it’s the dread of that nothingness that keeps one’s attention outwardly fixed.

“Stay with the question,” I tell them. “Don’t worry about the answer, just get the question right. Examine your assumptions.”

You’re constantly projecting an external representation of yourself that is always a work in progress, always shifting and evolving.”

More to the point, in my view, the mystical experience is something to have, not something to have had. The memory of it begins receding the moment it’s over and it quickly takes on the remote quality of a dream.

In order to break with one’s false self, one would have to break with…” “…everything.” Julie says. “Family, friends…” Her voice falters as she considers the ramifications. “Everything. Everything you are… everything you know… everything… Really everything.”

“The Tao says that the sage sees people as straw dogs, and that’s what it means; all exterior, no interior. Empty costumes populating the stage like zombies. All appearance, no substance. Yes, the unenlightened look like zombies to the enlightened; like fictional characters animated by mysterious forces. No one home. If a person were born

I used to try to be smart and now I don’t and everything works a whole lot better. Stopping being smart was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.

Sarah labors under the same misconception everyone does. She believes, in the broadest sense, that something is wrong and that she can make it right.

now you’re actually in the audience, watching the drama. I could never mistake the play for reality again, or my character for my true state. Happily, I never know what my character is going to do or say until he does it or says it, so the whole thing stays interesting.”