Robert Augustus Masters > Quotes

“When transcendence of our personal history takes precedence over intimacy with our personal history, spiritual bypassing is inevitable. To not be intimate with our past—to not be deeply and thoroughly acquainted with our conditioning and its originating factors—keeps it undigested and unintegrated and therefore very much present,”
― Robert Augustus Masters, Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters

“Where feeling is reaction, emotion is adaptation. So feeling is an instantaneous, nonreflective (there’s no time for reflection!) arising, but emotion is all about how we handle that feeling.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, Emotional Intimacy: A Comprehensive Guide for Connecting with the Power of Your Emotions

“Blind compassion is rooted in the belief that we are all doing the best that we can. When we are driven by blind compassion, we cut everyone far too much slack, making excuses for others’ behavior and making nice in situations that require a forceful “no,” an unmistakable voicing of displeasure, or a firm setting and maintaining of boundaries. These things can, and often should, be done out of love, but blind compassion keeps love too meek, sentenced to wearing a kind face. This is not the kindness of the Dalai Lama, which is rooted in courage, but rather a kindness rooted in fear, and not just the fear of confrontation, but also the fear of not coming across as a good or spiritual person. When we are engaged in blind compassion we rarely show any anger, for we not only believe that compassion has to be gentle, we are also frightened of upsetting anyone, especially to the point of their confronting us.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters

“So let’s consider other factors or qualities that ought to—but generally don’t—count for much in making a male a “real” man, factors that many men keep in the shadows: vulnerability, empathy, emotional transparency and literacy, the capacity for relational intimacy—all qualities more commonly associated with being female than male.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“The fiery intensity at the heart of anger asks neither for smothering nor mere discharge, but for a mindful embrace that does not require any dilution of passion, any lowering of the heat, nor any muting of the essential voice in the flames.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, Emotional Intimacy: A Comprehensive Guide for Connecting with the Power of Your Emotions

“clearly healing and potently integrative. What spiritual bypassing would have us rise above is precisely what we need to enter, and enter deeply, with as little self-numbing as possible. To this end, it is crucial that we see through whatever practices we have, spiritual or otherwise, that tranquilize rather than illuminate and awaken us. Despite”
― Robert Augustus Masters, Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters

“Shame is probably our most hidden and misunderstood emotion. It’s also the one most likely to motivate men to stay away from the help they need—and need to admit they need—which can range from psychotherapy to addiction programs. Performance anxiety is driven by shame; so is the drive to overachieve; so is the pressure to man up. Shame is behind the scenes much more often than you might think.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Turning toward our pain is about bringing into our heart all that we have rejected in ourselves, all that we have ostracized, disowned, neglected, bypassed, shunned, excommunicated, or otherwise deemed as unworthy in ourselves. Our heart somehow has room for it all.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, Meeting the Dragon: Ending Our Suffering By Entering Our Pain

“Emotional illiteracy has much of its rooting in the historical devaluation of emotion relative to cognition. Thinking clearly is often associated with a muting of our emotions. But rationality and emotion work best when they work together.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Seeds grow in the dark—so do we. Let’s stop making such a virtue out of the light and turn toward what’s in the shadows and breathe it in, breathe it here meeting it face-to-face until we realize with more than mind that what we are seeing is none other than us in endarkened disguise Seeds grow in the dark—so do we. Let’s not be blinded by light let’s unwrap the night building a faith too deep to be spoken a recognition too central to be broken until even the darkest of days can light our way”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Softening can be a profoundly healing undertaking, helping to make more room for pain and difficulty, enriching a man’s capacity for deep relationship, rendering him more flexible and permeable, more heartful—especially when that softening coexists with stead-fastness and firmness. An example of such coexistence can be seen in fierce compassion, wherein we’re both forceful and soft, both angered and caring.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Emotion is far more verb than noun, being not some entity or thing we can get out of our system but a vital process always in some degree of flux.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, Emotional Intimacy: A Comprehensive Guide for Connecting with the Power of Your Emotions

“The more our self-esteem is tied to our competency or perceived competency, the more debilitating shame will be for us, whether it’s coming from us or from others.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“CULTIVATING NOT-KNOWING Though not-knowing is natural to us and not all that unfamiliar—as when we wordlessly resonate and interact with the radiant presence emanating through a baby’s eyes—the capacity for it gets easily pushed into the background by our conditioned knowing.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark: Breaking Free from the Hidden Forces That Drive You

“The more deeply we dive, the less we mind upsetting waves, finding within intimate relationship an increasingly compelling invitation to seek and find freedom through our shared heart, our shared body, our shared limitations, our shared boundlessness, our shared mortality, our shared yes, our shared being, our shared all...

P.14”
― Robert Augustus Masters, Transformation through Intimacy: The Journey toward Awakened Monogamy