8 Quotes by Ernest Kurtz

The message of all spirituality is that, in some mysterious way, we are all one – that therefore the joy and the sorrow of any one of us is the joy and the sorrow of all of us.

Humility and obedience are two painfully misunderstood virtues that are really the arts of listening. Humility involves the refusal to coerce, the rejection of all attempts to control others.

The search for spirituality is, first of all, a search for reality, for honesty, for true speaking and true thinking. At least from the time of the Delphic oracle’s first admonition, Know thyself, the arch-foe of spirituality has been recognized to be “denial” – the self-deception that rejects self by attempting to repudiate the essential paradox that is our human be-ing.

I’m Not All-Right, and You’re Not All-Right, But That’s Okay – THAT’S All-Right.

It’s nice to have moments when I’m not thinking about me.

We modern people are problem-solvers, but the demand for answers crowds out patience – and perhaps, especially, patience with mystery, with that which we cannot control.

As we listen, truly hearing, our understanding of the world changes from a self-centered focus to an other-oriented openness – we come to understand how we are connected.

William James, in his “Talks to Teachers,” derided that “ceaseless frenzy” in which we always feel that we “should be doing something else.” The ceaseless frenzy, the race through life, are symptomatic of the numbing of spirituality.