JohnPRyan

“In it Jesus indicates that his hearers have a spark of the divine that had a heavenly origin. This world we live in is a cesspool of suffering that he calls a corpse. A person’s inner being (the light within) has tragically fallen into this material world and become entrapped here (sunk into “poverty”), and in that condition has become forgetful of its origin (become “drunk”). It needs to be reawakened by learning the truth of both this world and its own heavenly origins. Jesus is the one who conveys this truth. Once the spirit within learns the truth, it will strip off this material body (symbolized as clothes to be removed) and escape this world, returning to the divine realm, whence it came.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“He believed that narcissism is a chronic search for self-preservation and the need to protect the psyche. In his telling, the origin of narcissism is likely some form of unresolved conflict from childhood that is playing out in adulthood. In one of the wisest descriptions of narcissism, Freud stated, “Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.”
― Ramani Durvasula, "Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility

“Trolls hurt people—their words turn news sites, social media sites, and other collective posting spaces into toxic spaces. Even when the reader is aware that the person posting such vitriol and hate is, at best, a coward operating from the anonymity of an alias, simple exposure to this hateful, uncivil, baiting, and cruel abuse contributes to the larger toxicity in which we are all currently living and that is negatively impacting everyone’s health and well-being.”
― Ramani Durvasula, "Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility

“God is a thought that makes everything straight crooked and everything that stands whirl.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Complete Works of Nietzsche: including Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, Human All Too Human, The Birth of Tragedy, and many more