who understands nature walks close with God. Edgar Cayce
• Something of God flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself. C. S. Lewis
• So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Mikhail Gorbachev
• Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. Albert Einstein
• If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand. Eldo Roshi
• Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Blaise Pascal
• One does not need to fast for days and meditate for hours at a time to experience the sense of sublime mystery which constantly envelops us. All one need do is to notice intelligently, if even for a brief moment, a blossoming tree, a forest flooded with autumn colors, an infant smiling.  Simon Greenberg
• Beauty,  Nature

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… and beauty in general …

• Beauty is the shadow of God on the universe. Gabriela Mistral
• Beauty is God’s handwriting. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Beauty is everywhere to he or she who would behold it. When God reigns supreme in the consciousness of man, the tiniest blade of grass speaks of God’s beauty. Frater Achad
• In all ranks of life, the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike. Harriet Beecher Stowe
• A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• To deprive ourselves of beauty is to deprive ourselves of an important reminder of God, who is Beauty itself. Murray Bodo
• There is not one speck of beauty under the sun that does not mirror back the beauty of God. Roberta Bondi
• Beauty

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… in the wonders of the universe …

• Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories…legends and history of man’s quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you are staring up at the work of God’s hands? Dan Brown
• I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker. Voltaire
• When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator. Mahatma Gandhi
• I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows, I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, moon, and stars… I awaken everything to life. Ildergard of Bingen
• This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. Isaac Newton
• The deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. Albert Einstein
• Wonder,  The universe

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… in our highest thoughts and feelings …

• Joy is the echo of God’s life in us. Abbot Coumba Mion
• Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God. Madeleine L’Engle
• Peace is not the absence of trouble, but the presence of God. Steve Dow
• In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral. John Ortberg
• Thinking,  Emotions

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… in the power and peace of pure stillness …

• There is a place in you where there is perfect peace. There is a place in you where nothing is impossible. There is a place in you where the strength of God abides. A Course in Miracles
• The sound of ‘gentle stillness’ after all the thunder and wind have passed will the ultimate Word from God. Jim Elliot
• Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness. Meister Eckhart
• In the stillness, you will find your true being. In the silence, you will hear the breathing of your soul – and of God. You will find God in the Stillness. Neale Donald Walsch
• Silence is the language of God; It is also the language of the heart. Dag Hammerskjold
• Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is a bad translation. Eckhart Tolle
• When we turn the mind inwards, God manifests as the inner consciousness. Ramana Maharshi
• You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind. Sai Baba
• If you want to find God, hang out in the space between your thoughts. Alan Cohen
• Stillness,  Silence

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… in the loving ways we connect …

• Perhaps God is in the space between people as they try to connect. Before Sunrise
• When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them. Martin Buber
• In the faces of men and women I see God. Walt Whitmen
• Connection,  Oneness

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… through the gift of unconditional love

• Earthly things must be known to be loved; Divine things must be loved to be known. Blaise Pascal
• Happiness is the realization of God in the heart. Happiness is a quiet tranquil realization of the love of God. White Eagle
• Love is our highest word and the synonym for God. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• What is God? The eternal one life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of the one life deep within yourself and all creatures; to be it! Therefore, all love is the love of God. Eckhart Tolle
• To love another person is to see the face of God. Victor Hugo
• Unconditional love

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The word “God” has become tarnished and empty of meaning to many

• The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed at the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or, they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as “My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false,” or Neitzche’s famous statement “God is dead.” Eckhart Tolle
• We don’t use the word God, because man has already decided what God is. And what man has decided, God isn’t. Abraham-Hicks
• How important the concept of God is, and how instead of valuing what has been given us, we with light hearts spurn it because of absurdities that have been attached to it. Leo Tolstoy
• The word ‘God’ is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, and religious scripture a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this. Albert Einstein
• No term of common discourse is so vague and elusive in meaning as the term ‘God.’ Eustace Haydon
• Meaning

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Don’t lose the true essence of God by becoming lost in dogma and ideology…

• No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self- centered idea. Shunryu Suzuki- roshi
• Some people become lost in religion and, as a result, it becomes God to them. Stevan Thayer
• Too much study of the scriptures does more than good. The important thing is to know the essence of the scriptures. After that, what is the need of books? One should learn the essence and then dive deep in order to realize God. Ramakrishna
• When the stakes are this high – when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don’t believe as you do. Sam Harris
• God is like a computer, the more software you put in, the greater the danger that extensions will conflict. Alexander Waugh
• Ideology and dogma

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… for ideas and concepts cannot convey the inexpressible

• The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. Rob Bell
• Don’t think of God in terms of forms, because forms are limited and God is unlimited. C. S. Lewis
• Man Made ‘God’ in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, the unnameable was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as ‘my god’ or ‘our god’. Eckhart Tolle
• It is useful to study different traditions in order to be free of attachment to any one way of expressing what is beyond expression. Ravi Ravindra
• Man demands that God prove Himself in terms of symbols and paradigms or be considered as non-     Richard Rose
• The soul understands what the mind cannot conceive. Neale Donald Walsch
• Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery. Ram Dass
• Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description. Anthony de Mello
• Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence. George Steiner
• Thoughts can at best point to the truth, but it never is the truth. That’s why the Buddhist say: The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon. Eckhart Tolle
• Each person is entitled to some version of God that seems real, yet many versions contradict one another. The God of any religion is only a fragment of God. This has to be true, because a being who is unbounded has no image, no role to play, no location either inside or outside the cosmos, whereas religions offer many images– father, mother, lawgiver, judge, ruler of the universe. Deepak Chopra
• God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that. Joseph Campbell

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God is not an abstract idea or theoretical concept but something to experience directly…

• People substitute tradition for the living experience of the love of God. They talk and think as though walking with God was attained by walking in the footsteps of people who walked with God.  Francis Howgill
• It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Talking about God is not at all the same thing as experiencing God or acting out God through our lives. Phillip Hewett
• It is the heart which experiences God, not the reason. Blaise Pascal
• I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences. William James
• Those who know God know that it is quite a mistake to suppose that there are only five senses. Coventry Patmore
• I deepen my experience of God through prayer, meditation, and forgiveness. Marianne Williamson
• You can disagree with another person’s opinions. You can disagree with their doctrines. You can’t disagree with their experience. Krista Tippett
• To know much and taste nothing-of what use is that? Bonaventure
• God cannot be explained… God can only be lived. Meher Baba
• Experience

