"... We must always see our own feelings of uneasiness as being our chance for "making the growth choice rather than the fear choice"..."
"... The therapist is an observer and a catalyst. He has no power to "cure" the patient, for cure is entirely out of his hands..."
"... the patient is already fully equipped for getting well..."
"... People seek the guidance of a psychotherapist when their usual, self-limited, risk-avoiding ways of operating are not paying off, when there is distress and disruption in their lives..."
"... though the patient enters therapy insisting that he wants to change, more often than not, what he really wants is to remain the same and to get the therapist to make him feel better. His goal is to become a more effective neurotic..."
"... This listening is that which will facilitate the patient's telling of his tale, the telling that can set him free..."
"... life is just what it seems to be, a changing, ambiguous, ephemeral mixed bag..."
"... The pilgrim is at war with himself, in a struggle with his own nature. All of the truly important battles are waged within the self..."
"... But as a therapist, I know that though the patient learns, I do not teach..."
"... The metaphor of his journey is a bridge, and as the pilgrim crosses it, "a fiend clutches at him from behind; and Death awaits him at the farther end"..."
"... you can stay at home, safe in the familiar illusion of certainty. Do not set out without realizing that "the way is not without danger. Everthing good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things". It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty."
The Healing Metaphors of the Guru.
"... In reality, what he [guru] offers them is guidance toward accepting their imperfect, finite existence in an ambiguous and ultimately unmanageable world..."
"... Even the contemporary Western guru, the psychotherapist, can only be of help to that extent to which he is a fellow-pilgrim..."
"... The Truth does not make people free. Facts do not chance attitudes..."
"... the security of known misery, rather than openness to the risk of the unknown or the untried..."
"... In the religion, myths, and literature of every culture, the personal motives and conflicts that men would disown are represented by gods and ghosts, by spirits and visions..."
"... What the guru knows that the seeker does not is that we are all pilgrims. There is no master, and there is no student. At its worst, the fundamental humanity of the guru may be expressed in his inevitable corruptibility..."
"... The arrogance of the guru may tempt him to self-elevation, or he may be done in by his followers' needs to make more of themselves through his apotheosis..."
"... The teaching mission of the guru is an attempt to free his followers from him..."
"... The guru instructs the pilgrims in the tradition of breaking with tradition, in losing themselves so that they may find themselves."
Disclosing the Self.
"The guru instructs by metaphor and parable, but the pilgrim learns through of his own tale..."
"... it is the compelling power of the storytelling that distinguishes men from beasts. The paradoxical interstice of power and vulnerability, which makes a man most human, rests on his knowing who he is right now, because he can remember who has been, and because he knows who he hopes to become..."
"... The contemporary pilgrim is a person separated from the life-infusing myths that supported tribal man..."
"... Today, each man must work at telling his own story if he is to be able to reclaim his personal identity..."
"... The basic presumption is that the telling of the tale will it-self yield good counsel. This second look at his personal history can transform a man from a creature trapped in his past to one who is freed by it. But the telling is not all..."
"... as each man tells his tale, there must be another there to listen..."
"... A man not only needs someone to hear his tale, but someone to care as well..."
"... Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain..."
"... that pain in each of us that can from time to time be eased, but from which there is no final escape, save death..."
"... I try to be guided by Carl Whitaker's advice to feed the patient not when he is crying that he is hungry, but only when I feel the milk overflowing from my own nipples..."
"... who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone..."
"... Before a man can be free, first he must choose freedom. Then the hard works begins..."
"... Though I believe that the only real danger lies in that which is hidden, disclosure of myself must precede disclosure to the other..."
"... As a child, I was so often lonely and out of it that if I had not found the tales of others in the books I read, I believe I would have died..."
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!
Dr. Sheldon B. Kopp
Dr. Sheldon B. Kopp
