If you want a television, you go out and work for it and you buy it. If you want to learn about Aztec pottery, you take a course. But the relationship with God requires the active and passionate participation of you, yourself. You have to risk it. You have to abandon yourself to it. You have to leap into the fire. Nobody will do it for you; nobody can do it for you.

A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history. On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness ... will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions.

When the passion of the mystic for God is married to the passion of the activist for justice, a new fire is born.

If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly.

.. every single corner and aspect of our lives, every single choice, will be different if we take the invitation of this [Rumi's] poetry to act from the Divine Center of Silence and allow the glory of the Presence to soak our every movement.

Coming to know the hidden and forgotten Mother and the marvelous wisdom of the sacred feminine as revealed from every side and angle by the different mystical traditions is not luxury; it is, I believe, a necessity for our survival as a species.

What breaks your heart, what you really love, is the thing that will sustain you. That's what you ought to be doing.