Students want to know, "Are you painting by the numbers, or are you really present as a human being to what you are doing; and is it coming from inside of you?" So I would ask teachers this question: "Do you have a wellgrounded personal experience and conviction concerning whatever it is you are trying to teach?"

As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.

Fear is so fundamental to the human condition that all the great spiritual traditions originate in an effort to overcome its effects on our lives. With different words, they all proclaim the same core message: "Be not afraid." Though the traditions vary widely in the ways they propose to take us beyond fear, all hold out the same hope: we can escape fear's paralysis and enter a state of grace where encounters with otherness will not threaten us but will enrich our work and our lives.

We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.

Whoever our students may be, whatever the subject we teach, ultimately we teach who we are.

The inner life of any great thing will be incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my own.

A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside of himself or herself ... lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.