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… through the heart and soul, not through the intellect

• Far beyond your intellect, far beyond your understanding, lies inexhaustible knowledge and wealth, strength and power, peace and joy. Do not use your intellect to find the answers for God and his manifestations.  Everything is God.  Swami Vishnu- Devananda
• There is a place for analysis, but it is apt to be quite fatal in prayer and meditation. Do not dissect the love of God, but feel it. Do not dissect divine intelligence, but realize it. Do not wonder how God can possibly solve this problem, but just watch Him do it in His own way—and He will if you will give Him a chance.  You know that God is Love. So go ahead on that, and do not get theoretical about it.  Emmet Fox
• God is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul. Jean Paul Richter
• Your mind cannot possibly understand God. Your heart already knows. Minds were designed for carrying out the orders of the heart.  Emmanuel
• There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart. Blaise Pascal
• What do you think of God,” the teacher asked. After a pause, the young pupil replied, “He’s not a think, he’s a feel.”   Paul Frost
• It is the heart which experiences God, not the reason. Blaise Pascal
• I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences. William James
• It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• The soul understands what the mind cannot conceive. Neale Donald Walsch
• We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. Albert Einstein
• Whatever books you may read, you cannot realize the Divine merely by intellectual effort. One must put it into practice. That sense of oneness can only be promoted by the practice of love and not by any other means. Sri Sathya Sai Baba
• The heart,  The soul

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Don’t think of God as a judgmental being who exists to reward and punish you …

• God is love. There is no judgement and there is no separateness. And the only ‘hell’ is the one we create for ourselves here on Earth. Neale Donald Walsch
• I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. Albert Einstein
• Others have judged you, and from their judgments you have judged yourself. Now you want God to judge you, and I will not do it. Neale Donald Walsch
• I do not believe in a God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. Albert Einstein
• Guilt: punishing yourself before God doesn’t. Alan Cohen
• For many people, God is a frightening idea. Asking God for help doesn’t seem very comforting if we think of Him as something outside ourselves, or capricious, or judgmental.  But God is love and He dwells within us.  We are created in His image, or mind, which means that we are extensions of His love, or Sons and Daughters of God. . . .  Rather than accepting that we are the loving beings that He created, we have arrogantly thought that we could create ourselves, and then create God.  We have made up a God in our image.  Because we are angry and judgmental, we have projected those characteristics onto Him.  But God remains who He is and always will be:  He is the energy, the thought of unconditional love.  He cannot think with anger or judgment.  He is mercy and compassion and total acceptance.   Marianne Williamson
• A priest friend of mine has cautioned me away from the standard God of our childhoods, who loves you and guides you and then, if you are bad, roasts you: God as a high school principal in a gray suit who never remembered your name but is always leafing unhappily through your files.  Anne Lamott

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… for this is simply a projection of the human mind…

• We have made up a God in our image. Because we are angry and judgmental, we have projected those characteristics onto Him. But God remains who He is and always will be: He is the energy, the thought of unconditional love. He cannot think with anger or judgment. He is mercy and compassion and total acceptance. Marianne Williamson
• I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own – –   a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.  Albert Einstein
• The traditional God is a patriarchal, controlling authority figure, an often angry man who you should live in fear of, as the Old Testament suggests. This God is a projection of the human mind. Eckhart Tolle
• You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. Anne Lamott
• The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Richard Dawkins
• In the face of nature’s overwhelming forces, humans needed a God who would protect them from harm. When they felt that they had broken the law or committed wrongdoing, people turned to a God who would judge them on the one hand and redeem their sins on the other. In this way, purely from self-interest, the project of creating God in our own image proceeded–and continues to proceed. Deepak Chopra
• Projection,  Transcending the ego

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… a sign we have created God in our own image

• Man created God in his image: intolerant, sexist, homophobic and violent. Marie de France
• If triangles had a God, He’d have three sides.
• There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three- sided. Charles De Montesquieu
• Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. Robert Heinlein
• If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment. Voltaire
• It is said that God has created man in his own image. But it may be that humankind has created God in the image of humankind. Thich Nhat Hanh
• If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated. Voltaire
• In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him. Jethro Tull
• You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. Anne Lamott
• There’s an old saying that God made us in His image, and we’ve been trying to return the favor ever since. People often view God in a human image.  This God changes His mind, gets upset, answers some prayers but not others, loves some people but not others. But even with that limited image, if we pray sincerely, we’ll eventually realize that God is changeless.  He’s the same all the time because He’s not in time–time is in Him.   Michael Beckwith
• Everything flows from God, but we are limited by imposing our human perceptions upon him. Man designs God according to his own image and the image man has of himself is flawed. Tobsha Learner
• Man creates both his god and his devil in his own image. His god is himself at his best, and his devil himself at his worst. Elbert Hubbard
• Our notions of God are tinged by our own characters and ignorance. Austin O’Malley
• Gods always behave like the people who make them. Zora Neale Hurston

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Our belief in a judgmental, punitive God has done much harm

• Studies show that people who perceive God as distant and punitive are more likely to be distressed and ill. Sonja Lyubomirsky
• So long as you believe in a Two-Faced God, you will create ecstasy and terror side by side. You have imagined a God who is the epitome of both, and by telling yourself that you are created in the Image and Likeness of God, you have given yourself the moral authority to demonstrate both. You love and hate in the name of God. Neale Donald Walsch
• You do not understand who you are. You do not understand who God is. You do not understand how the world works. You do not understand that love is the basis of all life, nor can you comprehend a love that is unconditional. You imagine that God is a small, petty, jealous deity who says to people bowed in prayer, “Sorry, it’s my way or the highway. Your prayer I hear. Your prayer I don’t, because you didn’t do it right. You did not please me.” In this you turn me into a replica of the worst of humanity.  You claim that you are striving to be God- like in your lives… and if this is the God you are striving to be like, you have succeeded brilliantly. You may thank organized religion for teaching you how.  Neale Donald Walsch
• Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. Thomas Paine
• The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization. Robert Anton Wilson
• It is of course evident that everything in one’s religious life depends upon the sort of God one worships. The character of the worshiper must necessarily be molded by the character of the object worshipped.  If it is a cruel and revengeful God, or a selfish and unjust God, the worshiper will be cruel, and revengeful, and selfish, and unjust, also.  If it is a loving, tender, forgiving, unselfish God, the worshiper will be loving, and tender, and forgiving, and unselfish, as well.  Hannah Whitall Smith
• If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause. Joseph McCabe  (on the history of torture)
• It makes a great deal of difference what sort of God men believe in. Henry Ward Beecher
• I do not believe in God, but I am afraid of Him. Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Choose rather to believe that the nature of God is unconditional love …

