Wisdom
A few words from thinkers, mystics, and poets who have shaped how I see the world and approach my work.
Wonder
“I’ve been thinking about God. God must be very, very, very big… and God must be very, very, very tiny. God has to be very tiny because God has to fit inside me, right in the middle. And I am a very small boy.”
Russell, age 3quoted in Christina Grof, The Thirst for Wholeness
What Is
“I am afraid love is not really the experience of beauty and romantic joy alone. Love is associated with ugliness and pain and aggression, as well as with the beauty of the world; it is not the recreation of heaven. Love or compassion, the open path, is associated with what is.”
Chögyam TrungpaCutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Befriending
“Awakening does not eliminate suffering, but it does change our relationship to it.”
John WelwoodLove and Awakening
Emptiness
“If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial. If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked. If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.”
Lao TzuTao Te Ching
Shadow, Fed
“The dragon is not slain or fought against, but drawn out and fearlessly nurtured. In this way, the split between good and evil begins to soften, and the enemy can become an ally. The energy once bound up in struggle becomes a positive, even protective force.”
Tsultrim AllioneFeeding Your Demons
Eros
“The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling.”
Audre LordeUses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
The Numinous
“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure, and while we stand in wonder it coolly disdains to destroy us. Every Angel is terrifying.”
Rainer Maria RilkeDuino Elegies, The First Elegy
Silence
“To try to talk about the unsayable to the crowds is to trivialize it, or even to lose its depth, like describing great lovemaking to an outsider.”
Richard RohrThe Naked Now
Go beyond. Come home.
The spectrum, whole