Great Throughts Treasury

"It is impossible for you to become good by doing something, because the act is based on the assumption that you are not already good."

"The discoveries of how we can grow and the insights we need to have really come from the inside out. To have genuine empathy, not as a make-nice tool but as an understanding, is essential to the next step."

"War is a failure of human intelligence."

"There's nothing wrong with capitalism that ethics wouldn't cure."

"I always say that it's much more powerful to be good than to be right. Why? Because good guides us in moving towards that which is good. Being right makes a deadlock, an enemy, and it sucks us down from expanding our perception. It also frightens the other person and makes the position more stubborn."

"What is important is our power of choice: our power to choose what we pay attention to—and to pay attention wholesomely to what works and what is good."

"We mostly feel fearful because we feel powerless. We feel powerless, I contend, because of a style of thinking that splits information in two poles that makes us lose all the operative information we need to solve the problem."

"A culture of denial is the prerequisite of injustice and war; it is a thinking problem more than political. War is merely a failure of maturity."

"Box thinking is a comfortable narrow-minded either/or, mental trap that makes us ?right? but also creates the feeling of distaste, fear or hate of the other, which is ?wrong?. This both harms us and creates humiliation: a poison to human dignity that screams for defense at all cost. The cost is high. It is a trap that requires more and more blindness?and desperately the fruit becomes simplistically, all rotten or all ripe?because of the fear of seeing that you may be the one that is ?wrong?. It is why denial and ignorance seem the only defense."

"Humanity has an expansively unique possibility it could choose. It is in our power and conscious ability to choose the next step of development by healing ourselves, which is done by empowering our honesty. And we need to help each other by giving each other a break. We need to give our selves a break too."

"If you want to do something for world peace, cultivate kindness, stop hating, and have hope for all individuals including you."

"It is a sign of maturity when you can communicate information about corrections, and it is sent and received with goodwill. When people are judgmental and must self righteously or condescendingly blame others, they reveal their internal intolerance to their own faults or shadow. This in turn creates self-hatred or at least, low self-esteem that drives them to cover their fear with arrogance, domination and intolerance of others. This is the root of our dysfunction."

"My theory is that humans have evolved to a unique readiness to see enough of what is good; and enough of what is able to be achieved, with courage and earnestness: to manifest a collective quantum leap in consciousness. I believe we are now at a rather narrow window?of huge opportunity."

"Further, it is why such brilliant beautiful beings that humans beings are?use their magnificent brains to keep themselves ignorant, drugged, fighting, escapist, greedy, persecuting, or decadent. It is why great civilizations reach a certain point ?that of facing themselves?and if they don?t face and self-correct themselves?they decay and fall. Decadence and self-delusion always proceeds a fall. Matching energy keeps it running as we escalate our projection and denial into more and more escapist destruction, decadence, persecution and war."

"Healing wounds and claiming truth is the crux of the matter for everybody, whether they realize it or not."

"Not being judgmental gives our minds and even our bodies, a chance to shift out of polarized, immature thinking. A chance to forgive others and ourselves so we can all face mistakes??as the wonderful insights for change that they are. We need to know too that there is a big difference between making a judgment and being judgmental."

"Nothing will ensure war more certainly or entrench rivalries more seriously than for or against thinking!"

"One of the reasons we get very stuck when making jumps in awareness is that we know what we are looking for, but we don't want to risk going into unfamiliar territory to find it. Let there be joy when you step into the unknown. It takes courage. It takes heart--and that is the evolutionary leap."

"Patriotism is a beautiful thing - to love your country, your land, and your people and have a deep emotional affinity. But it can be so easily corrupted to polarized thinking, to harming others and ourselves if we don't realize what it is that is beautiful. It is beautiful because it is love."

"There is only one thing keeping us from having heaven on earth: we can't believe it! Why? Because we don't want to be wrong - so we'll be right and make it hell!"

"There is only one thing keeping us from Heaven on earth - We can't believe it."

"To have genuine empathy, not as a make-nice tool but as an understanding, is essential to the next step."

"War comes from our being immature, fearful, and injured, and not being able to conceive of other ways of solving problems. It comes from an immature style of thinking where creativity and overview is scarce."

"We have magnificent brains, but we use a great deal of our brilliance to keep ourselves stuck and ignorant, to keep ourselves from not shining. We are so afraid of our beauty and radiance and brilliance because it scared the adults around us when we were children."

"We need to make judgments, of course - to observe what works and what doesn't, but not to be judgmental. Being judgmental is a form of madness that screams powerlessness and ruthlessness. When we can make good judgments and update them and not stay rigid, we come from goodwill and promote goodwill back to us."

"We will and must make observations/judgments like, the fruit is ripe or rotten, but judgmental is a stagnant, unmoving boxing of thought that criticizes with bad feeling. It is an energetic put down to feel superior. It is not a helpful critique, or just knowledge."

"What matters is to respond to our children in a way that whole-heartedly makes us and them feel good. Responding from that respect-filled, vulnerable, innocent place--transforms our lives and relationships."

"When we don't have information, we go to the simplest outlook, to black and white. But then we have to lie to ourselves. Black is never as black as you're painting it and white is never as white."

"You can't take sides when you know the earth is round."