• God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us. St Augustine
• If it isn’t about love, it isn’t about God. Susan Jeffers
• When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart”, but rather, “I am in the heart of God”. Kahlil Gibran
• God is love. God accepts you as you are. God expects nothing of you. God does not judge. Nothing makes God unhappy. God would never condemn anyone. You do not need to change anything or “get better” to be seen as perfect and beautiful in God’s eyes. Neale Donald Walsch
• Where else would God’s love be than right here, now? Michael Jeffreys
• God is love, generosity and forgiveness; If we believe in this, we will never allow our weaknesses to paralyze us. Paulo Coelho
• God is love and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. Bible
• God is love. There is no judgement and there is no separateness. And the only ‘hell’ is the one we create for ourselves here on Earth. Neale Donald Walsch
• Love creates new form, changes matter, and holds the cosmos together beyond time and space. It’s in every one of us. It’s what God is. Wayne Dyer
• Because we are angry and judgmental, we have projected those characteristics onto Him. But God remains who He is and always will be:  He is the energy, the thought of unconditional love.  He cannot think with anger or judgment.  He is mercy and compassion and total acceptance.   Marianne Williamson
• There is nothing you need to do to make yourself more acceptable to God. You don’t have to work harder, nor do you need to change the kind of work you do.  You don’t have to give more money to charitable organizations.  The reality is, God doesn’t want you to give anyone anything if you only do it to impress God!  God does not love you or find you acceptable because of anything that you do.  God loves you and accepts you because you are a part of God.  Iyanla Vanzant
• It is good and true to think that every ray of the sun touching the earth has the sun at the other end of it. Just so, every bit of love upon God’s earth has God at the other end of it.  Mark Guy Pearse
• The material world. . . says: If you use this product, you will be popular.  If you live in this neighborhood, you have arrived.  If you win this award, your worth will be validated.  The material world demands that you do something to earn favor.  God doesn’t work this way.  His grace is a gift.  There’s nothing we can do to make God love us more.  There’s nothing we can do—or can have done—to make God love us less.  And when we accept this—not just nonchalantly agree, intellectually, that it’s true, but hide it in our very hearts—it fills our life sails with a cleansing breeze.  Bob Welch
• There are no different categories of love. There isn’t one kind of love between a mother and child, another between lovers, and nother between friends.  The love that is real is the love that lies at the heart of all relationships.  That is the love of God and it doesn’t change with form or circumstance. Marianne Williamson
• Divine love,  Unconditional love

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… for surely if the concept of God has any use in today’s world, it must be to make us healthier, happier and more loving

• If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him. James Baldwin
• What is important is not the specific manner in which God is worshiped but the degree to which the devotee is filled with love. Prem Prakash
• A man has a right to picture God according to his need, whatever it be. Henry Ward Beecher
• If you meditate on your ideal, you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God. Ramakrishna
• Happiness,  Love,  Health

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Creating a loving relationship with God is an empowering and healthy path to take…

• Communing with God is communing with our own hearts, our own best selves, not with something foreign and accidental. Saints and devotees have gone into the wilderness to find God; of course they took God with them, and the silence and detachment enabled them to hear the still, small voice of their own souls, as one hears the ticking of his own watch in the stillness of the night. John Burroughs
• To love someone is to desire and work toward their becoming the best version of themselves. The one person in all the universe who can do this perfectly for you is God. John Ortberg Jr.
• God and I have built an immense fire together. We keep each other happy and warm. Hāfez
• One of the most powerful concepts, one which is a sure cure for lack of confidence, is the thought that God is with you and helping you. This is one of the simplest teachings in religion, namely, that Almighty God will be your companion, will stand by you, help you, and see you through. No other idea is so powerful in developing self- confidence as this simple belief when practiced. To practice it simply affirm “God is with me; God is helping me; God is guiding me.” Spend several minutes each day visualizing his presence. Then practice believing that affirmation.  Norman Vincent Peale

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… a relationship based on friendship rather than lordship…

• Shepherd God, companion me on all the journeys of my life. Dance through the darkness with me. Macrina Wiederkehr
• However, many years life might last, no one could ever wish for a better friend than God. Teresa of Avila
• God offers friendship, not lordship—and in return asks for friendship, not worship. Neale Donald Walsch
• The promise of God is that you are His son. Her offspring. Its likeness. His equal. Ah…here is where you get hung up. You can accept “His son,” “offspring,” “likeness,” but you recoil at being called “His equal.” It is too much to accept. Too much bigness, too much wonderment—too much responsibility. For if you are God’s equal, that means nothing is being done to you—and all things are created by you. There can be no more victims and no more villains—only outcomes of your thought about a thing. Neale Donald Walsch
• Prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God. Teresa of Avila
• Friendship

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… devoting quiet time each day to the relationship…

• We all know that it is God alone who is our peace—although nearly all of us forget it from time to time. We forget it when we begin to neglect our daily visit with God.  Now, when you think that you are too busy for your daily visit, let me ask you frankly, what wonderful thing are you doing that is more important?  There is nothing that you could possibly do with that time that would bring you greater benefit than perfect peace.  As a matter of fact, if you have something very important and urgent to do, your visit will make that very important thing go through much more easily and successfully. Emmet Fox
• Every morning I spend fifteen minutes filling my mind full of God; and so there’s no room left for worry thoughts. Howard Chandler Christy
• If you want to have a non-miraculous day, I suggest that newspaper and caffeine form the crux of your morning regimen. Listen to the morning news while you’re in the shower, read the headlines as you are walking out the door, make sure you’re keeping tabs on everything: the wars, the economy, the gossip, the natural disasters. . . But if you want the day ahead to be full of miracles, then spend some time each morning with God. Marianne Williamson
• God is no White Knight who charges into the world to pluck us like distressed damsels from the jaws of dragons, or diseases. God chooses to become present to and through us.  It is up to us to rescue one another. Nancy Mairs
• We can be tired, weary and emotionally distraught, but after spending time alone with God, we find that He injects into our bodies energy, power and strength. Charles F. Stanley
• The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. Anne Frank
• Devotion

