Mark Trujillo

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The downside is that by recognizing our total dependence on powers beyond ourselves, we can be filled with an overwhelming sense of religious obligation and guilt at not fulfilling it. One way out of this sense of inadequacy is to become an atheist. If everything happens automatically and unconsciously, if there is no purpose or providence in the world, then there is nothing to feel grateful for. But this liberation comes at a high price. Being ungrateful is often accompanied by unhappiness.”
― Rupert Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices: Transformative Experiences and Their Effects on Our Bodies, Brains, and Health

“The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil.”
― Joseph Conrad

“I cannot pretend that I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return . . . Above all, I have been a sentient being on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”
― Rupert Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices: Transformative Experiences and Their Effects on Our Bodies, Brains, and Health