I learned a history not then written in books but one passed from generation to generation on the steps of moonlit porches and beside dying fires in one-room houses, a history of great-grandparents and of slavery and of the days following slavery; of those who lived still not free, yet who would not let their spirits be enslaved.
You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has, you’ve got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting. Your problem is you’re afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You’re too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You’d rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and I look and I see your beauty, even if you don’t.
The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be exaggerated.
We have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.
She loved the serene brutality of the ocean, loved the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.
It was the last day of school, and I was walking with my dad. . . . Suddenly, he paused, looked at me intently, and said, “Son, you’re a black male, and that’s two strikes against you.” To the general public, anything that I did would be perceived as malicious and deserving of severe punishment, and I had to govern myself accordingly. I was seven years old.
This troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those who receive the rewards are totally separate from those who shoulder the burdens. It is not a wise leadership.
“Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.”
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all — but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.
