A Religion of One's Own Quotes

“I'm painfully aware that the experts in fields like religion and spirituality sometimes feel that bringing mysticism down so far into ordinary life is an insult to the great mystics and makes it all too light and breezy. I feel just the opposite. I believe that one day we'll understand that we've lost out on religion because we made it too lofty and distant. I see it as a simple quality of everyday life, and in that simplicity lie its beauty and importance.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“Your first task is to find the place where your soul is at home.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“The conscious mind is small and weak compared to the emotional and spiritual power that we call daimonic. It may be the urge to create, take risks, and love. Life may be simple when you avoid the daimon of love, but it is also less passionate and meaningful.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“You might also understand the difference between force and strength, the former pressing too hard to achieve questionable ends, the latter a deep-seated power of soul. You might notice the difference between ego power and soul power, the former anxious and self-centered. Finally, you might appreciate the paradoxes involved, where being more vulnerable in a comfortable way gives you strength, and when you have some deep strength, you can finally feel vulnerable.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“She was lost in the breeziness of her secular existence and couldn't land anywhere. Nothing was sacred. Nothing could stop her long enough to reflect sufficiently on her life.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“If you are often angry, trace the roots in story and then apply your anger as a force and a sharp edge to whatever you do. Don't indulge in venting. Always convert and transform your anger into something worthwhile. Let people see and feel your anger, but don't explode every time you feel it.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“I believe that one day we’ll understand that we’ve lost out on religion because we made it too lofty and distant. I see it as a simple quality of everyday life, and in that simplicity lie its beauty and importance.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“But real virtue can't be bought with repression; real virtue is the rare innocence that comes from taking life on and owning your passions.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“But to get the full benefit of your exploration, your story has to go deep and take risks. You may censor your story as you tell it, and that holding back may obscure the lessons the story has to give...

Tell your stories, and when you sense fear and reluctance, try to relax. The more your stories pour out unimpeded, the better chance you have of glimpsing your soul. You need to see it before you can work with it.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“It's far better to be under construction than to be shabby and in need of repair. The person who hasn't sorted out his life experiences acts them out in daily life, repeating negative patterns. The alchemical or therapeutic work not only liberates you from your past, it makes you a thoughtful and less impulsive person, less prone to acting on raw emotion. You also become a better leader, parent, teacher, friend. You become a person of substance, liberated from the raw, interfering patterns and emotions that are useful only when refined.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“Jung called this process I'm describing individualism, becoming an individual, a real person not continually swept away by his passions of influenced by his culture. Each person has a unique opus, a soul work, because each has a particular makeup and history. For Jung the opus was a process of getting to know yourself deeply, not only a psychological process of painful advance in self-knowledge; but a religious initiation involving spiritual ideals and the search for meaning.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“Today we are all doing penance every day. We’re working hard, trying to make money to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, trying to maintain a good relationship or marriage, trying to keep our children safe and happy and educated, trying to keep the world from blowing itself up. We don’t need any more penance. We need some joy, an ideal, encouragement, a philosophy worthy of us, a real community, neighbors to keep us from having to go it alone. We need our own religion: our sources of inspiration, hope, and healing.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“At this deep level of personal myth and innate constitution, spirituality and psychology overlap and conjoin. For that reason, paying close attention to dreams aids any spiritual activity, keeping it grounded and in contact with the elements that have shaped you. Dream work becomes as important as meditation, quiet reading, and prayer, and fits tightly into a developed spiritual way of life.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“To be religious even in a personal way, you have to wake up and find your own portals to wonder and transcendence.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“The problem in the modern spiritual landscape is not only a plethora of genuine, useful material but also a marketplace teeming with questionable ideas, practices, and leaders.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“As the religious authorities often say, the institution is human, while the substance of the religion is transcendent.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“Your challenge, then, is to create a religion of your own by being secular in a religious way, or religious in a secular way. You can learn how to see the secular from a religious angle, and vice versa.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“When I speak of a religion of one’s own, I’m not talking about a selfish, ego-centered, loosely patched together spiritual concoction. I’m recommending a courageous, deep-seated, fate-driven, informed, and intelligent life that has sublime and transcendent dimension. It can be shared in a community. It can be accomplished inside or outside a traditional religious organization. It is suitable for pious members of a religious group and for agnostics and atheists. To be religious even in a personal way, you have to wake up and find your own portals to wonder and transcendence.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“The world is ruled by letting things take their course.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“He (Thoreau) knows what every inspired person understands: You have to prepare yourself for your muse, and sometimes you have to clear a space in a busy and cluttered life.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“Waking up is the first act. One day something in you stirs and you wake up from your ignorance and sheer unconsciousness. You wake up from neglect of things that matter. You can wake up to a new vision of your world and your place in it...Some moments of waking up minuscule. You hardly know they exist when they're happening, and only later do you realize that your world has changed. You wake up many times during your lifetime, if you're lucky, and never stop waking as you make new significant discoveries.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“Confuse the sacred and secular in your environment. Create a liminal, neither here nor there, milieu. It is always in the liminal places that significant things happen, so work at creating liminality.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“Consider your spiritual emotions and keep your soul and spirit rightly connected as you work through your problems. You can care for your soul every day by doing things that make your world more beautiful and intimate and by tending the wounds and bad habits that have accrued to your life. Follow your dreams, find the occasion to speak from your heart, and make a life that is more soulful that practical.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“You may need different wording for being religious in a new way: living a life of reverence, contemplation, solid ethics, developing a sense of wonder and awe; or responding creatively to the mysteries. If you're going to use the "religion" at all, as I do, you have to redefine it for yourself...