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Creating a relationship with God is all about opening a connection …

• That experience showed me that I – from moment to moment – am the only person in control of my connection to God. It’s not that God is deciding to connect with me, depending on whether I had a good day, or did good or bad deeds.  It’s all up to me.  God, the awareness of God, the love of God, the blessings of God – that lively ecstasy – is always there.  It’s me who separates from God by judging, by indulging in negativity, by criticizing myself, as well as others.  Barbara De Angelis
• God is always connected, you are the one who’s always getting disconnected. Jo Chui
• That has been my personal relationship with God–a connection with the powerful, loving, wise energy in all of us, in all creation. It is the life force itself.  We can all have contact with it each moment in our lives, but it takes commitment and practice.  We must be willing to move through all our deepest fears, doubts, and misunderstandings.  Shakti Gawain
• Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God. William Law
• To think you are separate from God is to remain separate from your own being. M. Street
• Connection,  Communication

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… through prayer…

• We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defence. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Oswald Chambers
• When man is with God in awe and love, then he is praying. Karl Rahner
• We can be tired, weary and emotionally distraught, but after spending time alone with God, we find that He injects into our bodies energy, power and strength. Charles F. Stanley
• Every morning I spend fifteen minutes filling my mind full of God; and so there’s no room left for worry thoughts. Howard Chandler Christy
• Prayer at its highest is a two-way conversation and for me the most important part is listening to God’s replies. Frank C. Laubach
• The value of consistent prayer is not that God will hear us, but that we will hear Him. William McGill
• Prayer is exhaling the spirit of man and inhaling the spirit of God. Edwin Keith
• Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God. Diana Robinson
• Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God. Peace Pilgrim
• Prayer

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… through listening…

• Prayer at its highest is a two-way conversation and for me the most important part is listening to God’s replies. Frank C. Laubach
• God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer. Mother Teresa
• View life as a learning opportunity. Ask God what He wants you to learn from the situations you face. . . . When we set aside specific time to listen, He often encourages us with His presence and promises, and interprets to some degree the circumstances of life.  Take advantage of the natural lull after hard times when you’re pulling together the pieces to sort through the events and ferret out the lessons.  Jean Fleming
• God speaks silently, he speaks in your heart; if your heart is noisy, chattering, you will not hear. Caryll Houselander
• Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God. Diana Robinson
• Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. Malcolm Muggeridge
• Listening,  Intuition

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… through heartfelt wonder and gratitude…

• Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts and no one to thank. Christina Rossetti
• Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It’s a way to live. Jacqueline Winspear
• Each moment a blessing of abundance, each breath a prayer of thanksgiving. Michael Rawls
• A single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
• If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. Meister Eckhart
• God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” William A. Ward
• I thank God for this amazing day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural, which is infinite. E. E. Cummings
• You’ve got to tell God thank you every day. Russell Simmons
• Wonder,  Gratitude

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… through making time for stillness in your life …

• God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer. Mother Teresa
• I lovingly nurture the god in embryo that lies deep within my soul. I awaken myself to the deep stillness that lies deep within my heart. Deepak Chopra
• If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace. In that stillness you will know what His will is. Amy Carmichael
• In the stillness, you will find your true being. In the silence, you will hear the breathing of your soul – and of God. You will find God in the Stillness. Neale Donald Walsch
• Make peace with silence and remind yourself that it is in this space that you’ll come to remember your spirit. When you’re able to transcend an aversion to silence, you’ll also transcend many other miseries. And it is in this silence that the remembrance of God will be activated. Wayne Dyer
• The Bible says, `Be still and know that I am God.’ Stillness is the sole requisite for the realization of the Self as God. Ramana Maharshi
• We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls. Mother Teresa
• Stillness,  Prayer

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…through nurturing inner calmness…

• God is a tranquil Being and abides in a tranquil eternity. So must your spirit become a tranquil and clear little pool, wherein the serene light of God can be mirrored. . . . Nothing in the whole world is worth the loss of your peace; even the faults which you have committed should only humble, but not disquiet you.  God is full of joy, peace, and happiness. Endeavor then to obtain a continually joyful and peaceful spirit.  Avoid all anxious care, vexation, murmuring, and melancholy, which darken your soul.  If you perceive such feelings arising, turn gently away from them.  Terstregen
• Your own self-will and anxiety, your hurry and labor, disturb your peace and prevent Me from working in you. Look at the little flowers, in the serene summer days; they quietly open their petals, and the sun shines into them with its gentle influences.  So I will do for you, if you will yield yourself to me.  Tersteegen
• Calmness,  Equanimity

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… through meditation and reflection…

• If there’s a God, I want to see Him. It’s pointless to believe in something without proof, and Krishna consciousness and meditation are methods where you can actually obtain God perception. In that way you can see, hear and play with God. Perhaps this may sound weird, but God is really there next to you. George Harrison
• Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God. Diana Robinson
• The moment you die consciously, in meditation, God is born – because you disappear as an ego. Then what is left? A stillness, a tremendously potential stillness, a silence that is pregnant – pregnant with the whole. When you disappear, boundaries disappear. You melt and merge with everybody else. Osho
• When you meditate, the silence of the senses illumines the presence of God within. Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
• Meditation,  Reflection,  Contemplation

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… through awareness of God in the present moment

• I sometimes forget that life is fragile. The fact that I have more time to dream my dreams and take my ease is no reason at all to disregard the moment I’m in by preferring to be somewhere else.   I have to remind myself that wherever I am. . . fast lane or slow lane, in traffic or out of traffic, racing or resting . . .  God is there.  He is in me, abiding in me, thus making it possible for me to be all there, myself.  Luci Swindoll
• Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called “God.”Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life. Eckhart Tolle
• God speaks to all individuals through what happens to them moment by moment. P. DeCaussade
• Awareness,  Presence,  Live in the present

