Inspirational quotes by Phil Cousineau, Richard Moss, and others

From sanction we evolve to victory, as Phil Cousineau nostalgically relates, stating: “No one I’ve ever met has pronounced the word ‘wonderful’ like my father. He stressed the first syllable, ‘won,’ as if the adjective did indeed have its roots in victory and triumph.” (The Art of Pilgrimage, p8)

"...our misery proceeds ten times more from the outward bondage of opinion and custom than from any inward corruption or depravation of Nature;" lamented Thomas Traherne, "and that it is not our parents' loins so much as our parents' lives, that enthralls and blinds us."(Centuries of Meditation, p155)

As H. Rider Haggard states, describing one of his characters, "As for his mind, he was brilliant and keen witted, but not a scholar. He had not the dullness necessary for that result."(SHE, p21)

This realization was enough to have Henry Miller declare of Conrad Moricand- a brilliant but obsessive thinker, who 'lived by the letter' of his understandings, and therefore lived not at all- "...he had chosen the path of knowledge, and... in doing so he had clipped his own wings." (Big Sur, p287)

Richard Moss, author of The Black Butterfly, corroborates this point, writing, "Practically speaking there is a lot we know and can be certain of. But the appearance of knowing and of certainty in the ordinary sense always means we are operating in a restricted context."(p37)

Again, we have been lied to all along, deceived from the moment we could listen, tortured with irrelevant, invented, or contrived facts; what we 'know' we do not need to know, and, more precisely, what we 'do not know' we absolutely need ...to not-know it.

As Woody Allen found: "...perhaps nothing we can know is worth knowing." And, the corollary to this is that ...everything we can unknow is worth unknowing!

It is our task to release all judgment, all expectation, all ideas, and open up again to the brilliance of unhindered, unknowing absorption, for "The more layers of information you add, the more you obscure [life’s] pure presence [but] ...you can't destroy its mystery" rejoices Judith Williams. (from The Georgia Strait, Nov 12-19 '98)

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These inspirational quotes are taken from the unpublished writings of Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.