Sam Keen Quotes

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Meditation, like masturbation, has until recently been considered a form of self-abuse.

Sam Keen
The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous - large souled.

Sam Keen
The first part of the spiritual journey should properly be called psychological rather than spiritual because it involves peeling away the myths and illusions that have misinformed us.

Sam Keen
Neurotic identity crises come when our defense mechanisms have been too successful and we're encapsulated in the fortress we have constructed with nothing to refresh us in our solitary confinement. So we play the old movies with their stale fears and their unrealistic hopes until we become bored enough to risk disarmament and engagement.

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.

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.

Sam Keen
The evil we previously objectified and assigned to exterior agents—devils, communists, capitalists, chauvinists, faithless lovers, the system—must be discovered within. We can no longer divide the world between good and evil. The line between saints and sinners runs down the middle of my being... I destroy my propaganda machine that automatically casts me in a favorable light and others in the shadow.

Sam Keen
Self-awareness and self-consciousness are entirely different. When I am self-conscious, it is really someone else's eyes that are watching, judging, and criticizing me. … It is these eyes that must be put out if I am to make sense of and remain in touch with my true self. And when we fail to find symbolic ways of destroying the watchers by becoming our own true witness, then the parents or authorities are sometimes literally killed.

Sam Keen
The neurosis of normality is a case of repetition compulsion caused by the repression of awareness.

Sam Keen
Freud articulated the standard opinion when he asked with supposed seriousness, 'What does a woman want?'... Today the question that is the yeast in the social dough is, 'What do men want?

Sam Keen
A man must go on a quest / to discover the sacred fire / in the sanctuary of his own belly / to ignite the flame in his heart / to fuel the blaze in the hearth / to rekindle his ardor for the earth

Sam Keen
On the pilgrim's path each man must become Moses, going on a vision quest to some mountaintop and returning with the ten or twenty commandments that he holds sacred. So long as we obey or break the rules that have been set up for us by the Giants - Parents and other Authorities - we remain good or bad children. Growing into the fullness of our humanity means that we become co-authors of the rules by which we will agree to have our lives judged.

Sam Keen
Enter each day with the expectation that the happenings of the day may contain a clandestine message addressed to you personally. Expect omens, epiphanies, casual blessings and teachers who unknowingly speak to your condition.

Sam Keen
The outlaw uses the knife to separate the persona from the self. The outlaw uses the warrior's sword to cut through his own character armor to destroy the defense mechanisms that have kept him imprisoned within the citadel of personality and role.

Sam Keen
When … some intimation of the eternal significance of my time moves through the heart of my self, it must still battle a positivistic turn of mind and mean-spirited secularism that denies the existence of the holy.

Sam Keen
It is the vocation of each person to become unique.

Sam Keen
Myth is the system of basic metaphors, images, and stories that in-forms the perceptions, memories, and aspirations of a people; provides the rationale for its institutions, rituals and power structure; and gives a map of the purpose and stages of life.

Sam Keen
Good men and good women have fire in the belly. We are fierce. Don't mess with us if you're looking for someone who will always be 'nice' to you. Nice gets you a C+ in life. We don't always smile, talk in a soft voice, or engage in indiscriminate hugs. In the loving struggle between the sexes we thrust and parry.

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
The female has learned by long experience to win by losing, to wield power in the passive-aggressive manner of the sadomasochist.

Sam Keen
In back of the outward calm … a small terrified voice cries out: I need it. I have to have it or... The end of the sentence is lost in chaos. The need is so strong that an illusion is created that it must be fulfilled, or the very existence of the self is threatened.

Sam Keen
Soul grows in communion. Word by word, story by story, for better or worse, we build our world. From true conversation - speaking and listening - communication deepens into compassion and creates community.

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.

Sam Keen
A society that trains us to specialize in making, doing, performing, and producing neglects to educate us in wonder and appreciation.

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.

Sam Keen
Hero tales suggest the price of courage is beyond the ordinary budget. They tempt us to disown the common capacity of the human spirit to transcend normality.

Sam Keen
A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.

Sam Keen
The path that leads from the persona to the self, from the adult to the outlaw, consists of learning to distinguish between false desire and true desire, or superficial desire and profound desire, or obsessive desire and free passion, … or illusory needs and real needs.

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.

Sam Keen
Living mythical-political systems are invisible to those who live within them. The problem of myth and consciousness is reflected in the old saying: We don't know who discovered water, but it certainly wasn't a fish. Myth is the sea of commonly accepted assumptions that are not questioned by the majority of those living within a system. To the average, normal member of society, the myth is what is natural and obvious.

Sam Keen