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A relationship with God brings great richness, happiness and peace to life…

• Human nature is such that humans can turn to God anywhere at any time, and by believing in His care and protection, and thinking in accordance with this belief, fill their hearts with peace and poise, rebuild their bodies into health and strength, and surround themselves with harmonious and joyous conditions. Emmet Fox
• If you possess happiness you possess everything: to be happy is to be in tune with God.  Paramahansa Yogananda
• Happiness is the realization of God in the heart. Happiness is a quiet tranquil realization of the love of God. White Eagle
• No God, no peace. Know God, know peace. When we put our cares in His hands, He puts His peace in our hearts. Peace is not the absence of affliction, but the presence of God. Peace on the outside comes from knowing God on the inside. Because God has made us for Himself, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.  Augustine of Hippo
• To win true peace, a man needs to feel himself directed, pardoned, and sustained by a supreme power, to feel himself in the right road, at the point where God would have him be – in order with God and the universe. This faith gives strength and calm. Henri Frederic Amiel
• Happiness,  Inner peace

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… and we are much poorer without it

• When we lose God, it is not God who is lost. God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. Dag Hammarskjold

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Trust God…

• In these times, God’s people must trust him for rest of body and soul. David Wilkerson
• Trust in God – she will provide. Emmeline Pankhurst
• Put your trust in the Lord and go ahead. Worry gets you no place. Roy Acuff
• Never trust anyone completely but God. Love people but put your full trust only in God. Lawrence Welk
• All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• My job is to take care of the possible and to trust God with the impossible. Ruth Bell Graham
• I let go and trust that all is happening perfectly. Susan Jeffers
• Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God. Sydney Smith
• I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much. Mother Teresa
• Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and don’t lean on your own understanding. In all things acknowledge him, and he shall direct your way. [Proverbs 3:5, 6]
• When you let go of everything you think you know and just trust, life has a way of working itself out that’s better than you could ever imagine. Jackson Kiddard
• Can anyone think of believing in God without trusting Him? Is it possible to trust in God for the big things like forgiveness and eternal life, and then refuse to trust Him for the little things like clothing and food? Oswald Hoffmann
• For the rest of my life I’m going to trust that God is always at work in all things and give him thanks long before my simplest prayers are answered. Nancy Parker Brummett
• Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. Corrie ten Boom
• Quit questioning God and start trusting Him! Joel Osteen
• God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things done. Harry Emerson Fosdick
• I pray hard, work hard, and leave the rest to God. Florence Griffith Joyner
• Trust,  Trust in God

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… especially when it comes to your worries and problems

• Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He’s going to be up all night anyway.   Mary C. Crowley
• You can tell the size of your God by looking at the size of your worry list. The longer your list, the smaller your God.
• Worry, is in effect, saying to God I don’t trust you. John Loftness
• There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever. Mahatma Gandhi
• I close my eyes, then cut an imagery cord that is attaching me to whatever I am worrying about. I then say to myself “OK God, I am doing my best. I’ll let you take over now. Take over God, I trust it is all happening perfectly.” I take a deep breath and feel myself letting go.” Susan Jeffers
• Do not be afraid of tomorrow; for God is already there.
• My job is to take care of the possible and to trust God with the impossible. Ruth Bell Graham
• Good morning, this is God. I will be handling all of your problems today. I will not need your help, so have a miraculous day. Wayne Dyer
• Every morning I spend fifteen minutes filling my mind full of God; and so there’s no room left for worry thoughts. Howard Chandler Christy
• He who climbs above the cares of this world, and turns his face to his God, has found the sunny side of life. Charles Haddon Spurgeon
• Put your trust in the Lord and go ahead. Worry gets you no place. Roy Acuff
• Cast your cares on God; that anchor holds. Alfred Lord Tennyson
• Let God’s promises shine on your problems. Corrie Ten Boom
• I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about. Henry Ford
• Worry,  Problem solving

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Have patience with God

• The great soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. Josiah Gilbert Holland
• Patience is the analogue of God’s serenity. Austin O’Malley
• Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on; Hold fast; Hold out. Patience is genius. Georges- Louis Leclerc Buffon
• God delays but doesn’t forget. Spanish proverb
• Until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words – “Wait and hope. Alexandre Dumas
• Dear God, I pray for patience. And I want it right now! Oren Arnold
• Please be patient. God has not finished with me yet.
• The best things are never arrived at in haste. God is in no hurry; His plans are never rushed. Michael Phillips
• Patience

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Every moment is an opportunity for awareness and communion with God…

• We mustn’t reserve communing with God just for morning and evening prayers, or for weekly worship service, or for when we feel burdened. The goal is to realize that every moment is a meditation.  Allow yourself to marvel at the wonder of God’s work all around us.  Throughout your day, let the sun, a tree, a piece of fruit remind you that everything you could ever want has been provided and can be found right here on earth.  While changing the baby’s diaper, give thanks for the miracle of creation you hold in your hands… The moment you begin to consider God first in everything you do, the world around you softens and your life becomes easier.  You’ll feel healthier, happier and at peace with yourself.  Susan L. Taylor
• Renew every day your conversation with God: Do this even in preference to eating. Think more often of God than you breathe. Epictetus
• Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God. Peace Pilgrim
• How can I bring the feeling of God’s presence with me into everyday life? Perhaps I can make it a point, whenever I drive on the highway, or ride a bus or subway, or travel by air, to count the time as a gift.  Instead of fretting about what’s ahead of me or how long it’s taking me to get there, perhaps I can allow myself just to relax into the scene: to open the windows of my awareness and let it all in; to say, with my Creator, “It is very good.”  Marilyn Morgan Helleberg
• Awareness,  Devotion,  Prayer

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… for you can see God everywhere…

