When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.

I have a very full and busy life and occasionally I am asked, Scotty, how can you do all that you do? The most telling reply I can give is: Because I spend at least two hours a day doing nothing.

Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking; and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.

While I generally find that great myths are great precisely because they represent and embody great universal truths, the myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie. Perhaps it is a necessary lie in that it ensures the survival of the falling-in-love experience that traps us into marriage. But as a psychiatrist I weep in my heart almost daily for the ghastly confusion and suffering that this myth fosters. Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately and futilely attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth.

Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.

If we know exactly where we're going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn anything.

But for the first time, I had a religious identity. I had come home. And so I called myself a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18.