Men must learn how to grieve, or they are inevitably angry or controlling, and they don't even know why.

When you look at the dominance of Notre Dame, the love of Mary in almost every European country, psychologically, had to come from this recognition of the feminine mediating divine love. And for many people in history, it was clearly the preferred way because women raised most people, not men, so their first experience of unconditional love, of touch, of caring, of nurturing very often came from a woman - that got easily transferred to Mary.

Our culture is almost entirely prepared to not just help you create your false self, but to get very identified with it and attached to it. So, without some form of God experience, which teaches you who you are apart from that - we would say in the religious world, who you are "in" God, in the mind and heart of God - there's almost no way to get out of it.

Transformed people transform people.

Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.

The two Virtues of Equanimity and Compassion become more available to the person whose ego-shell has been smashed-either by great suffering or by great love-or by both.

Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it's difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will.