We need to work on the world so it will not be so oppressive.

You are born with a character; it is given, a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth...Each person enters the world called.

I don't think anything changes until ideas change.

Many of our troubles are chronic. Life is chronic.

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.

Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections.

If you are still being hurt by an event that happened to you at twelve, it is the thought that is hurting you now.