Sam Keen quotes - page 2

A society that trains us to specialize in making, doing, performing, and producing neglects to educate us in wonder and appreciation. (Sam Keen)
Beneath the smiling mask, we can see the injury that results from a deficiency of rebellion. The nice ones are never quite real. They lack self-definition, self-confidence, because they have never created boundaries and limits for themselves by making decisions. Having never dared to break the taboos they suffer from shame. Their sins are ones of omission rather than commission. They "have left undone those things they ought to have done,” most especially deciding for themselves what is good and evil. View quote
Sam Keen
Outlaw consciousness is born the moment I drop out, stop the world, cease being an actor identified with the mythic roles I have been playing in society. Change begins when I do nothing except observe. The wisdom of the railroad crossing: Stop. Look. Listen. Meditation is the healthy form of voyeurism. View quote
Sam Keen
Secular culture, with the aid of psychoanalysis, has continued the old Christian habit of observing the self only to criticize it. View quote
Sam Keen
The neurosis of normality is a case of repetition compulsion caused by the repression of awareness. View quote
Sam Keen
Within the horizon of this [western] myth, love is understood as the artificial restraining of our natural impulses toward unbridled aggression. View quote
Sam Keen
The decision to become an individual, to allow oneself to be moved by the deepest impulses of the self rather than the social consensus, can only be made with fear and trembling. View quote
Sam Keen
If you live out of a negative identity, ... others will always be cast in the mold of the enemy against whom you must struggle. View quote
Sam Keen
In the presence of our addictions, we are not free to ask what we really desire. Eros is silent. The addiction floods us with the noise of its demands, the plans for its satisfaction. There is no interval for deliberation. View quote
Sam Keen
The difference between narcissism and self-love is a matter of depth. Narcissus falls in love not with the self, but with an image or reflection of the self-with the persona, the mask. The narcissist sees himself through the eyes of another, changes his lifestyle to conform with what is admired by others, tailors his behavior and expression of feelings to what will please others. Narcissism is ... voluntary blindness, an agreement ... not to look beneath the surface. View quote
Sam Keen
There is a crucial difference between the criminal and the outlaw. The criminal is a perverse rebel who acts out against the law. ... The outlaw is a supranormal individual who cares about others too much to accept the limitations on eros that are imposed by normal life. Thus the outlaw question moves outside end beyond, not against the law. While the rebel is an antinomian, merely rejecting the established, the outlaw is motivated by a quest for autonomy. (Sam Keen)
In a political situation where tyranny reigns and rebellion is not tolerated, few men and women will have the luxury of going beyond the stance of the rebel. View quote
Sam Keen
To love the carnal self means to love the body-mind. I cannot abuse my body with alcohol, stress, and self-indulgence and still claim to love my self. View quote
Sam Keen
The gentlest and most insidious way we are dominated by the body politic is by the official versions of the good life that are implicit in advertising and propaganda. Happiness is a new car, a color TV-fill in the gap with your own "freely chosen” artificially stimulated desire. View quote
Sam Keen
There are two questions a man must ask himself: The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?' If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in trouble. View quote
Sam Keen
Trust what moves you most deeply. View quote
Sam Keen
The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble. View quote
Sam Keen
Being impotent because they have never dared to assert themselves, they continually play the blame game. They are innocent and powerless and, therefore, others are always to blame when things go wrong. ... They have yet to bite the apple of consciousness. View quote
Sam Keen
For the adult, all the world is a stage and the personality is the mask one wears to play the assigned role. The outlaw quietly takes a seat in the back row of the theater of the mind and watches. View quote
Sam Keen
Overstimulation of the adrenal glands (with consequent exhaustion of the spirit) is the price of our incorporation within the male womb of the modern corporate society. View quote
Sam Keen
A major component of the western myth is the belief that myth is a primitive and mistaken way of thinking about the world that has been replaced by science. Commonly, the word "myth” is now used to mean an illusion or a lie... Enlightened moderns are accustomed to looking at the queer beliefs of the Mayas or the Tassaday and seeing them as mythical. But we look on our own belief systems as rational and rooted in the realities of politics and economics. As Joseph Campbell says: "Myth is other people's religion.”. (Sam Keen)
Pleasers ... make up what Earl Shorris has called "the oppressed middle,” the middle-managers who enjoy "the comforts of fearful people” and pay by submitting to their superiors' definitions of happiness and success. View quote
Sam Keen
The carrot of happiness has been dangled in front of me, just beyond my reach for as long as I can remember, and I have never gained on it. It is always still just a step beyond me. And, what's worse, I have been hypnotized by the promise so that I keep going for it, stay in the harness. The moment I turn my eyes from the carrot and ask the radical question about my true desires, I step out of the harness and begin to wander freely in search of what will satisfy my hungers. View quote
Sam Keen
A living myth remains largely unconscious for the majority. It is the reality, not the symbol. ... Some people in every culture, however, see through or beyond the myth. ... Those whose amphibious minds move both within and beyond the myth may be though of as outlaws or metaphysicians. Myth and metaphysics are related to each other in the same way that religion is related to theology. The mythical mind is unreflective. It lives unquestioningly within a horizon of the culture's images, stories, rituals, and symbols, just as the religious person rests content within the liturgy and creedal structure of the church or cult. The metaphysical mind reflects upon the myth and tries to make it conscious. It plays with the stories and images and lifts the basic presuppositions about life into the light of consciousness. In this sense, metaphysics is the thinking person's religion. View quote
Sam Keen
It is only from the perspective of the outlaw ... that we are able to see that mythically informed normality is a form of mass hypnosis. View quote
Sam Keen