“In the end, as at the beginning, the divine turns out to be most interested in the unique life of the individual soul. That’s what was meant by the old idea that “inside people is where god learns.” This is not a religious notion, but more of a spiritual insight. For this conversation god is simply the shortest way to refer to the divine. When a unique life becomes fully livedeveryone involved learns something and it becomes clear that god was involved all along.”

“A false sense of security is the only kind there is.”

“The purpose of conflict is to create.”

“When a person becomes aware of their genius and they live it and they give generously from it, they change the world, they affect the world. And when they depart everyone knows something is missing.”

“An old Celtic proverb boldly places death right at the center of life. ‘Death is the middle of a long life,’ they used to say. Ancient people did things like that; they put death at the center instead of casting it out of sight and leaving such an important subject until the last possible moment. Of course, they lived close to nature and couldn’t help but see how the forest grew from fallen trees and how death seemed to replenish life from fallen members. Only the unwise and the overly fearful think that death is the blind enemy of life.”

“What’s secretly in the water of modern culture is that people enter the world empty. That’s a very dangerous idea,because if everybody’s empty than other people can get us to do whatever they want because there’s nothing in us to stand against it. But if we came to do something that’s meaningful, that involves giving and making the world a more beautiful, healthy, lively place, then you become a difficult person to move around and manipulate.”

“The only choice once your world has been torn apart is to find your genius and live with that. ‘Normal’ is out of the question. The healing for veterans, or anyone going through great tragedy, is finding your natural spirit and your genius that was waiting to be found. That can now become the cohering principle in your life. The idea of patching someone up and back into normal when they’ve had extremely abnormal experiences is a misunderstanding.”

“Whereas literalists and fundamentalists tend to choose one pole of any dilemma or opposition, whereas modern political parties and religious groups tend towards demonizing each other, the creative individual must be born again and again in the crucible created by the tension between opposing instincts, conflicted feelings, and contrasting ideas.”

“If we want the world to change, the healing of culture and greater balance in nature, it has to start inside the human soul.”

“Fate and destiny are close woven within us and near them can be found the true genius of our lives.”

“Inside each one of us there is a mostly hidden, mostly golden, mostly eternal image or aspect of being, similar to the gold that is buried in the earth. We are the earthlings, the children of the earth, and therefore we are a replica, in a sense, of the earth itself. One of the ideas that is important is: As above, so below. As outside, so within.”