It is our task-our essential, central, crucial task-to transform ourselves from mere social creatures into community creatures.

Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.

An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes.

It is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn.

Examination of the world without is never as personally painful as examination of the world within.

The symptoms and the illness are not the same thing. The illness exists long before the symptoms. Rather than being the illness, the symptoms are the beginning of its cure. The fact that they are unwanted makes them all the more a phenomenon of grace — a gift of God, a message from the unconscious.

By far the most important form of attention we can give our loved ones is listening... True listening is love in action.