• I do not believe in God, for that implies an effort of the will – I see God everywhere! Jean Favre
• If you can’t see God in All, you can’t see God at all. Yogi Bhajan
• Real spirituality is not up in the clouds–it is down on earth, here and now. Deep spirituality is seeing God every day in the common things, and showing God your appreciation by doing common tasks. Fred De Witt Van Amburgh
• This kind of split makes me crazy, this territorializing of the holy. Here God may dwell.  Here God may not dwell. It contradicts everything in my experience, which says:  God dwells where I dwell.    Nancy Mairs
• Once, hurrying through a busy airport to get to my gate on time for a connecting flight, I came upon a lady in a wheelchair. Amidst the chaos of the hundreds of people rushing around us, my eyes met hers. The sweetest smile appeared on her face. I smiled back, but I knew she would never fully realize how that small gesture had filled my soul.  I believe that God is in our everyday.  Many moments occur in our lives which reveal his face, his touch, his voice.  Look for him today.  He will be found.  Kathy Troccoli
• If someone were to ask me whether I believed in God, or saw God, or had a particular relationship with God, I would reply that I don’t separate God from my world in my thinking. I feel that God is everywhere.  That’s why I never feel separated from God or feel I must seek God, any more than a fish in the ocean feels it must seek water.  In a sense, God is the “ocean” in which we live.  Robert Fulghum
• The highest condition of the religious sentiment is when. . . the worshiper not only sees God everywhere but sees nothing which is not full of God. Harriet Martineau
• They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of him as somewhat of a recluse. Emily Dickinson
• People see God every day; they just don’t recognize him. Pearl Bailey
• Because you cannot see him, God is everywhere. Yasunari Kawabata
• Lord, make me see thy glory in every place. Michelangelo
• To recognize God where and as he reveals himself is the only true bliss on earth. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• God is in the tiger as well as in the lamb. John Updike
• We have been looking for the burning bush, the parting of the sea, the bellowing voice from heaven. Instead we should be looking at the ordinary day-by day events in our lives for evidence of the miraculous.  M. Scott Peck

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… for God is in the everyday

• It’s really quite simple. When we look at a tree, God is there. When we look at a flower, God is there.  When we look at the sky, God is there.  When we look at the earth, God is there.  We can see God in the faces of people on the street, in the faces of our children, our friends, our partners, our colleagues, and our bosses.  When we see God shining through the faces of all those around us—those like us and those unlike us—every moment becomes a prayer and the world becomes a different place to live in.  Anne Wilson Schaef
• I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: “Go down again – I dwell among the people.” John Henry Newman

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There is no need to go on a pilgrimage to find God …

• I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. I laugh when I hear that people go on pilgrimage to find God. Kabir
• God is in your heart, yet you search for him in the wilderness. Arjun
• Do not be under the delusion that God is somewhere, and you have to search for Him; God is in you. Atharva Veda
• You find God the moment you realize that you don’t need to seek God. Eckhart Tolle

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… for God is in you

• Life is nothing but the expansion of love. We can cultivate divine love by entering into the Source.  The Source is God, who is all Love. We must try to love all of humanity with the inner awareness, consciousness, and conviction that inside each individual is the living presence of God.  Sri Chinmoy
• I believe in the absolute oneness of God and therefore of humanity. What though we have many bodies?  We have but one soul. . . . I know God is neither in heaven nor down below, but in everyone.  Mohandas K. Gandhi
• God doesn’t do the work for you; he does the work through you. It’s not enough to look up; you must also look within. Patti LaBelle
• We need not wings to go in search of Him, but have only to find a place where we can be alone– and look upon Him present within us. Teresa of Avila
• God is in you. Vedas
• The highest revelation is that God is in every man. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Don’t look for God in the sky; look within your own body. Osho
• The purpose of life is to realize God within ourselves. This can be done even whilst attending to our worldly duties… Meher Baba
• I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong. John Lennon
• 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. Johannes Kepler
• God dwells in you, as you, and you don’t have to ‘do’ anything to be God- realized or Self- realized, it is already your true and natural state. Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being. For this to be your own presently lived experience, Self- Inquiry is the one direct and immediate way. Ramana Maharshi
• The kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17:2I
• He is more within us than we are ourselves. Elizabeth Ann Seton
• I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence. Helen Keller
• Even as the scent dwells within the flower, so God resides always within your heart. Traditional Sikh Wisdom
• I am Brahman… I dwell within all beings as the soul, the pure consciousness, the ground of all phenomena… In the days of my ignorance, I used to think of these as being separate from myself. Now I know that I am All. Shankara

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Some would even say that you, yourself, are God in deep disguise for God is your inner most essence …

• In reality, we are divinity in disguise, and the gods and goddesses in embyro that are contained within us seek to be fully materialised. True success is therefore the experience of the miraculous. It is the unfolding of the divinity within us. It is the perception of divinity wherever we go, in whatever we perceive. Deepak Chopra
• Every person is a God in embryo. Its only desire is to be born. Deepak Chopra
• We are God in deep disguise. Eckhart Tolle
• I learned the most important lesson of my life: that the extraordinary is not the birthright of a chosen and privileged few, but of all people, even the humblest. That is my one certainty: we are all the manifestation of the divinity of God. Paulo Coelho
• You need to keep reminding yourself that you are a Divine piece of God. Feeling as if you’re unworthy of God’s abundance is the same as denying your spiritual essence. Wayne Dyer
• The only difference between you and God is that you have forgotten you are divine. Dan Brown
• I lovingly nurture the god in embryo that lies deep within my soul. I awaken myself to the deep stillness that lies deep within my heart. Deepak Chopra
• Accept your own divinity. Everything is a manifestation of God. When you know that, the power that is LIFE is inside you, you accept your own divinity, and yet you are humble, because you see that see the same divinity in everyone else. Don Miguel Ruiz
• You are gods who have forgotten who they are. Osho
• You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t- shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was. Anthon St. Maarten
• Has it ever occurred to you that you are seeking God with His eyes? Adyashanti
• If God is the essence of the whole of creation, then God is the essence of every creature, and every person. This is why the search to discover the nature of one’s own innermost essence is the search for God. Peter Russell
• God dwells within you, as you. Elizabeth Gilbert
• There is no need to invent an ego that is separate from the divine if our basic human nature is trusted. If we trust ourselves, we know how to avoid interfering with nature and how to live in harmony.  When we know God as an unseen, loving, and accepting power at the heart of everything, allowing us to make our own choices, then God is a trusted part of our nature.  Wayne Dyer
• God and I are One. Mister Eckhart
• If I penetrate to the depths of my own existence and my own present reality, the indefinable am that is myself in its deepest roots, then through this deep center I pass into the infinite I am which is the very Name of the Almighty. Thomas Merton
• The soul is in itself a most lovely and perfect image of God. John of the Cross
• Yet when mystics say “I am God,” or words to that effect, they are not talking of an individual person. Their inner explorations have revealed the true nature of the self, and it is this that they identify with God. They are claiming that the essence of self, the sense of “I am” without any personal attributes, is God. Peter Russell
• “I am” is the name of God… God is none other than the Self. Ramana Maharshi
• “I am” is one of the Hebrew names of God, Yahweh. Derived from the Hebrew YHWH, the unspeakable name of God, it is often translated as “I AM THAT I AM.”
• If thou knowest thine own self, thou knowest God. Ibn-Al-Arabi
• This concept of God is not of a separate superior being, existing in some other realm, overlooking human affairs and loving or judging us according to our deeds. God is in each and every one of us, the most intimate and undeniable aspect of ourselves. God is the light of consciousness that shines in every mind. Peter Russell

