Myth and poetry represent a reservoir of vertical thinking, which we could also call longing and gratitude to ancestors. We need that gratitude desperately.

The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. "I am a victim," he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like.

I think more and more people are recognizing how much adults and elders are actually needed. That's a gift of the sibling society.

If you want to know what it will be like when we are more deeply into the horizontal, simply go to one of the Indian casinos. The Native Americans, who stand for vertical thinking more than anyone else in our culture, have been setting up totally flat casinos for honkies.

Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief.

The models of adulthood are disappearing fast. How can two people have a new marriage if neither of them is an adult?

The dead made this world. We didn't make it. They made the poetry and the songs and the customs.