The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.

For those in whom a local mythology still works, there is an experience both of accord with the social order, and of harmony with the universe. For those, however, in whom the authorized signs no longer work-or, if working, produce deviant effects-there follows inevitably a sense both of dissociation from the local social nexus and of quest, within and without, for life, which the brain will take to be for 'meaning'.

You've got to say yes to this miracle of life as it is, not on condition that it follow your rules.

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.