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… present in you as pure consciousness

• God is not found in places. God is found in consciousness. Joel Goldsmith
• When we turn the mind inwards, God manifests as the inner consciousness. Ramana Maharshi
• The Divine is present in everyone, in all beings, in everything. Like space it is everywhere, all pervading, all powerful, all knowing. The Divine is the principle of Life, the inner light of consciousness, and pure bliss. It is our very own Self. Amma
• Spirit is the essence of consciousness, the energy of the universe that creates all things. Each one of us is a part of that spirit – a divine entity. So the spirit is the higher self, the eternal being that lives within us. Shakti Gawain
• I know that what you call ‘God’ really exists, but not in the form you think; God is primal cosmic energy, the love in your body, your integrity, and your perception of the nature in you and outside of you. Wilhelm Reich
• God is a wider consciousness than we are, a pure intelligence, spiritual life and actuality. He is neither one nor many, neither man nor spirit. Such predicates belong only to finite beings. Joseph Alexander Leighton
• I am the infinite deep / In whom all the worlds appear to rise. / Beyond all form, forever still. /  So am I  Ashtavakra Gita
• God is Almighty. What greater power is there than the power of consciousness to appear as the myriad of forms we experience, everything in the world we see, hear, taste. touch and smell. Peter Russell
• Realize that the “I am” that is your essential self, the pure consciousness that lies behind all experience, is God.  Peter Russell
• This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection. But the people of the world do not awake to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feels and knows as mind, Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling and knowing, they do not perceive the spectral brilliance of the source of all substance. Huang Po
• Whatever is taking place in my mind, whatever I may be thinking, believing, feeling or sensing, the one thing I cannot doubt is consciousness. Consciousness is my only absolute, unquestionable truth. If the faculty of consciousness is God, then God is the truth. Peter Russell
• Like God, consciousness is omnipresent. Whatever our experience, consciousness is always there. It is eternal, everlasting. Peter Russell
• God is omniscient, all-knowing. So too, consciousness is the essence and source of all our knowing. It lies behind all understanding. Peter Russell
• God is the creator. Everything in our world, everything we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch; every thought, feeling, fantasy, intimation, hope, and fear; it is all a form that consciousness has taken on. Everything has been created in consciousness from consciousness. I, the light of consciousness, am the creator. Peter Russell
• Consciousness

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There are many paths to God…

• God enters by a private door into each individual. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• God has no religion. Mahatma Gandhi
• God made so many different kinds of people. Why would he allow only one way to serve him? Martin Buber
• God’s greatest truth is that there is not one way only but many ways Home. There are a thousand paths to God and everyone will get you there. Indeed, all paths lead to God. This is because there is no other place to go. N. D. Walsch
• Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat wearing Muslims. Yann Martel
• I believe that life is a journey towards God, and that no one has the right to insist that you go a certain road. Pat Buckley
• All religions lead to the same God, and all deserve the same respect. Paulo Coelho
• Each person is different and each one will reach God by his or her own path. Paulo Coelho
• God can be realized through all paths. All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole. Sri
• To connect with the great river, we all need a path, but when you get down there there’s only one river. Matthew Fox
• There are many paths to God

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… and no one owns the copyright to what God means

• I refuse to be forced to believe in other people’s interpretations of God. No one person can own the copyright to what God means. Marilyn Manson
• Anyone who says he knows God’s intention is showing a lot of very human ego. Michael Crichton

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You don’t need to experience God by following an organised religion

• I have never read any theologian who claims God is particularly interested in religion, anyway. Annie Dillard
• Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.   Lenny Bruce
• Religion

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All you need to do is to embrace your innate spirituality

• Spirituality on the other hand, is a chosen path of developing intimate relationships with God. It’s chosen, it’s nurtured, and it’s optional. Caroline Myss
• The whole world is the altar of God… If we can only change our vision and the thought, whatever we do becomes spiritual practice. Sri Swami Satchidananda
• You don’t have to call it God or Jesus. That’s religious humbug to a lot of people, but you’ve gotta believe that nature and spiritual things surround us. That is what put us here! I thank the universe for that every day of my life. Jack LaLanne
• Real spirituality is not up in the clouds–it is down on earth, here and now. Deep spirituality is seeing God every day in the common things and showing God your appreciation by doing common tasks. Fred De Witt Van Amburgh
• 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. Aldous Huxley
• The journey by which we discover God is also the journey by which we discover, or uncover, our true self hidden in God. It is a journey that we all have to make. Esther de Waal
• Spirituality

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Make full use of the intelligence, reason and curiosity that God has given you…

• My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence is provided by such a God. We would be unappreciative of that gift . . . if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. Carl Sagan
• I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. Galileo Galilei
• Faith is a continuation of reason. William Adams
• Faith is a function of the heart. It must be enforced by reason. The two are not antagonistic as some think. The more intense one’s faith is, the more it whet’s one’s reason. When faith becomes blind it dies. Mohandas Gandhi
• Curiosity

