In silence all our usual patterns assault us ... That is why most people give up rather quickly. When Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the first things to show up were the wild beasts.

Much of the work of midlife is to tell the difference between those who are dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you.

When we can see the image of God where we don't want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.

Egoic consciousness is the one we all normally operate with, until we are told there is something else! Every culture teaches egoic consciousness in different ways. At that level it is all about me, my preferences, my choices, my needs, my desires and me and my group as the central reference point.

Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid.

Denial of our pattern of failure seems to be a kind of practical atheism or chosen ignorance among many believers and clergy.

God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history.