Quotes from Stephen Cope

It is the night sea journey that allows us to free the energy trapped in these cast-off parts—trapped in what Marion would call "the shadow." The goal of this journey is to reunite us with ourselves. Such a homecoming can be surprisingly painful, even brutal. In order to undertake it, we must first agree to exile nothing.

The goal of human life, says Ramakrishna, is to meet God face to face. But the magic is this: if we look deeply into the face of all created things, we will find God. Therefore, savor the world, the body. Open it, explore it, look into it. Worship it.

The feminine comes to us in nature. Go outside. Look at the amazing waves of green, of lilacs, of blue mountains. We are in the presence of the manifestation right here. And she's reaching for you.

Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.

If you bring forth what is within you it will save you. If you do not, it will destroy you.

As W. H. Auden noted, "human beings are by nature actors who cannot become something until they have first pretended to be it.

Many of us ordinary folk have tasted these moments of union - on the ladder, in the pond, in the jungle, on the hospital bed. In the yogic view, it is in these moments that we know who we really are. We rest in our true nature and know beyond a doubt that everything is OK, and not just OK, but unutterably well. We know that there is nothing to accept and nothing to reject. Life just is as it is.

Susan never denied the existence of God. But her beliefs were secularized and lodged in the world around her. When she was once asked, "Do you pray?" she responded, "I pray every single second of my life; not on my knees but with my work. My prayer is to lift women to equality with men. Work and worship are one with me.

8. And finally, of course, the very central teaching of the Gita: "Let go of the outcome." Let go of any clinging to how this all comes out. You cannot measure your actions at this point by the conventional wisdom about success and failure.

Dharma is born mysteriously out of the intersection between The Gift and The Times. Dharma is a response to the urgent—though often hidden—need of the moment. Each of us feels some aspect of the world's suffering acutely. It tears at our hearts. Others don't see it or don't care. But we feel it. And we must pay attention. We must act. This little corner of the world is ours to transform. This little corner of the world is ours to save.

We derive the greatest pleasure and fulfillment when all our faculties are drawn together into our life's work. In this state of absorption, we experience extraordinary satisfaction. We human beings are attracted to the experience of intense involvement. The outcome of this involvement, says Hokusai, is sublime. "By ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature." Hokusai's lesson, finally, is that a life of passion for dharma is a fulfilled

And now a surprise: Beethoven was deeply inspired by his reading of the Bhagavad Gita.

longing for our idealized images of life separates us from our true selves and from our true callings.

For me," he says, "the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew." In a new poem, he wrote, he "meets himself coming home.

Our unconscious ideals cause us to sacrifice our true lives to a beautiful chimera, a haunting dream, a compelling illusion.

Frost's early years were spent finding out who he was. But his later years were spent increasingly being who he was on purpose. As he himself said, the story of his life is the story of someone becoming more and more himself. He later wrote: They would not find me changed from him they knew— Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Am I living fully right now? Am I bringing forth everything I can bring forth? Am I digging down into that ineffable inner treasure-house that I know is in there? That trove of genius? Am I living my life's calling? Am I willing to go to any lengths to offer my genius to the world?

What Frost makes clear in his poem is that the act of choosing is the most important thing. The act of moving forward is what matters. He might have chosen either teaching or poetry. But he had to choose one or the other. He looked long down each path. He understood the loss involved—the cutting off of possibilities. He saw clearly that options once discarded are usually gone forever. Way leads on to way. But Krishsna writes: Concerning one's dharma, one should not vacillate!

good. In order to ignite the full ardency of dharma, The Gift must be put in the service of The Times.

If you bring forth what is within you it will save you. Yes. But this saving is not just for you. It is for the common good.

The fundamental experience of human suffering is the experience of alienation from the self, from the source—from God.

1. First of all, "ask for guidance." As it turns out, this is remarkably important, and it's something most of us almost always forget to do. It seems that there is something about actually asking that jump-starts a process. And sometimes asking repeatedly is required. Even begging.

2. Then (something else we usually forget) "listen for the response." It helps, says Bede, to "actively listen." To turn over every stone in your search for clues to the response. These responses usually come in subtle ways—through

The impulse to eschew the unpleasant leads to avoidance; avoidance leads to aversion; aversion leads to fear; fear leads to hatred; hatred leads to aggression. Unwittingly, the oh-so-natural instinct to avoid the unpleasant becomes the root of hatred. It leads to war: war within, war without. Entertaining aversion is a slippery slope.