Spirituality, Contemplation, and Transformation Quotes

“Now we are entertaining the suggestion that the real work of prayer is just to get rid of the very assumption that was the foundation of all these other modes of prayer. It is a matter of shifting the location of the sense of identity. We have to accept the idea that the word I does not have a fixed and clear and obvious referent. This is where the transformation that we undergo becomes more and more radical with each breakthrough or illumination.”
― Thomas Keating, Spirituality, Contemplation, and Transformation

“the concept of “creative freedom,” in which the origin and stimulation of the action is entirely in the agent, as against “choice-freedom,” in which the stimulus of the act is in the agent's environment, which presents the alternatives and evokes the motive for choosing between them. One who exercises creative freedom may not experience choosing and yet not be compelled, and this realization should mean a more profound appreciation of what freedom, action, and the person as agent really are. This has something to do with the identity that I think we discover in prayer, and I will come back to this point.”
― Thomas Keating, Spirituality, Contemplation, and Transformation