We all yearn to fly. We are creatures of longing. We do not need to [physically fly] to be airborne. What I call the aerial instinct-the drive to transcend our present condition- is the defining characteristic of a human being. We are restless animals, eternal travelers who are forever in the process of becoming. Consciousness itself is a flight from the here and now to the beyond. Our reach always exceeds our grasp, which is what Heaven is for.

Each day befriend a single fear, and the miscellaneous terrors of being human will never join together to form such a morass of vague anxiety that it rules your life from the shadows of the unconscious. We learn to fly not by being fearless, but by the daily practice of courage.

Throughout my life, I've had different metaphors for freedom. At one time, it was skin diving. In the ocean you feel weightless; you escape from gravity.

You come to love not by discovering the ideal individual, yet by figuring out how to see a blemished individual flawlessly.

The abyss beyond our beliefs is something we have to pass through in order to see the world anew, to see it in terms not dictated so much by our culture, our parents, or our religious convictions.

There has always been a part of me that saw wilderness and risk-taking as the path to freedom.

I think it's increasingly hard to have deep self-knowledge without entering the darkness in some way.