“Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—inmorals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing ararified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment ofany height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast withsomeone else's depth or failure.”

“The morality thatgoes with this understanding is, above all, the frank recognition of yourdependence upon enemies, underlings, out-groups, and, indeed, upon allother forms of life whatsoever. Involved as you may be in the conflictsand competitive games of practical life, you will never again be able toindulge in the illusion that the "offensive other" is all in the wrong, andcould or should be wiped out.”

“This state of affairs is known technically as the "double-bind." Aperson is put in a double-bind by a command or request which containsa concealed contradiction...This is a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don'tsituation which arises constantly in human (and especially family)relations...The social doublebind game can be phrased in several ways:The first rule of this game is that it is not a game.Everyone must play.You must love us.You must go on living.Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role.Control yourself and be natural.Try to be sincere.Essentially, this game is a demand for spontaneous behavior of certainkinds. Living, loving, being natural or sincere—all these arespontaneous forms of behavior: they happen "of themselves" likedigesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquirethat unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyonedeplores—weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless likeforced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generatethem. Faith—in life, in other people, and in oneself—is the attitude ofallowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in itsown time.”

“To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.”

“Here is the vicious circle: if you feel separate from your organic life, you feel driven to survive; survival -going on living- thus becomes a duty and also a drag because you are not fully with it; because it does not quite come up to expectations, you continue to hope that it will, to crave for more time, to feel driven all the more to go on.”

“Now as you plumb out into the universe and explore it astronomically, it gets very strange. You begin to see things in the depths that at first sight seem utterly remote. How could they have anything to do with us. They are so far off and so unlikely. And in the same way, when you start probing into the inner workings of the human body you come across all kinds of funny little monsters and wiggly things that bear no resemblance to what we recognize as the human image. Look at a spermatozoon under a microscope. That little tadpole! And how can that have any connection with a grown human being. It’s so unlike, you see. It’s foreign feeling. And you get the creeps, a foreign feeling, about yourself...But what we will always find out in the end when we meet the very strange thing, there will one day be the dawning recognition: Why that’s me.”

“For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you willnever be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be livingfor some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit backwith full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entireeducation has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparingyou for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.”