Joint consumption doesn't create intimacy.

It's not like activist work is a nice add-on to what's really important, the spiritual work. The two are inseparable and it goes both ways. Many people are hardcore activists for decades, and they encounter burnout, futility, or a feeling of imbalance. Sometimes they need to go so far as to drop their activism and go on a spiritual journey. They're realizing that all the stuff they're trying to change in the world isn't just out there in the world. It's in them, too. And as long as they're blind to what's in them, they're going to continually re-create it in all that they do.

The gift economy represents a shift from consumption to contribution, transaction to trust, scarcity to abundance and isolation to community.

When you understand that everything happening in the world mirrors something that's happening in yourself, then you can work on the self by working on the external manifestation of that thing in the world. And in fact, there may be no other way. You can sit in meditation for a long time and be blind to huge wounds in yourself, and it's only when you're engaging with the world that the wounds become visible, externalized.

The financial crisis we are facing today arises from the fact that there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money.

An economist says that essentially more for you is less for me, but the lover knows that more for you is more for me, too.

The logic is backwards. Genius is the result of doing what you love, not a prerequisite for it.