To face our painful emotions—to allow them to be felt, to acknowledge them, to listen to the messages they contain, and perhaps to describe in words what we are feeling—requires courage and honesty; it is not an exercise in self-pity. To say, “Right now I am feeling forlorn, miserable, hopeless” is not self-pity; to say, “My situation is hopeless”

Many an individual, particularly if raised in a religious home, has been taught that suffering represents a passport to salvation, whereas enjoyment is almost certainly proof that one has strayed from the proper path. Psychotherapy clients have spoken to me of times when, as children, they were ill, and a parent told them, “Don’t regret that you

Thus we can begin to see that to honor the self is to practice selfishness in the highest, noblest, and least understood sense of that word. And this, I shall argue, requires enormous independence, courage, and integrity.

Sacrifice means the surrender of a higher value in favor of a lower value or of a nonvalue. If we give up that which we do not value in order to obtain that which we do value—or if we give up a lesser value in order to obtain a greater one—this is not a sacrifice but a gain.

We have an immense repertoire of behaviors through which we deny our powerlessness in the face of death; from seeking symbolic immortality through children, flags, causes, fame, to persuading ourselves that we are indestructible by living recklessly and irresponsibly, to consoling ourselves with the belief that death is an illusion.

I can learn to notice the kinds of actions that enhance my life and the kinds that produce frustration or disappointment. I can learn to pay attention to what works and what does not work. Or, in the absence of self-awareness, I can proceed to act blindly and obliviously, not bothering myself with such questions, blaming others and feeling sorry

One of the core meanings of enlightenment is liberation from false and spurious value attachments that blind the individual to his or her true essence. When and if I learn that ultimately I am my mind and my manner of using it—when and if I understand that ego is only the internal experience of consciousness, the ultimate center of awareness—I am

Sometimes when I am stuck on some question or problem I think I should have an answer for, I tell myself, “OK, you don’t know. But if you knew, what might the answer be?” Surprisingly often, the answer appears.

In a virtuoso effort to integrate Western and Eastern psychologies, Wilber develops a concept that he describes as “the spectrum of consciousness,” which interprets different schools of psychology and therapy as being applicable to different levels of the evolutionary development of consciousness, with the Eastern vision not contradicting the