I Think You've Got To Take Your

Facing The Darkness, Admitting The Pain, Allowing The Pain To Be Pain, Is Never Easy. This Is Why Courage - Big-heartedness - Is The Most Essential Virtue On The Spiritual Journey. But If We Fail To Let Pain Be Pain - And Our Entire Patriarchal Culture Refuses To Let This Happen - Then Pain Will Haunt Us In Nightmarish Ways. We Will Become Pain's Victims Instead Of The Healers We Might Become.

Healthy Mysticism Praises Acts Of Letting Go, Of Being Emptied, Of Getting In Touch With The Space Inside And Expanding This Until It Merges With The Space Outside. Space Meeting Space; Empty Pouring Into Empty. Births Happen From That Encounter With Emptiness, Nothingness. . . . Let Us Not Fight Emptiness And Nothingness, But Allow It To Penetrate Us Even As We Penetrate It.

I Consider Otto Rank To Be One Of The Great Spiritual Giants Of The Twentieth Century, A Genius As A Psychologist And A Saint As A Human Being. Though Vilified By His Original Community Of Freudians, He Never Became Bitter. He Died A Feminist And Deeply Committed To Social Justice, In 1939....his Deep Understanding Of Creativity Makes Him A Mentor For All Of Us Living In A Postmodern World....i Believe That Art And Artist, Especially Chapters 12 To 14, May Well Emerge As The Most Valuable Psychoanalysis Of The Spiritual Life In Our Time.

Compassion Is Not Pity ... Compassion Never Considers An Object As Weak Or Inferior. Compassion, One Might Say, Works From A Strength Born Of Awareness Of Shared Weakness, And Not From Someone Else's Weakness. And From The Awareness Of The Mutuality Of Us All. Thus To Put Down Another As In Pity Is To Put Down Oneself.

A Lot Of People Want To See This Idealized Version Of Heroism, All Pretty And Perfect, And I'm Not Interested In Playing The Goody-goody Hero At All.