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.

Sam Keen

Categorized in : Practice Anxiety Fearless

There are two questions a man must ask himself: The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?' If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in trouble.

men two order

We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

anniversary love friendship

The best practice is to follow the advice posted on every railroa... by Sam Keen

The best practice is to follow the advice posted on every railroad crossing: Stop. Look. Listen.

best-practices railroads advice

To love is to return to a home we never left, to remember who we... by Sam Keen

To love is to return to a home we never left, to remember who we are.

sweet-love home cute

The more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego-your need to posses and control-and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous-lar ge souled.

gratitude ego spiritual

I think we're always in the process of writing and rewriting the story of our lives, forming our experiences into a narrative that makes sense. Much of that work involves demythologizing family myths and cultural myths - getting free of what we have been told about ourselves.

stories writing thinking

The root of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst.

self-esteem animal men

A man must go on a quest / to discover the sacred fire / in the sanctuary of his own belly / to ignite the flame in his heart / to fuel the blaze in the hearth / to rekindle his ardor for the earth

fire heart men

Our minds, bodies, feelings, relationships are all informed by our questions. What you ask is who you are. What you find depends on what you search for. And what shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think of asking.

mind feelings thinking

Burnout is nature's way of telling you, you've been going through the motions your soul has departed; you're a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker. False optimism is like administrating stimulants to an exhausted nervous system.

walking-dead optimism soul

Soul grows in communion. Word by word, story by story, for better or worse, we build our world. From true conversation - speaking and listening - communication deepens into compassion and creates community.

our-world communication compassion

The more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair.

resentment gratitude despair

Trust what moves you most deeply. by Sam Keen

Trust what moves you most deeply.

moving

Compassion begins with the acknowledgment of the single inescapable truth that is the foundation for the possibility of love between human beings - an awareness of the tragic sense of life.

foundation compassion love-is

The spiritual journey is one that we must take "alone together," in the same way that a good marriage involves a dance between solitude and communion. The life of the spirit entails a continuous alternation between retreating into oneself and going out into the world: it's an inward-outward journey. There is a solitary part to it, but that solitude helps us to develop richer and more in-depth relationships with our friends, our children, our community, and the political world.

journey spiritual children

The first part of the spiritual journey should properly be called psychological rather than spiritual because it involves peeling away the myths and illusions that have misinformed us.

soul journey spiritual

Enter each day with the expectation that the happenings of the day may contain a clandestine message addressed to you personally. Expect omens, epiphanies, casual blessings and teachers who unknowingly speak to your condition.

blessing expectations teacher

The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what ma... by Sam Keen

The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble.

sacred moving

To a large extent, the aged in our society are ghettoized. Old people are seen as useless, bypassed by history, old-fashioned, in the way. So, not surprisingly, when we reach the official mark of old age, we're supposed to go gently into that good night, to get off center stage and hand over the spotlight. Old age is also surrounded by shame - the myth of impotence and inability.

good-night hands people

You don't go through a deep personal transformation without some... by Sam Keen

You don't go through a deep personal transformation without some kind of dark night of the soul.

personal-transformation dark night