When one begins the transformative process, death and birth are imminent: the death of custom as authority, the birth of the self.

General Systems Theory, a related modern concept [to holism], says that each variable in any system interacts with the other variables so thoroughly that cause and effect cannot be separated. A simple variable can be both cause and effect. Reality will not be still. And it cannot be taken apart! You cannot understand a cell, a rat, a brain structure, a family, a culture if you isolate it from its context. Relationship is everything.

The most disturbing and wasteful emotions in modern life, next to fright, are those which are associated with the idea of blame, directed against the self or against others.

We cannot leave the trap until we know we are in it.

Those who have most at stake in the old culture, or are most rigid in their beliefs, try to summon people back to the old ideas.'

Risk always brings its own rewards: the exhilaration of breaking through, of getting to the other side; the relief of a conflict healed; the clarity when a paradox dissolves.

The spiritual quest begins, for most people, as a search for meaning.