Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy. Or barring that, to turn out a good juicy cheeseburger and a strong glass of beer.
– Tom Robbins
Wheels within Wheels, Mysteries upon Mysteries.
With two eyes, I am distracted by your vision and my reflection. But can I see my original face?
Welcome to my bit of narcissism.
I like stretching out my arms during windy days and feeling the wind wrap around me and go through my fingers…
I don’t know who I am really. Am I a collection of memories? Am I the footprints of my history?
I’d like to think that who I am runs a bit deeper than that.
I look around and I am always utterly amazed - Struck by beauty in every place. I couldn’t have dreamed any of this.
Especially the platypus…and maybe rhinos. They get me every time.
" In a series of books (e.g., A Sociable God, Up from Eden, and The Eye of Spirit), I have tried to show that religion itself has always performed two very important, but very different, functions. One, it acts as a way of creating meaning for the separate self: it offers myths and stories and tales and narratives and rituals and revivals that, taken together, help the separate self make sense of, and endure, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. This function of religion does not usually or necessarily change the level of consciousness in a person; it does not deliver radical transformation. Nor does it deliver a shattering liberation from the separate self altogether. Rather, it consoles the self, fortifies the self, defends the self, promotes the self. As long as the separate self believes the myths, performs the rituals, mouths the prayers, or embraces the dogma, then the self, it is fervently believed, will be "saved"--either now in the glory of being God-saved or Goddess-favored, or in an after-life that insures eternal wonderment.
But two, religion has also served--in a usually very, very small minority--the function of radical transformation and liberation. This function of religion does not fortify the separate self, but utterly shatters it--not consolation but devastation, not entrenchment but emptiness, not complacency but explosion, not comfort but revolution--in short, not a conventional bolstering of consciousness but a radical transmutation and transformation at the deepest seat of consciousness itself."
- Ken Wilber
"How truly liberated is our own mind? How vast is our perspective? Is our interest in enlightened consciousness so inspired that we always seek for a way of seeing that is free from unexamined assumptions? As much as we may believe we want to, we'll never be able to truly evolve in hell. Do you know what hell is? Hell is not even knowing that we are lost. Hell is being unconscious, adrift in the inner world of isolation and suffocation that is created by a self that is enslaved by the separate ego. And unless we become aware of how bad it really is, we'll never find the courage or the inspiration to do whatever is necessarily to finally liberate ourselves here and now in this very life. I can't emphasize enough how urgent this is. So few of us take the possibility of our own liberation deadly seriously. And the main reason for this is, once again, that we just don't know how bad things are."
- Andrew Cohen
We don't really know what these cometary knots are headed toward. The guess is that they will grow cold and dark and will then dissipate. But sometimes when I'm staring at them I pretend that they are in fact enroute to becoming solar systems all by themselves. It helps me remember that throughout the Milky Way there are clouds of such gas collapsing, even now, into new solar systems. All of it via the same dyanamics that created our Sun and Earth. That's the great thing. The same creative energy is at work in the cometary knots, as in the birth of new stars, as in our bodies as we wake up and drag ourselves down to Starbucks and wonder about the day. We are that same energy with the added burden and privilege and knowing that in fact we are the creative energy of the universe."
- Brian Swimme
"I've always wondered if there was a god. And now I know there is -- and it's me."
- Homer Simpson
"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. "
- Joseph Campbell
"A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom. "
- Bob Dylan
"To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself."
- Simone Weil
"The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by."
- Felix Adler
"Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes."
- Benjamin Disraeli
"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."
- Alton Ashe
"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson