Self-Guided Tour

Blessed be the longing that brought you here And quickens your soul with wonder. May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe. May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take. May the forms of your belonging–in love, creativity, and friendship– Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul. May the one you long for long for you. May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire. May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling. May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world. May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage. May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency. May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

When two people are 'in love,' people commonly say that they are 'more than just friends.' But in the long run, they seem to treat each other as less than friends. Most people think that being 'in love' is a much more intimate, much more 'meaningful,' relationship than 'mere' friendship. Why, then, do couples refuse each other the selfless love, the kindness and good will, that they readily give to their friends? People can't ask of their friends that they carry all their projections, be scapegoats for all their moods, keep them feeling happy, and make life complete for them. Why do couples impose these demands on each other? Because the cult of romance teaches us that we have the right to expect that all our projections will be borne--all our desires satisfied, and all our fantasies made to come true--in the person we are 'in love' with. In one of the Hindu rites of marriage, the bride and groom make to each other a solemn statement: 'You will be my best friend.' Western couples need to learn to be friends, to live with each other in a spirit of friendship, to take the quality of friendship as a guide through the tangles we have made of love.

Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.