Joseph Massey

“I think that taking life seriously means something like this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation . . . of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false. —Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death1”
― Timothy J. Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

“Authentic awakening has nothing to do with the accumulation of good feelings or with identification with a role, albeit a spiritual one. It’s not about being happy when things are going your way; it’s about being anchored in the light of awareness, come what may. It’s in the darkest moments that we get pulled by the archaic patterns of dysfunctional thinking. Authentic awakening says yes even to the darkness and has the compassion to meet what is truly here without denial or escapism or the attempt to fix it. The light within you, when resolutely recognized in all circumstances, has the capacity to embrace everything. This uncompromising acceptance is, in fact, your true nature. It is nothing less than the unbounded space of consciousness that is here, beneath and beyond the story of who you think you are. To deeply rest here is a new way of being. Whether the river flows gently or turbulently, to rest here means that something obsolete will die and a radically new way of living will be born.”
― Amoda Maa Jeevan, Embodied Enlightenment: Living Your Awakening in Every Moment

“Any attempt to fix the external world becomes a manipulation of shadows. It never works. We must return to a place where it’s possible to make real change: the self. Once we learn how to do it, the process will free us from poisonous habits gleaned at an early age. They say, “If you save one life in your lifetime, the gates of heaven open and you’re welcome.” That life should be one’s own. Suffering doesn’t come to an end. What does end is our inability to transform suffering into love and joy. We share happiness with people who are ready to receive it. The alternative is simple: to reincarnate again and again, to go through a wind tunnel of pain and suffering until we free ourselves from life’s invisible prison, and learn that happiness is the only real success on earth.”
― Stuart Perrin, Navigating The River of Time

“The most surreal consequence of melting ice and rising seas is that together they are a kind of time machine, so real that they are altering the length of our days. It works like this: As the glaciers melt and the seas rise, gravity forces more water toward the equator. This changes the shape of the Earth ever so slightly, making it fatter around the middle, which in turns slows the rotation of the planet similarly to the way a ballet dancer slows her spin by spreading out her arms. The slowdown isn’t much, just a few thousandths of a second each year, but like the barely noticeable jump of rising seas every year, it adds up. When dinosaurs roamed the Earth, a day lasted only about twenty-three hours.”
― Jeff Goodell, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World