The shoes of leadership have many ways to pinch and blister the feet of those who walk in them. But here's the thing, when we do walk in them despite the difficulties and challenges, our gait gradually changes from an ungainly, self-conscious toddle ...
Those who live as though God sets the rules are not going by their own rules. That is the self-sacrifice, or selflessness, that peace more often than not requires. Those who insist on going by their own rules cannot make that sacrifice. They are the ...
One of the biggest contradictions in self-proclaimed open-mindedness is to say that we're all one but when a true bigot comes around tell him we're all different. It's usually the case that neither side is correct. One might have the right to do some...
Poor Father, I see his final exploration. He arrives at the new place, his hair risen in astonishment, his mouth and eyes dumb. His toe scuffs a soft storm of sand, he kneels and his arms spread in pantomimic celebration, the immigrant, as in every m...
Pop stars AREN'T cool. Cheating on your husband or your wife isn't cool. Having no modesty with your body and no self-respect is NOT cool. It doesn't matter how pretty someone's voice is, or if they SAY they are Christian, God calls us to modesty and...
Always, the eye sees more than the mind can comprehend, and we go through life self-blinded to much that lies before us. We want a simple world, but we live in a magnificently complex one, and rather than open ourselves to it, we perceive the world t...
Some people experience a life-changing sensation that transforms how they see the world after a near-death experience, but the way I see it, we’re all dying – nay, we’re all dead – and it is up to us to be our own self-necromancers to find so...
Enthusiasts for empire argued that Rome had a civilizing mission; that because her values and institutions were self-evidently superior to those of barbarians, she had a duty to propagate them; that only once the whole globe had been subjected to her...
Going beyond our ordinary concept of self is what always brings us the greatest sense of joy in life. Going beyond our own boundaries brings us an ecstatic awareness of how we are truly created in connection with all that is.
Love...no such thing. Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist. Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. B...
Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.
Knowledge of Self is very important, you can't be living in a world pretending to be someone you're not. No one will ever believe in you, when you don't have the courage to believe in yourself. You can not live to impress others solely not giving tho...
Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
We need – more urgently than architectural utopias, ingenious traffic disposal systems, or ecological programmes – to comprehend the nature of citizenship, to make serious imaginative assessment of that special relationship between the self and t...
Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in...
Ascension through all levels of consciousness and awareness can only happen when you live life as you, and not how others think you should live. How could self-realization possibly be anything other than being yourself?
Because we are always growing, life compounds and magnifies what is already in us. If you are miserable you grow in misery and if you are joyful you grow in joy. This makes self-love is the perfect soil from which to grow love.
Marriage is never static. There are peaks and troughs, cycles. It is easy to forget that this shifting landscape is really only ever a reflection of the self. Our capacity for attachment determines the kind of mate we attract, and it is through this ...
I came to see that man finds meaning in his existence only through the active demonstration of his human self, a cosmos comprising the entire constellation of life's factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts, physical conditio...
It is the cry of the separate self, ‘What about me?’ As long as we keep acting from that place, it doesn’t matter who wins the war against (what they see as) evil. The world will not deviate from its death-spiral.
People belittle or ignore or even rebel against God, because they view the processes of nature as having self-sufficient causes, normally regarded by them as ultimate. They do not realize that the universe is a sign pointing to something "beyond" its...
