Contemplative prayer

"When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words without heart." ~ John Bunyan

"Prayer, springing from a deep place in the heart, may bring healing and unity as nothing else can." ~ Quaker Advices and Queries

"To navigate this ancient way of prayer is to “put out into the deep,” as Luke says, let down our nets for our catch. Paradoxically, we discover that it is we ourselves who are caught and held in this net…" ~ Martin Laird

"What awakens in this awareness is the sanctity of the other, and to see how all things are reflections of this mystery that we call God. We’re simply one with all that is, the way that God is one with all that is. And the illusion that we can possibly or have ever been separate from God falls away." ~ Martin Laird

"When you are praying, do not shape within yourself any image of the Deity, and do not let your intellect be stamped with the impress of any form; but approach the Immaterial in an immaterial manner, and then you will understand." ~ Evagrius Ponticus

"The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao" - Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

“Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.” ~ Thomas Merton

“If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.” ~ Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

“But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.” ~ Thomas Merton

“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