Quotes About Experience

Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed-to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science-and it means as little to us as a color means to a blind man.

that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done.

All revelations are personal, that's why all revelations are suspect.

Your business, son." "Yes. Self. I must grok each cusp myself alone. And so must you . . . and so must each self. Thou art God." "I don't accept the nomination." "You can't refuse it. Thou art God and I am God and all that groks is God, and I am all that I have ever been or seen or felt or experienced. I am all that I grok.

But, to tell the truth, a soldier doesn't notice a war much more than a civilian does, except his own tiny piece of it and that just on the days it is happening.

the trouble with "lessons from history" is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins.

In the course of nearly a century of gusty living he had been broke many times, had several times been wealthier than he now was; he regarded both conditions as he did shifts in the weather, and never counted his change.

At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that "news" is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different—in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.

A thing can be fine on paper but utterly crummy in the field.

Hell, was no military man; was computer technician who had bumbled into wrong field.

Dress yourself in heavy fishing waders, put on an overcoat and boxing gloves and a bucket over your head, then have somebody strap two sacks of cement across your shoulders and you will know what a space suit feels like under one gravity.

He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done.

however the trouble with "lessons from history" is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins.

I spent that summer pushing an idiot stick

beauty will lure a man into bed, but it won't bring him back a second time, unless he's awfully young or very stupid.

There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularized for the masses; they take years of skull sweat. This be treason in an age when ignorance has come into its own and one man's opinion is as good as another's.

Her frail body, although still agile as a cricket under the Moon's weak pull, was not up to heavy work with a wrench, but her eyes were sharper—and much more experienced—than those of the twins.

a thousand reasoned opinions are never equal to one case of diving in and finding out.

You must understand that when you approach the unconscious you are dealing with one the most powerful and autonomous forces in human experience.

Perhaps one of the greatest jokes of my life is that I first went to India to be spiritualized, and I came home humanized.

In tribal cultures, shamans or healers often experience an illness that gives them the insight they need to heal themselves and then bring wisdom to their people. We are still operating with the archetype of the wounded healer who has learned to cure himself and find the gold in his experience.

Marriage is a very different experience for a man than for a woman. The man is adding to his stature; his world is getting stronger, and he has risen in stature and position. He generally does not understand that he is killing the Psyche in his new wife, and that he

must do this. If she behaves strangely, or if something goes dreadfully wrong, or there are many tears, he usually doesn't understand that marriage is a totally different experience for her than for him.

Only awareness of your shadow qualities can help you to find an appropriate place for your unredeemed darkness and thereby create a more satisfying experience. To not do this work is to remain trapped in the tedium, loneliness, agitations, and disappointments of a circumscribed life rather than awakening to your higher calling.