Love to me is - the final lines in Dante's Paradiso, when he says, "The love that moves the Sun and all the stars" - it's what draws us together, it's why we have leaky margins with each other. It is that sumptuous, sensuous, sensitive quickening that happens when we really know ourselves as love and see ourselves as loving.
Jean HoustonWe all get betrayed or we all betray. Life is so complex that it's almost impossible to avoid that. Betrayal is also a critical theme in all the world's great stories. If Christ had not been betrayed, would you have had the resurrection?
Jean HoustonIf you are going to learn mathematics, you have to learn it not simply as an abstraction but as it is applied. I always say to teachers, for goodness sake, take the kids out first to look at the stars in order to understand infinity.
Jean HoustonIn a world such as ours, where we have to cross the great divide of otherness or we will not survive, love is perhaps the most critical aspect that is there in our humanity, to both activate and to practice.
Jean HoustonWhat I often do in my work is to take a great story, such as the Odyssey, the search for the Grail, the story of Jesus, or the story of the great peacemaker who helped create the Iroquois Confederacy in the 15th century. I then use these tales as templates upon which to weave psychological and spiritual exercises which allow us to open ourselves up to the larger venue of a story.
Jean Houston