I have come to trust the power of a few well-chosen words to reveal to the world something I cannot say, or don’t want to say, or didn’t even know I needed to say until I saw it spelled out in front of me in the prophetic hand of the poet.

Man’s Search for Meaning,

Twice-Born people trade the safety of the known for the power of the unknown.

You cannot help each other on your quests anymore as husband and wife. Write that down. His grief at your leaving is also his fear of losing the power he has had for lifetimes. Those days are over for him, and he is in turmoil. But if you are to help him on his soul’s quest, you will leave him. It is your job—your sacred contract—to free him, and t

Here is the Book of thy Descent, Here begins the Book of the Holy Grail, Here begin the terrors, Here begin the miracles. —THE GRAIL LEGEND

When there is nothing left to lose, we find the true self—the self that is whole, the self that is enough, the self that no longer looks to others for definition, or completion, or anything but companionship on the journey. This is the way to live a meaningful and hopeful life—a life of real happiness and inner peace. This is the Phoenix Process.

If we don’t go looking for what lies beneath the surface of our lives, the soul comes looking for us.

And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Trungpa was telling me to trust what I already knew, to dignify the longings of the human heart, and to respect its romantic, quixotic nature. He was saying that life as a human being here on Earth could not be sanitized, rationalized, or tranquilized into a rigid vision of the way it’s “supposed to be.” Life would always be quirky, dynamic, changi