The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom Quotes

“gnosis”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“ineluctably”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“What is the role of “holiness” in the building of a new world?”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“there is a unity behind each of these messages. There is something about that term itself: “sacred” points us to the divine, “heritage” points us to the past, but “our” says this sacred heritage is universally accessible. We make our choices of which beings to open to—they make our choices as well, but that is a whole other conversation!”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“in itself a huge spiritual task. We are called to it almost prophetically, to find a way to create avenues of understanding and redress and balance and harmony, so that we can start living in a truly peaceful world in which these different experiences will all be valuable resources for insight, growth and creative development. We can mediate peaceful co-existence with each other through honoring each other and through discarding all that will create conflict and violence.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“That creates a different kind of responsibility not focused on cultivation of mystical experience per se, but on moral groundedness. The Great Mystery wants us to be in conversation and reconcile our differences, and that is”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“I believe elders have a responsibility to help people, and not just elders, but insightful, youthful persons as well, whoever has the capacity to help ground the experience and make it vital in terms of this overall development process.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“All times and places, all religions and spiritual paths, all saints, prophets, philosophers, and poets are accessible, making one’s sacred heritage an individual, conscious question: a search, for those called to do so. For some, of course, it is not a question at all.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Through our own gifts we’re actualizing the purpose of our soul, which then supports the unfolding of the universe.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“that when we go back to our source through nature, including through our mother’s genealogy, and remember who we are, what do we find”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Our own divinity, which is the Star People in my parlance, the first woman that came to the Earth in the blue ball of flames. Who is she but our own sacredness? There’s a lot of talk about recovering our divinity, but oh, there’s nothing like the experience of even a flash of it. And I feel that what you’re each saying is if we keep going, that’s where we’ll end up.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“It’s easy to talk about wisdom, but wisdom is hard to do.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“want to add that in; I want the Mother acknowledged as part of what we’re talking about.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Everybody wondered why they took the bluestones a hundred and sixty miles from South Wales to Salisbury Plain where Stonehenge stands, and now we think there’s a sonic connection.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Frankl’s emphasis is on the essential freedom within suffering: that your reaction is who you are, your response, and that can’t be taken from you.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Rabbi Olivier: I really like what Mary Catherine is saying. What comes up for me when I listen to you explaining that wisdom is available and manifest at every stage of life and every age, is that it reminds me of the principles of Kabbalah, where wisdom, which is one of the highest levels of consciousness as expressed through the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, finds itself beyond knowing and beyond understanding. So the quality of wisdom is not something that requires years and years of learning and understanding. It is prior to that, in fact, and it is at a different level of consciousness. There is innate wisdom, inherent wisdom.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Our challenge, both individually and collectively, is to seek an integration that honors the past and animates the present with deep respect for all traditions, while always remaining open to the discovery of other points”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“All the great teachers—saints, prophets, poets, great souls, from all times and places—are with us now, just as the angels, the dead, and the ineffable Source of all are with us now and only await our response to their call.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Humanity’s sacred heritage is a living soul-spiritual reality beyond space and time, one that paradoxically is to be experienced here and now.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“But others, for various reasons, are called to choose their spiritual path, to discover and create their own sacred heritage.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“We may sense in the swirl of life that there is some deeper field of meaning and purpose hidden beneath its surface.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“There is a way of living through what you are experiencing now that will bring you closer to God.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Erikson speaks of the development of different ego strengths at different stages of the life cycle, and he uses the word wisdom to refer to the strength of old age.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“So ever since that time in 1963, I’ve been working with life histories and looking at the choices that people make in their lives as essentially artistic or aesthetic choices, fitting various elements together and trying to find a graceful and satisfying harmony as they face different challenges in the process of aging and moving through the stages of life.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Each one of us seems to be endowed to grow, to suffer, to learn, to find fulfillment and seek happiness. As we meet each unfolding experience of life, we learn our way through it. The conundrum for us is that in the midst of great personal suffering, a compression occurs that impedes our sense of connection to the larger world. As we hear the stories of others and sense the realms of resonance we share, we are given the opportunity to recognize ourselves in each other, and to see others within ourselves. When we see the commonality of joys and struggles in all our stories, and look at life from that perspective, perhaps more compassion will be born both for ourselves and others. Hopefully, we will then be better able to affirm the rightness of the strategies we have used and the choices we have made to move through life, as well as the insight we have gained from our struggles. Our understanding of how every single person is on a journey, with many of the same joys and challenges as our own, brings forth a natural sense of forgiveness, and allows us to better appreciate each of us as a contribution to the world, and to each other.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“Each one of us seems to be endowed to grow, to suffer, to learn, to find fulfillment and seek happiness. As we meet each unfolding experience of life, we learn our way through it. The conundrum for us is that in the midst of great personal suffering, a compression occurs that impedes our sense of connection to the larger world. As we hear the stories of others and sense the realms of resonance we share, we are given the opportunity to recognize ourselves in each other, and to see others within ourselves. When we see the commonality of joys and struggles in all our stories, and look at life from that perspective, perhaps more compassion”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“It is a beautiful expression of our need to develop that we seek to make meaning of our lives and to discover”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“So what is the meaning of the Journey of Life? What if there was no meaning? What if, like Mary Catherine said at the beginning, what if the journey is all that we need, and to just be as present as we can to every moment of that journey, sharing as best we can of the truth of our being? You know, like we say in Hebrew, dayenu—that would be enough for me.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“I think that life is what life is, and perhaps being with what is is sufficient in the moment. That is one of the deepest spiritual teachings that I got from a mystic rabbi who sees the Book of Job as about awakening to being with the absoluteness of what is, and letting go of control, letting go of wanting things to be any different than they are. Which is probably the hardest thing one can do on one’s spiritual journey, that kind of realization.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom

“There’s something about being absolutely present in the moment—and maybe that’s another term for love, in some ways—that I was really struck by.”
― Pir Zia Inayat Khan, The Seven Pillars Journey Toward Wisdom