By cutting ourselves off from the rest of creation, we are left bereft of awe and wonder and therefore of reverence and gratitude. We violate our very beings, and we have nothing but trivia to teach our young.

Facing the darkness, admitting the pain, allowing the pain to be pain, is never easy. This is why courage - big-heartedness - is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey. But if we fail to let pain be pain - and our entire patriarchal culture refuses to let this happen - then pain will haunt us in nightmarish ways. We will become pain's victims instead of the healers we might become.

I didn't learn to swim until I was 21 or something because I grew up in the mountains in Wyoming and all the water is glacier runoff and cold.

The whole purpose of letting pain be pain is this: to let go of pain. By entering into it, we see that we are strong enough and capable enough to move through it. We find out that it ultimately has a gift for us.

Cars are part of our genetic makeup. It's unavoidable.

The system is not working. That is how a paradigm shift begins: the established way of seeing the world no longer functions.

I am a Westerner. We're not going to change the West by going East. The East has a lot to teach us, but essentially it's like a mirror, saying, hey, can't you see what's here in your own religion, what are you, stupid?