Wayne Muller Quotes

Quotes about:

Giving Healing Heart Kindness Pain Pilgrimage Sabbath

When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.

Wayne Muller

Pain, Loss, Challenges

Wayne Muller (2013). “How Then, Shall We Live?: Four Simple Questions That Reveal the Beauty and Meaning of Our Lives”, p.41, Bantam

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The heart of most spiritual practices is simply this: Remember who you are. Remember what you love. Remember what is sacred. Remember what is true. Remember that you will die and that this day is a gift. Remember how you wish to live.

Wayne Muller

Spiritual, Heart, Practice

Wayne Muller (2013). “How Then, Shall We Live?: Four Simple Questions That Reveal the Beauty and Meaning of Our Lives”, p.233, Bantam

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If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath— our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.

Wayne Muller

Cancer, Heart, Pneumonia

Wayne Muller (2013). “Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives”, p.20, Bantam

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Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished with all our work, we will never stop, because our work is never completely done. With every accomplishment there arises a new responsibility... Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished.

Wayne Muller

Responsibility, Accomplishment, Needs

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As Gandhi wisely points out, even as we serve others we are working on ourselves; every act, every word, every gesture of genuine compassion naturally nourishes our own hearts as well. It is not a question of who is healed first. When we attend to ourselves with compassion and mercy, more healing is made available for others. And when we serve others with an open and generous heart, great healing comes to us.

Wayne Muller

Healing, Heart, Compassion

Wayne Muller (1993). “Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantage of a Painful Childhood”, p.182, Simon and Schuster

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Some of us have a hard time believing that we are actually able to face our own pain. We have convinced ourselves that our pain is too deep, too frightening, something to avoid at all costs. Yet if we finally allow ourselves to feel the depth of that sadness and gently let it break our hearts, we may come to feel a great freedom, a genuine sense of release and peace, because we have finally stopped running away from ourselves and from the pain that lives within us.

Wayne Muller

Running, Pain, Believe

Wayne Muller (1993). “Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantage of a Painful Childhood”, p.10, Simon and Schuster

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Because we do not rest we lose our way...Poisoned by the hypnotic belief that good things come only through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we never truly rest. And for want of rest, our lives are in danger.

Wayne Muller

Determination, Effort, Way

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In that inevitable, excruciatingly human moment, we are offered a powerful choice. This choice is perhaps one of the most vitally important choices we will ever make, and it determines the course of our lives from that moment forward. The choice is this: Will we interpret this loss as so unjust, unfair, and devastating that we feel punished, angry, forever and fatally wounded-- or, as our heart, torn apart, bleeds its anguish of sheer, wordless grief, will we somehow feel this loss as an opportunity to become more tender, more open, more passionately alive, more grateful for what remains?

Wayne Muller

Death, Powerful, Grief

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For thousands of years we have gathered in circle--around fires, around bodies, around altars--because we can't do this alone.

Wayne Muller

Fire, Years, Circles

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What is at the center of your life? Carefully examine where you spend your attention, your time. Look at your appointment book, your daily schedule. This is what receives your care and attention--an by definition, your love.

Wayne Muller

Book, Looks, Attention

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When we live without listening to the timing of things, when we live and work in twenty-four-hour shifts without rest – we are on war time, mobilized for battle. Yes, we are strong and capable people, we can work without stopping, faster and faster, electric lights making artificial day so the whole machine can labor without ceasing. But remember: No living thing lives like this. There are greater rhythms, seasons and hormonal cycles and sunsets and moonrises and great movements of seas and stars. We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms.

Wayne Muller

Strong, Stars, War

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Every single choice we make, no matter how small, is the ground where who we are meets what is in the world. And the fruits of that essential relationship- the intimate, fertile conversation between our own heart's wisdom and the way the world has emerged before us- becomes a lifelong practice of deep and sacred listening for the next right thing we are required to do. We make the only choice that feels authentic and honest, necessary and true in that moment.

Wayne Muller

Heart, Practice, Choices

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To pray is no small thing. It is nothing less than a sacred pilgrimage into the heart of the whole world.

Wayne Muller

Prayer, Heart, World

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The greatest barrier to own own healing is not the pain, sorrow or violence inflicted upon us as children. Our greatest hindrance is our ongoing capacity to judge, to criticize, and to bring tremendous harm to ourselves. If we can harden our heart against ourselves and meet our most tender feelings with anger and condemnation, we simultaneously armor our heart against the possibility of gentleness, love and healing.

Wayne Muller

Children, Pain, Healing

Wayne Muller (1993). “Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantage of a Painful Childhood”, p.62, Simon and Schuster

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We become what we love. Whatever you are giving your time and attention to, day after day, is the kind of person you will eventually become.

Wayne Muller

Giving, Attention, Kind

Wayne Muller (2013). “How Then, Shall We Live?: Four Simple Questions That Reveal the Beauty and Meaning of Our Lives”, p.107, Bantam

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We are called to be strong companions and clear mirrors to one another, to seek those who reflect with compassion and a keen eye how we are doing, whether we seem centered or off course ... we need the nourishing company of others to create the circle needed for growth, freedom and healing.

Wayne Muller

Strong, Healing, Eye

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Even in the middle of a hurricane, the bottom of the sea is calm. As the storm rages and the winds howl, the deep waters sway in gentle rhythm, a light movement of fish and plant life. Below there is no storm.

Wayne Muller

Plant Life, Light, Deep Water

Wayne Muller (2013). “How Then, Shall We Live?: Four Simple Questions That Reveal the Beauty and Meaning of Our Lives”, p.75, Bantam

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Our lives are made of these moments. Simple words and actions, taken together, weave a single day, and our days become our life. Every gesture is a seed, and the seed determines the harvest.

Wayne Muller

Taken, Simple, Together

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Many of us incorrectly assume that a spiritual life begins when we change what we normally do in our daily life. We feel we must change our job, our living situation, our relationship, our address, our diet, or our clothes before we can truly begin a spiritual practice. And yet it is not the act but the awareness, the vitality, and the kindness we bring to our work that allows it to become sacred.

Wayne Muller

Spiritual, Jobs, Kindness

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Emptiness is the pregnant void out of which all creation springs. But many of us fear emptiness. We prefer to remain...surrounded by things...we imagine are subject to our control.

Wayne Muller

Spring, Void, Emptiness

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As we explore the nature of our gift, our goal is to move toward this kind of giving: cheerful giving that flows gently and easily, kingly giving that flows surely from who we are. As we encounter the questions—Who are we ? What do we love ?—the gift we bring will be easy, because our gift naturally emerges from who we are. The offering we bring is ourselves, just as we are. Our gift is our true nature. There can be no greater gift than this.

Wayne Muller

Moving, Offering, Giving

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What if the healing of the world utterly depends on the ten-thousand invisible kindnesses we offer simply and quietly throughout the pilgrimage of each human life?

Wayne Muller

Kindness, Healing, What If

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All life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life.

Wayne Muller

Blow, Wind, Reeds

Wayne Muller (2013). “Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives”, p.46, Bantam

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Be not afraid. A kind life, a life of spirit, is fundamentally a life of courage-the courage simply to bring what you have, to bring who you are.

Wayne Muller

Spirit, Kind, Not Afraid

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Even when our intentions are noble and our efforts sincere, even when we dedicate our lives to the service of others, the corrosive pressure of frantic over-activity can nonetheless cause suffering in ourselves and others. A "successful" life can become a violent enterprise.

Wayne Muller

Successful, Effort, Suffering

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Born: 1953
Occupation: Author
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