"Where are the people that chose their lives?

... maybe a life of drudgery and carrot-chasing is exactly what we would chose if we did chose, but we don't. That's what it means to be unconscious; to be asleep within the dream. We slip into the lives that are laid out for us the way children slip into the clothes their mother lays out for them in the morning. No one decides. We don't live our lives by choice, but by default. We play the roles we are born to. We don't live our lives, we dispose of them. We throw them away because we don't know any better, and the reason we don't know any better is because we never asked. We never questioned or doubted, never stood up, never drew a line. We never walked up to our parents or our spiritual advisors or our teachers or our gurus or any other formative presences in our early lives and asked one simple, honest, straightforward question, the one question that must be answered before any other question can be asked:

What the hell is going on here?"

 "The soul-which I'm defining as our capacity for these deeply positive human qualities-is something that, in most of us, desperately needs to be developed. Too many of us live in a fractured state, deeply divided against ourselves-often far more so than we are aware of or able to feel. We exist in a self-generated vacuum of moral ambiguity, where everything is relative and our attention is focused mainly on our emotional state. Most of us know a lot more about what really matters than we are willing to live up to. Indeed, we are attracted to that which is beautiful, profound, and meaningful but find ourselves lacking the soul strength to really struggle, to engage in a life-and-death wrestling match with our own division, cynicism, and inertia. The awful truth is that it is just easier for us not to care that much. In order to care that much, we have to be willing to feel a connection with life that is so deep that it hurts. We have to be ready to step onto the field of our own experience in a way that is authentic, unconditional, and deeply committed-to embrace a kind of fearless vulnerability where our transparency is our strength and the living experience of connection is permanent, unbroken, and inescapable."

"If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed"

You're only given a little spark of madness, you mustn't lose it.

When I had nothing to lose, I had everything.
When I stopped being who I am, I found myself

Spirituality is the wise art of making life a sacred adventure.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

 ... I simply accept that technology is stronger and more powerful than me: it works when it wants to, and when it doesn't its best to go for a walk, and just wait until the cables and telephone links are in a better mood and the computer decides to work again. I am not, I have discovered, my computers master: it has a life of its own.

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

-having a body that is like a musical instrument, open enough to be able to resonate, literally resonate with what is coming both from the inside and from the outside, so that one is able to surrender to powers greater than oneself.