Sanity is not about confrontation. It’s about filtering. Having a stable and happy life is about saying “no” to crazy people, not about inviting them in and then hoping that confrontations are going to make...

I had the right to remain silent… but I didn’t have the ability.

Let us each take up our flaming torches and mount as the blazing fireballs of light that we are and let’s burn the skies and leave it with deep scars and let them be our...

LearningTo believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.

The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.

In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic...

Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new...

I’m freeeee… SPLAT!”.

As I think of myself, so I shall be.

An artist has got to get acquainted with himself just as much as he can. It is no easy job, for it is not a present-day habit of humanity.

Thinking, he walked ever more slowly and asked himself, What is it now that you were hoping to learn from doctrines and teachers, and what is it that they—who taught you so much—were unable to...

Would he ever come back? He wondered. The water filled his ears with its own rush, and he was comforted by the realization that, in fact, he never left.

I don’t want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses.

Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.

The processing of universals is the job of the unconscious. If we feed it the opposite it breaks; when it breaks we break and the people around us break.

Deep down within the heart there is a stillness which is healing, a trust in the universal laws which is unwavering, and a strength which is rock-like. But because it is so deep we need...

an axiom of sorcery: If you come to know yourselfno one else can know you

The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I’m not going to let myself pull me down anymore.

Your brain doesn’t know what it cannot do until you tell it.

…Reason should take on anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its...

All positive interactions with other human beings involve, to some degree, the experience of visibility– that is, the experience of being seen and understood.

Answer all the questions. Question all the answers.

I never really grew up until I had kids.

A lot of the conflict you have in your life exists simply because you’re not living in alignment; you’re not be being true to yourself.

Do not limit yourself to your own preconceptions of yourself, but throw yourself out onto a blank page that you haven’t written on yet, and see what you find out about you, see what story...

I always have my reasons, even when I don’t know what they are.

There is a correlation between the severity of a person’s moods and a lack of self-knowledge.

Genuine self esteem – please understand this – genuine self esteem is not competitive or comparative. Genuine self esteem isn’t expressed by self-glorification at the expense of others, or by trying to make yourself superior...

Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser; of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse.

The unconscious is the true accumulation of your history. It can be accepted or rejected but it can’t fundamentally be altered.

When we teach people that suspending moral judgments is a virtue, the necessary outcome is moral horror.

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows...

To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion of what one is… The whole surface of consciousness – for consciousness -is- a surface – must be kept clear of all great...

Master thyself, seek to know thy soul.

Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you; you don’t have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than...

When you go with first principles, a giant light goes off in what you think is a city and turns out to be an insane asylum.

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.

[I]t doesn’t matter whom you love or where you move from or to, you always take yourself with you. If you don’t know who you are, or if you’ve forgotten or misplaced her, then you’ll...