Self-righteousness is much like a spiritual egocentricity. It constitutes a secular type of love that thrives under conditionality, one in which is only existent after an individual meets the adopted standards of the condemner; oppositely, unconditio...
Sometimes I think they are writers who do not write. That "writers write" is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers that w...
He looked up at the reddening sky and said with a self-deprecating laugh, "You put me to shame, Seraphina. Your bravery always has." "It's not bravery; it's bullheaded bumbling." He shook his head, staring off into the middle distance. "I know courag...
Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences,...
It was in the work that she came closest to finding herself, by which we don’t mean gaining “self-knowledge” or understanding one’s “true nature” but rather how at some point you can see most plainly that this is what you do, this is how ...
The ecstatic state of wholeness is bound to be transient because it has no part in the total pattern of ‘adaptation through maladaptation’ which is characteristic of our species…the hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, ta...
GREAT SECRET Whenever I’m learning something difficult, I keep expectations low, and aspirations high.
Rumi and Shams taught us how to see the world with new eyes, how to find our place in the order of things, and how to extricate the true self trapped under layers of noise.
She stamped her foot. She hoped the greedy thing shit for a week. She hoped it shit its awful self insideout and backward, then fell into a crack and lost it's name and died alone and hollow-empty in the angry dark.
It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it ...
Even though God could create all kinds of things, he could hardly create himself before he had a "self" to create with. So there was only one possibility left: God had always existed. But she had already rejected that possibility! Everything that exi...
Chronic pain shatters productive lives. Chronic pain almost always is accompanied by depression, anxiety, frustration, fatigue, isolation, and lowered self-esteem.
The last remnants of Deanna the child--the idealist, the sheltered elite--had been torn loose by tonight's tragedies, slain with the same bullet that had felled her would-be killer. She had no idea who the new person inhabiting this shell of her old ...
I learned that if you love a boy you are o longer free. The boy may become more important than your own self and if it is so, you will find trouble there. The first time you are hurt in your heart, you do not forget the lesson. It stays forever.
Tess is not simply presented as a passive victim, however. Throughout the novel she is shown as experiencing tension between the intractable materiality of the social and economic world in which she has to live, and her extraordinarily vulnerable, se...
That is what happens when the heart door opens- you become less yourself than part of everything.' Many are the sentinels who guard that door: our fears, our self-importance, our meanness, our greed, our bitterness, and others.
An important ethical function of identity politics, in this context, is to highlight that obstacles to the self-development of individuals, and to the formation and exercise of their agency, emerge in complex cultural and psychic forms, as well as th...
The assumption that being gay or black necessarily harms the self-worth of all who fit this category has a patronizing dimension, because it neglects consideration of the agency that persons exercise in respect of imposed identity.
A Permeable Life is about what presses out from the heart, what comes in at a slant and what shimmers below the surface of things. To live permeably is to be open-hearted and audacious, to risk showing up as our truest self, and embracing a willingne...
To be alone with yourself is to be alone. To be in the company of others is to be alone together. The only time you are not alone is when you forget yourself and reach out in love -- the lines of self blur, and just for a wild, flickering moment you ...
There is power born of humility . . . Humility, in business and in life, is a powerful asset and does not denote lowliness, unimportance, or self-deprecation.
