The geography of your destiny is always clearer to the eye of your soul than to the intentions and needs of your surface mind. — John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong (Harper Perennial; Reprint edition, March 22, 2000)
It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things. — Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness (Pantheon; First Edition, October 3, 2006)
The more consciousness the more intense the despair. — Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death. (Princeton University Press November 1, 1983) Originally published 1849.
The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the… Continue reading Aldous Huxley
To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees – these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. But, I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how… Continue reading Brené Brown
When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings. — Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book… Continue reading Sogyal Rinpoche
If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic. — Thomas Szasz, “Schizophrenia,” The Second Sin. (Anchor Press; First edition 1973)
The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands. ― C.G. Jung, On the Nature of the Psyche. (Routledge; 2 edition July… Continue reading C.G. Jung
There is a desert on the moon where the dreamer sinks so deeply into the ground that she reaches hell. — C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols. (Dell August 15, 1968)
Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage. ― Brené Brown, Rising Strong. (Spiegel & Grau; 1 edition August 25, 2015)
The Vale of Soul-Making 