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Human beings are what I think of as biomythic animals: we're controlled largely by the stories we tell. When we get the story wrong, we get out of harmony with the rest of the natural order.

Sam Keen

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Sam Keen
Age: 54
Author
Philosopher
Writer
Thinking
Story
Largely
Natural
Controlled
Tell
Harmony
Order
Animals
Stories
Beings
Human
Rest
Humans
Animal
Think
Wrong

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The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble.
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Down to earth advice about the path that leads away from the kingdom of the hollow men.
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Enter each day with the expectation that the happenings of the day may contain a clandestine message addressed to you personally. Expect omens, epiphanies, casual blessings and teachers who unknowingly speak to your condition.
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If we come from good families where we have been supported well, there is a disillusionment we have to undergo in terms of the culture's values. We have to get beyond our cultural mythology to find out who we are.
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Being pretty successful, I can, of course, afford some luxuries. But I realize again and again how we have to disillusion ourselves of the idea that these things are going to give us real satisfaction.
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Compassion begins with the acknowledgment of the single inescapable truth that is the foundation for the possibility of love between human beings - an awareness of the tragic sense of life.
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Freud articulated the standard opinion when he asked with supposed seriousness, 'What does a woman want?'... Today the question that is the yeast in the social dough is, 'What do men want?
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The more we chase away the false mysteries - those things we think we know about ourselves and others - the more mysterious our existence becomes.
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What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask.
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Paranoia reduces anxiety and guilt by transferring to the other all the characteristics one does not want to recognize in oneself. It is maintained by selective perception and recall. We only see and acknowledge those negative aspects of the enemy that support the stereotype we have already created.
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Our society has been eaten up by the economic view of things, which routinely forces us to work at jobs that don't mean anything.
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The major impediment to experiencing the sacred depths of ordinary moments is the speed and distraction of contemporary life that moves to the imperatives of the global economic order.In addition, we increasingly live in a virtual world in which our reality is filtered through media and information technology.
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I think we're inevitably going to be depressed when we focus the major part of our energy and attention on something that doesn't give us meaning, only material things.
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I think it's increasingly hard to have deep self-knowledge without entering the darkness in some way.
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You come to love not by discovering the ideal individual, yet by figuring out how to see a blemished individual flawlessly.
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Mystical experiences (unlike scientific conclusions) cannot be communicated from one person to another. Philosophers and little children are continually amazed that we, unaccountably, find ourselves in a somewhat intelligible world.
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