The purpose of therapy is not to remove suffering but to move through it to an enlarged consciousness that can sustain the polarity of painful opposites.

In the end, we are only tiny frightened animals, doing our best to survive amid other tiny frightened animals.

To experience some healing within yourself, and to contribute healing to the world, you are summoned to wade through the muck from time to time.

Anger is generally seen as an unwelcome presence in our midst, however natural it may be. Although each person, and each society, is charged with how anger is to be appropriately channeled, the denial of anger, or its continuous repression, is a deep source of our psychopathology and will invariably seek its expression in a less healthful fashion.

One of the most powerful shocks of the Middle Passage is the collapse of our tacit contract with the universe-the assumption that if we act correctly, if we are of good heart and good intentions, things will work out. We assume a reciprocity with the universe. If we do our part, the universe will comply. Many ancient stories, including the Book of Job, painfully reveal the fact that there is no such contract, and everyone who goes through the Middle Passage is made aware of it.

We best serve intimate relationship by becoming sufficiently developed in ourselves that we do not need to feed off others.

We are all meaning-seeking, meaning creating creatures and when we experience the loss of meaning, we suffer.