Top 15 Andrew Harvey Quotes

If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold evermore wonders.

Nothing that happens on the surface of the sea can alter the calm of its depths

A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history. On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness and rooted in divine truth, wisdom, and compassion will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions. When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic and social institutions, a holy force - the power of wisdom and love in action - is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism.

To be in a body is to hear the heartbeat of death at every moment.

If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly.

We are now, I believe, on the threshold of a third stage which I call the stage of the sacred marriage. This is the only position we could possibly take and still survive. This is a stage beyond both matriarchy and patriarchy. It involves the restoration to human respect of all of the rejected powers of the feminine. But it is absolutely essential that this restoration should be accomplished in the deep spirit of the sacred feminine. Not only should we invoke the sacred feminine, restore the sacred feminine, but this union between the matriarchal and the patriarchal, the sacred marriage, must be accomplished in the spirit of the sacred feminine for it to be real, effective, rich, and fecund. It must occur in her spirit of unconditional love, in her spirit of tolerance, forgiveness, all-embracing and all-harmonizing balance, and not, in any sense, involve a swing in the other direction.

I pray for the gift of silence, Of emptiness and solitude, Where everything I touch is turned into prayer:

If you’re listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; it’s purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever more wonders.

The universe is in fact the constantly reborn “child” of the lovemaking of the “Father” and “Mother,” Shiva and Shakti, who at all moments dance in and out of, and merge with, each other’s being with divine complexity, subtlety, passion, and ecstatic humor.

You will be graced by the necessary catastrophes.

To be human is to be born into a dance in which every animate or inanimate, visible or invisible being is also dancing. Every step of this dance is printed in light; its energy is adoration, its rhythm is praise. Pain, desolution, and destruction in this full and unified sacred vision are not separate from the dance, but are instead essential energies of its transformative unfolding. Death itself cannot shatter the dance, because death is the lifespring of its fertility, the mother of all its changing splendor. If we could bring ourselves to open to this vision, we would undergo a revolution of the heart.

The Sufi lovers of the Beloved tell us badly that we must, for our own sakes, always keep on our knees before the majesty of God and always dare to keep up in our hearts a constant stream of longing for the Beloved, however painful that might sometimes be. Without humility, revelation itself can be a source of ignorance because it makes its receiver vain. Longing is both the anguish that burns away the veils of separation between the soul and God and the thread that guides us deeper and deeper within ourselves to where love is waiting, always, to take us further into its mystery.

Make everything in you an ear, each atom of your being, and you will hear at every moment what the Source is whispering to you, just to you and for you, without any need for my words or anyone else’s. You are — we all are — the beloved of the Beloved, and in every moment, in every event of your life, the Beloved is whispering to you exactly what you need to hear and know. Who can ever explain this miracle? It simply is. Listen and you will discover it every passing moment. Listen, and your whole life will become a conversation in thought and act between you and Him, directly, wordlessly, now and always. -Rumi

Competition exists to choose who gets the prize when the prize can’t be shared.

Slowly, the practice of gratitude will begin to transform your consciousness so you start to detect Divine Presence and Divine Mercy all around you, which in time tremendously lessens your fear and suffering. For, it will make you aware of the maternal protection of God and of how the entire universe and all of life is constantly giving you signs of God's glory, beauty, and love. Practicing gratitude not only heals you of vanity and pride; it also heals your fear, grief, and insecurity of separation.