And the best thing I can do for others is bring a more evolved person in relationship to them. There’s a wonderful exchange in Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, where the young poet is saying, “Give me the answers, give me the answers.” And Rilke said, You’re not ready to live the answers. He said, You have to live the questions, until some distant

What kind of payoff do I get through my avoidances in life? Because there’s always a payoff. People have to start asking a different kind of question about themselves. And again, this is not self-absorption. It’s paying attention to what’s governing your life. If you don’t pay attention, nobody else is going to, and they’re going to have to pay the

Well, yes, first of all, the whole self-help industry out there is fueled by giving people tips, but if they worked, we would know it by now. The real issue is people don’t ask large questions. If you don’t ask large questions, you’re going to have a small life. I don’t say it judgmentally. I say it with sympathy. Large questions bring you a larger

Of course what people want, when they are feeling troubled by finitude, or overwhelmed by the pressure of time, is tips—they want techniques and methods and things that they can do. I know that people in the depth psychology tradition tend not to be fond of tips.

Most folks go through most days on automatic pilot and don’t reflect upon it. When you say, “Why did I do that? What was that in service to inside of me? What old button, or issue, or agenda did that hit in me? When have I been here before?” these are questions that begin to open up the mechanism working within each of us. And through that, you

That’s right. I’m going to say something outrageous here, but happiness is overrated. It’s not like it’s a steady state. If you’re thirsty, happiness is a glass of cold water, for example. But too much of it, you drown. So it’s very contextual and it’s short-lived and happiness is the by-product of being in the right relationship with your own soul

You better have a compass. And if you have a compass, then you can figure out what’s true north for you, and make your decisions.

The unreflective life is responding simply to whatever the pressures are in your environment. And if that’s how you’re going to spend your journey, full speed ahead. But there’s something inside that sickens and sours when that happens. And in my profession, strange as this may seem, we pay deep respect to something called psychopathology.

First of all, we’re always in service to something. When you’re a child you’re responding to what your parents want from you. What playmates want from you. The schoolteacher wants from you. As you get older, it’s what the employer wants from you. Your partner wants. Maybe very legitimate responding—but it takes our authority away from us. And the