The desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.

Recommended reading: The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. 

Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery. Compassion is one of the purest springs of love.

Recommended reading: Daybook: The Journal of an Artist.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension and not another… unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present and future mingle and pull us backward, forward or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Recommended reading: The Portable Anaïs Nin.

When everything is connected to everything else, for better or for worse, everything matters.

Recommended reading: Massive Change.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

Recommended reading: Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed.

Recommended reading: The Alchemist.

What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.

Recommended reading: Awake, My Heart: Daily Devotional Studies for the Year.

There is a legend about a bird which sings only once in it’s life, more beautifully than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves it’s nest, it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, it impales it’s breast on the longest, sharpest thorn. But as it is dying, it rises above it’s own agony to outsing the Lark and the Nightingale. The Thornbird pays it’s life for that one song, and the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles, as it’s best is brought only at the cost of great pain; Driven to the thorn with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand… and still, we do it.

Recommended reading: The Thorn Birds.

The thought manifests the word. The word manifests the deed. The deed develops into a habit. And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care.

Recommended reading: The Bhagavad Gita.

Always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and try to duplicate it.

Recommended reading: Bruce Lee: Artist of Life.