Quote

The more we chase away the false mysteries - those things we think we know about ourselves and others - the more mysterious our existence becomes.

Sam Keen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sam Keen
Age: 54
Author
Philosopher
Writer
Think
Mysterious
Thinking
False
Mystery
Becomes
Existence
Away
Others
Chase
Things
Mysteries

More quotes by Sam Keen

Image
To love is to return to a home we never left, to remember who we are.
Sam Keen
Image
Neurotic identity crises come when our defense mechanisms have been too successful and we're encapsulated in the fortress we have constructed with nothing to refresh us in our solitary confinement. So we play the old movies with their stale fears and their unrealistic hopes until we become bored enough to risk disarmament and engagement.
Sam Keen
Image
Throughout my life, I've had different metaphors for freedom. At one time, it was skin diving. In the ocean you feel weightless you escape from gravity.
Sam Keen
Image
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.
Sam Keen
Image
In the beginning, we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them. Propaganda precedes technology.
Sam Keen
Image
A man must go on a quest / to discover the sacred fire / in the sanctuary of his own belly / to ignite the flame in his heart / to fuel the blaze in the hearth / to rekindle his ardor for the earth
Sam Keen
Image
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.
Sam Keen
Image
Soul grows in communion. Word by word, story by story, for better or worse, we build our world. From true conversation - speaking and listening - communication deepens into compassion and creates community.
Sam Keen
Image
What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask.
Sam Keen
Image
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.
Sam Keen
Image
There has always been a part of me that saw wilderness and risk-taking as the path to freedom.
Sam Keen
Image
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.
Sam Keen
Image
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?
Sam Keen
Image
To really love a person completely is to come to a point where your stories are intertwined.
Sam Keen
Image
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.
Sam Keen
Image
I think it's increasingly hard to have deep self-knowledge without entering the darkness in some way.
Sam Keen
Image
When you genuinely lose your illusions, you begin to marvel at things, because you don't have the answers any more.
Sam Keen
Image
In the degree that we remember and retell our stories and create new ones we become the authors, the authorities, of our own lives.
Sam Keen
Image
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
Image
I've spent my life cultivating knowledge of myself. But the more I know myself, the more utterly mysterious I become.
Sam Keen