What happens if I try to build a life dedicated to avoiding all danger and all unnecessary risk? Sam Keen More Quotes by Sam Keen More Quotes From Sam Keen You don't go through a deep personal transformation without some kind of dark night of the soul. Sam Keen personal-transformationdarknight I suspect that we are all recipients of cosmic love notes. Messages, omens, voices, cries, revelations, and appeals are homogenized into each day's events. If only we knew how to listen, to read the signs. Sam Keen eventsvoiceeach-day Our society has been eaten up by the economic view of things, which routinely forces us to work at jobs that don't mean anything. Sam Keen viewsjobsmean I fall into all kinds of inauthenticity when I conspire to forget my mortality. Sam Keen kindforgetfall I think we have to trust ourselves in the darkness of not knowing. The God out of which we came and into which we go is an unknown God. It's the luminosity of that darkness and that unknowing that is, I think, the most human - and the most sacred - place of all. Sam Keen knowingdarknessthinking What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask. Sam Keen favouriteshapesthinking We learn to fly not by being fearless, but by the daily practice of courage. Sam Keen learn-to-flyfearlesspractice We suffer from the illusion that the faster we run, the more likely we are to grasp happiness. The truth is that the velocity necessary for success rarely exceeds the rate of reflection. Sam Keen sufferingreflectionrunning To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions. Sam Keen questsjourneytravel On the pilgrim's path each man must become Moses, going on a vision quest to some mountaintop and returning with the ten or twenty commandments that he holds sacred. So long as we obey or break the rules that have been set up for us by the Giants - Parents and other Authorities - we remain good or bad children. Growing into the fullness of our humanity means that we become co-authors of the rules by which we will agree to have our lives judged. Sam Keen menmeanchildren Chronological time is what we measure by clocks and calendars; it is always linear, orderly, quantifiable, and mechanical. Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic; it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change the direction of his life. Sam Keen cadencecalendarsmen Neurotic identity crises come when our defense mechanisms have been too successful and we're encapsulated in the fortress we have constructed with nothing to refresh us in our solitary confinement. So we play the old movies with their stale fears and their unrealistic hopes until we become bored enough to risk disarmament and engagement. Sam Keen boredsuccessfulplay Paranoia reduces anxiety and guilt by transferring to the other all the characteristics one does not want to recognize in oneself. It is maintained by selective perception and recall. We only see and acknowledge those negative aspects of the enemy that support the stereotype we have already created. Sam Keen anxietysupportperception The 'still, small voice' of God never calls on me to be like another man. It appeals to me to rise to my full stature and fulfill the promise that sleeps within my being. Sam Keen uniquesleepmen Call it "womb awe" or even "womb worship" but it's not simple envy. I don't remember even wanting to be a woman. But each of the three times I have been present at the birth of one of my children, I have been overwhelmed by a sense of reverence... It was quite suddenly, the first day of creation; the Goddess giving birth to a world... Like men since the beginning of time I wondered: What can I ever create that will equal the magnificence of this new life? Sam Keen simplefatherchildren Myth is the system of basic metaphors, images, and stories that informs the perceptions, memories, and aspirations of a people; provides the rationale for its institutions, rituals and power structure; and gives a map of the purpose and stages of life. Sam Keen givingmemoriespeople As a mode of perception that often becomes a style of life, paranoia weaves around the vulnerable self or group an air-tight metaphysic and world view. Paranoia is an antireligious mysticism based on the feeling or perception that the world in general, and others in particular, are against me or us. Reality is perceived as hostile. By contrast, the religious mystic experiences the ground of being as basically friendly to the deepest needs of the self. That which is unknown, strange, or beyond our comprehension is with and for rather than against us. Sam Keen religiousairreality In a way, human beings have never been part of the natural order; we're not biological in the normal sense. Normal biological animals stop eating when they're not hungry and stop breeding when there is no sense in breeding. By contrast, human beings are what I think of as "biomythic" animals: we're controlled largely by the stories we tell. When we get the story wrong, we get out of harmony with the rest of the natural order. For a long time, our unnatural beahvior didn't threaten the natural world, but now it does. Sam Keen animalorderthinking You come to love not by discovering the ideal individual, yet by figuring out how to see a blemished individual flawlessly. Sam Keen discoveringidealsindividual Wise people are able to give themselves gracefully to seemingly contradictory experiences, because they know that they belong to different seasons of life, all of which are necessary to the whole. Spring and winter, growth and decay, creativity and fallowness, health and sickness, power and impotence, and life and death all belong within the economy of being. Sam Keen wisdomwisespring