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… but realise the true power of God is activated by faith

• Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times. Martin Luther
• The ultimate ground of faith and knowledge is confidence in God. Charles Hodge
• Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time. Oswald Chambers
• Have faith in God; God has faith in you. Edwin Louis Cole
• All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired. Martin Luther
• Those who base their lives on the belief that a loving God is acting in their behalf tend to see problems as opportunities for growth. Nido Qubein
• We may not understand why things happen, but we must have faith that there is a reason for them happening. John Wooden
• It’s our faith that activates the power of God. Joel Osteen
• We can approach belief from an intellectual path, but in the end, God must be taken on faith. Proofs are for things of this world, things in time and of time, not beyond time. Dean Koontz
• Faith

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Discovering God is a journey and an adventure

• 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. Aldous Huxley
• The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too. Teresa of Avila
• The journey by which we discover God is also the journey by which we discover, or uncover, our true self hidden in God. It is a journey that we all have to make. Esther de Waal
• To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement. Saint Augustine
• Discovery,  Adventure

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God gives us the freedom to create and express our lives as we will

• A tragic mistake that is often made is to assume that the will of God is bound to be something very dull and uninviting, if not positively unpleasant. Consciously or not some persons look upon God as a hard taskmaster, or a severe parent. . . . The truth is that the will of God for us always means greater freedom, greater self- expression, newer and brighter experience, wider opportunity of service to others—life more abundant. Emmet Fox
• It is not God’s function to create or uncreate the circumstances of your life. God created you in the likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God has given you the free choice to create with life as you will. Neale Donald Walsch
• You cannot create a thing—not a thought, an object, an event—no experience of any kind—which is outside of God’s plan. For God’s plan is for you to create anything—everything—whatever you want. Neale Donald Walsch
• I do not make a judgment about the creations that you conjure, I simply empower you to conjure more—and more and more and more. If you don’t like what you’ve just created, choose again. My job, as God, is to always give you that opportunity. Neale Donald Walsch
• I truly want what you truly want—nothing different and nothing more. Don’t you see that is My greatest gift to you? Neale Donald Walsch
• Freedom,  Creativity,  Creative expression

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Make full use of the talents that God has given you

• Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.   Leo Buscaglia
• God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.   Eleanor Powell
• When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’. Erma Bombeck
• Talent,  Potential

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To love life is to love God

• Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Leo Tolstoy
• He that lives in love lives in God. William Penn
• But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. Vincent van Gogh
• Love

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God helps those who help themselves

• God helps those who help themselves. German proverb
• Ask God’s blessing on your work, but don’t ask him to do it for you. Dame Flora Robson
• If our god’s work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves. Dan Simmons
• I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. Frederick Douglass

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Did God create us or did we create him?

• On the sixth day God created man. On the seventh day, man returned the favor.
• If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Voltaire
• It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him. Arthur C. Clarke
• All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours. Aldous Huxley
• He was a wise man who invented God. Plato
• Is man one of God’s blunders, or is God one of man’s blunders? Friedrich Nietzsche
• If God were not a necessary being of himself, he might almost seem to be made for the use and benefit of men. John Tillotson

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Does God really want to be worshiped all the time?

• I cannot believe in a God that wants to be praised all the time. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Let’s face it; God has a big ego problem. Why do we always have to worship him? Bill Maher
• There is no particular way that God wants you to worship God. Nor, in fact, does God need to be worshipped at all. God’s ego is not so fragile that She must require you to bow down to Her in fearful reverence, or grovel before Him in earnest supplication, in order to find you worthy of receiving blessings. What kind of Supreme Being would need to do this? What kind of God would this be? Meale Donald Walsch
• Worship

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Does God have a sense of humour?

• The pug is living proof that God has a sense of humor. Margo Kaufman
• To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. Ghose Aurobindo
• God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. Voltaire
• Sex is God’s joke on human beings. Bette Davis
• I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that He has a sense of humor. Dean Inge
• Humour

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God and atheism

• He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him. George Orwell
• If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion. Edmond De Goncourt
• The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection, creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell. Armand Salacrou
• Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before. S. Eliot
• And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence. Bertrand Russell
• Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? Douglas Adams
• The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a ‘what’ created the universe; the theist believes a ‘who’ created the universe. Criss Jami
• The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. Eric Hoffer
• Atheism

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God and pain

• God is a concept by which we measure our pain. John Lennon
• We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. S. Lewis
• Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. S. Lewis
• The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God! Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• God’s nature is medicinal to ours. There are no troubles which befall our suffering hearts, for which there is not in God a remedy, if only we rise to receive it. Henry Ward Beecher
• Pain

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God and coincidences

• God–the force, the energy, the design, the experience that some call Divinity– shows itself in your life in the way that is exactly and perfectly suited to the time, place, and situation at hand. You either call that experience “God” or you call it something else- – coincidence, synchronicity, “random event,” whatever. Yet what you call it does not change what it is– it merely indicates your belief system. Neale Donald Walsch
• Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. Albert Einstein
• Synchronicity and coincidences are ways the Divine winks at you to show you that you are loved and cared for. Lorraine Cohen
• Coincidence,  Synchronicity

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God and scientific laws

• The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. William James
• I’m not religious in the normal sense. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws. Stephen Hawking
• Science

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God as a circle

• God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. Empedocles
• God is an intelligible sphere—a sphere known to mind, not to the senses—whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.  Joseph Campbell

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• After God created the world, He made man and woman. Then, to keep the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor.  Bill Kelly
• Do you know why God withheld the sense of humor from women? That we may love you instead of laugh at you.   Patrick Campbell
• God always has another custard pie up His sleeve. Lynn Redgrave
• God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. Voltaire
• God writes a lot of comedy – the trouble is he’s stuck with so many bad actors who don’t know how to play funny. Garrison Keillor
• If there’s one thing I know, it’s God does love a good joke. Hugh Elliott
• Men reach their sexual peak at eighteen. Women reach theirs at thirty-five.  Do you get the feeling that God is playing a practical joke?  Rita Rudner
• Sex is God’s joke on human beings. Bette Davis
• The pug is living proof that God has a sense of humor. Margo Kaufman
• God (funny quotes)

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