Sublime

But neurologically, as the biologist Robert Sapolsky has observed, the response of empathy and the response of action are two very different and distinct physiological circuits.

This work is deeply personal, and it invites you to do your own transformative work, because who you are is more important than what you teach.

Flint’s mother died. Theoretically, Flint’s instincts should have urged him to survive. But three weeks later, he went back to the spot where his mother had breathed her last and curled up in a fetal ball. Within a few days, he, too, was dead. An autopsy revealed that there was nothing physically wrong with Flint: no infection, no disease, no

the longest-living participants had, among other things, consistently dedicated themselves to helping others.

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man—his courage and hope, or lack of them—and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.

students: If you do something to a patient that you would not do to your friends or children, consider whether you are unwittingly replicating a trauma from the patient’s past.

No person is free who is tied to a defensive position. This is true of the neurotic character who erects psychological walls and armors himself muscularly as a protection against possible hurt, only to find that the hurt he feared is locked into his being by this very process.

the adults in their lives had become so naively overprotective that they deluded themselves into thinking that not talking about suffering would in some way magically protect their children from it.