"Moral" doesn't mean "moralistic." Moralism is a defense against morality, its opposite. Morality means acting in ways that are sensitive to the needs of the other and of the world that is in our care. Moralism is the assumption that you know what is the right behavior for everyone and that it can be itemized in a list of right and wrong that everyone should follow. In tone, moralism is usually negative and unyielding and has little room for thoughtfulness and kindness.

The moral person appreciates the complexity of human life and emotion, and factors this into any judgment about what is the best thing to do --- not moral relativism, but moral subtlety. People usually become more morally sensitive as they age, while moralistic standards are considered absolute for all times.

I have never met a person who hasn't had some moralism in him. It's convenient and always serves the self or ego. It isn't generous or understanding. In fact, it's usually sadistic and is connected to a deep desire to punish. It's more of that raw material of the psyche in need of refinement. Yet, eventually, with work, it could become morality.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“You can care for your soul every day by doing things that make your world more beautiful and intimate and by tending the wounds and bad habits that have accrued to your life. Follow your dreams, find the occasion to speak from your heart, and make a life that is more soulful than practical.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“The spiritual emotions include a longing for meaning, the need to be creative and make life worth living, wondering about death and afterlife, having the pleasure of feeling in tune with your destiny, and worrying about ethical behavior. These are just feelings, but they can turn into anxieties and depressions and cause serious problems. Many people I have seen in therapy over the years say that some of their adult problems go back to religious teachings and personalities that affected them when they were children.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“We are on the hero's journey when we submit to the deep processes of life and allow them to affect us and bore their necessities into us. We are the hero when we take on the challenges and go through our initiations and transformations, enduring loss and gain, feeling happy and sad, making progress and falling back. The hero is engaged in life The hero is not the one who displays force and muscle without deep insight or the courage to be. The hero may not look heroic from the outside but may go through powerful developments in a quiet way. The difference is that the real hero engages life and reflects on it. She becomes more and more what he or she is destined to be.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“I felt that Caroline was being asked to make stark changes in her way of perceiving the world and finding her way in it. I didn't know if she would have the tenacity to remain loyal to her process, but I had faith in her. I had seen others back away or ultimately refuse the challenge. My guess is that half of my clients decline to take the risk. They all have their reasons, but it always comes down to preferring the comfort of the messy status quo over the promise of a challenging new way of life.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“Many mystics are like Nicholas (of Cusa) in saying that you have divinity inside you; it is not only outside. If you go deep enough into yourself, you will come up against mysterious creative forces. You can't know yourself completely, and you may realize, again as mystics have pointed out, that some of your problems stem from your resistance against that deep, unknown source of vitality. If you could get out of the way, who knows what you could become? The divine creator not only makes a world but also creates a self.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World

“In a letter of 1952, written when she was sixty-four, O'Keefe said: "I realize how un-Catholic I my soul is...I am startled to realize my lack for the need of the comfort of the Church --- When I stand alone with the earth and sky a feeling of something in me going off in every direction into the unknown of infinity means more to me than any thing any organized religion gives me.”
― Thomas Moore, A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World