By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life.

Vertical attention is not the same as, and doesn't evolve from nor imply, hierarchy. We could say that hierarchy is associated with power, and vertical attention with longing for the Divine Feminine, for the Divine Masculine, for what the Sufis call 'wine.'

If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth: Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.

Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.

One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life. I still feel surprised that such various substances can find shelter and nourishment in a poem. A poem in fact may be a sort of nourishing liquid, such as one uses to keep an amoeba alive. If prepared right, a poem can keep an image or a thought or insights on history or the psyche alive for years, as well as our desires and airy impulses.

Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.

Male initiation does not move toward machoism; on the contrary, it moves toward achieving a cultivated heart before we die.