The Kingdom Within Quotes

“But at the same time there is always a transcendent aspect to the kingdom, expressed in the above sayings in which Jesus hints at repayment to come in eternal life. Or, in psychological terms, one who seeks to establish wholeness in his or her life comes to belong to Life. Having served the purposes of life in this earthly lifetime, he or she continues to serve a spiritual life in a world to come. Exactly what life after death consists of we cannot know in this earthly existence. But if life has a meaning, so does death; and if we become whole, something indestructible is forged in us that, in ways that pass our understanding, joins us to the fabric of eternal life. This is the ultimate promise of the kingdom of God. The”
― John A. Sanford, The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meanings of Jesus' Sayings

“The kingdom involves the realization of our personalities according to the inner plan established within us by God; hence, the unfolding of a Self that predates and transcends the ego.”
― John A. Sanford, The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meaning of Jesus' Sayings – A Psychotherapist's Guide to Consciousness and Wholeness

“The opposite sides of personality are so different that only a great force can draw them together in union. This power is love. Love is a stronger power than the forces of disunion.

In love even the opposites can become one, and their differences unite in one indivisible whole.”
― John A. Sanford, The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meaning of Jesus' Sayings – A Psychotherapist's Guide to Consciousness and Wholeness

“The “complete human being”—that is, the Son of Man—is at the heart of this new person born into the kingdom of God.

Because personality is the ultimately valuable thing in creation, since it is life’s most unique expression, and because the kingdom is the goal of personality, the kingdom is futuristic and goal-centered.”
― John A. Sanford, The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meaning of Jesus' Sayings – A Psychotherapist's Guide to Consciousness and Wholeness

“how much Jesus had broken away from the historically conditioned attitudes of his time, for the prevailing idea at that time was that good health and good fortune were a sign of God’s favor to the deserving. This is how they got around the problem of evil, for it meant that the poor and suffering were only having divinely ordained punishment for their sin. No doubt this justified in the minds of the people of his day a great deal of social abuse, even as today some people of wealth and means look upon their material gains as their “just due.” Jesus”
― John A. Sanford, The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meanings of Jesus' Sayings

“Jesus’ personality and teachings are unique and not historically conditioned because they do not stem from a human source but are rooted in his consciousness of the inner world, through which comes his awareness of the holy God whom the prophets before him knew in part. From this came his individual consciousness, which eventually destroyed the collective, formalized religious structure of his time. In this sense Jesus renews the spirit of Israel, the wrestler with God (Gen. 32:24–28) in that he bears in his consciousness the numinous will of the heavenly Father. Such”
― John A. Sanford, The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meanings of Jesus' Sayings

“Very often in the history of Christianity theologians and teachers have dwelt upon the unworthiness of human beings, our proneness to sin, our worthlessness in contrast to God’s supreme goodness; they have even laid the responsibility for evil at our doorstep. There is none of this in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus is often disappointed in people, of course, but only because human beings are potentially of the highest value, the inheritors of God’s very own kingdom. We harbor the kingdom within our own soul. God searches for the one who will recognize the kingdom within him or herself and he ascribes to such a one supreme value.”
― John A. Sanford, The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meanings of Jesus' Sayings