Have you ever noticed that there is no running away from anything? That, sooner or later, the things that you don’t want to deal with and try to escape from, or paper over and pretend aren’t there, catch up with you— especially if they have to do with old patterns and fears? The romantic notion is that if it’s no good over here, you have only to go

If you want out, if you want a decent life, you had better not devote your life to avoiding psychological pain. You had better not spend your life worrying about whether people like you or whether your car impresses people. What kind of life is that? It is a life of pain. You may not think that you feel pain that often, but you really do. To spend

Neurosis is a substitute for real suffering. Fearfulness is the most common state in a life that asks for no real courage.

the psychotherapist Bruce Tift, ‘we don’t have to consciously participate in what it’s like to feel claustrophobic, imprisoned, powerless, and constrained by reality’.12 This struggle against the distressing constraints of reality is what some old-school psychoanalysts call ‘neurosis’, and it takes countless forms, from workaholism and commitment-p

we realize, “I have no choice but to go beyond myself if I want to realize living truth.” All thought roads lead to the same hamster wheel of seeking and craving—promising everything and delivering nothing.