Bernadette Roberts famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

This journey then, is nothing more, yet nothing less than a period of acclimating to a new way of seeing, a time of transition and revelation as it gradually comes upon "that" which remains when there is no self. this is not a journey for those who expect love and bliss, rather, it is for the hardy who have been tried by fire and have come to rest in a tough, immovable trust in "that" which lies beyond the known, beyond the self, beyond union and even beyond love and trust itself
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Love #Lying #Journey
It is far more than the discovery of life without a self. The immediate, inevitable result is an emergence into a new dimension of knowing and being that entails a difficult and prolonged readjustment. the reflexive mechanism of the mind -or whatever it is that allows us to be self-conscious - is cut off or permanently suspended so the mind is ever after held in a fixed now moment out of which it cannot move in its uninterrupted gaze upon the Unknown
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Moving #Cutting #Discovery
I went on to discover that in its deepest sense, the will is not primarily the faculty of desire for anything known, but rather, the desire for something unknown, animate desire for something that lies beyond ourselves, a longing for something we know is missing in us...
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Lying #Missing #Desire
This search for perfection - which is a search for divinity - is nothing more than the failure to accept our existence the way it is.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Perfection #Divinity #Way
In some ways, all our experiences of God are beyond belief, because all conceptual beliefs pale when compared to the experiential reality.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#God #Reality #Way
To be forgiven is not enough; we must put an end to the very need to be forgiven.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Forgiveness #Needs #Enough
When there is no longer a cyclone, there is no longer an eye. So the storms, crises and sufferings of life are a way of finding the eye.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Eye #Suffering #Storm
But coming home that day, walking downhill with a panorama of valley and hills before me, I turned my gaze inward, and what I saw, stopped me in my tracks. Instead of the usual unlocalized centre of myself, there was nothing there, it was empty, and at the moment of seeing this there was a flood of quiet joy and I knew, finally I knew what was missing-it was my "self".
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Home #Self #Track
The onset of this second movement is characterized by the falling away of self and coming upon "that" which remains when it is gone. But this going-out is an upheaval, a complete turnabout of such proportions it cannot possibly be missed, under-emphasized, or sufficiently stressed as a major landmark in the contemplative life.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Fall #Self #Stressed
...a point is reached where the self is so completely aligned with the still-point that it can no longer be moved, even in its first movements, from this center. It can no longer be tested by any force or trial, nor moved by the winds of change, and at this point the self has obviously outworn its function; it is no longer needed or useful, and life can go on without it.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Wind #Self #Movement
......at this point the self has obviously outworn its function; it is no longer needed or useful, and life can go on without it. we are ready to move on, to go beyond the self, beyond even its most intimate union with God, and this is where we enter yet another new life- a life best categorized, perhaps, as a life without a self.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Moving #Self #Unions
It is one step, and a giant one, to see clearly and participate in the love that flows between the persons of the Trinity, but even here, God is seen as the object of his own love. It is yet another step to realize that God is beyond all subject and object and is Himself love without subject or object. This is the step beyond our highest experiences of love and union, a step in which self is not around to divide, separate, objectify or claim anything for itself. Self does not know God; it cannot love him, and from the beginning has never done so.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Love #Self #Giants
Only God is love, and for this love to be fully realized self must step aside. And not only do we not need a self to love God, but for the same reason we do not need a mind to know him, for that in us which knows God, is God.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Love #Self #Mind
Spiritual life is like a moving sidewalk. Whether you go with it or spend your whole life running against it, you're still going to be taken along.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Running #Spiritual #Moving
The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication.
-- Bernadette Roberts

#Communication #Silence #Existence

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