Madly, deeply

The primary impediment to falling madly in love with ourselves is the smallness of our thoughts.

Coin of the realm

When a man loses his fear of pain, he stops craving pleasure. Freedom from one is freedom from the other. Pain and pleasure are back to front, front to back. One is both.

Manacled man

The sole work of the inner journey is the removal of obstacles. First among these is the small clutch of ideas we hold about ourselves. William Blake called these mental concepts “mind-forg’d manacles.”

The rich young man

We encounter many obstacles on the inner journey. Paradoxically, the most formidable of them all—a life of comfort and ease, of having more than we need—doesn’t look like an obstacle.

Unshackled

Freedom is not freedom to do this or that. It’s freedom from something.