7 Quotes by James Hollis PhD

To serve the gods, not the ego, not the tribe, not one's parents, not one's prior picture, is to transform.

Anxiety is treated by a search for certainty. And certainty – wherever we think we've found it – will lead to dogma. And wherever we have dogma, in time, it leads to rigidity. And that rigidity ultimately leads to idolatry.

Fate is what is given to us; destiny is what we are summoned to become. In the interplay of the two, human character plays a role. Hubris, or the fantasy that we know enough to know enough, seduces us toward choices that lead to unintended consequences. Hamartia, the failure to see clearly enough, to see humbly enough, is a lens through which we imperfectly envision the world, unavoidably distorting and reductive, but convincing at the moment nonetheless.

Doubt is a form of radical relationship to and respect for mystery. The absence of doubt is a very scary thing. What that leads to is psychological, political, economic, spiritual fundamentalism. It leads to rigidity. It leads to a profound defense of the ego's security needs above all things [...]The absence of doubt ultimately leads to a violation of the mystery itself.

... one is an observation by that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it tends to happen outside, as fate. Now its a pretty scary thought, whatever i am not aware of is likely to enter my world from the outside.

Each of us is a prisoner to some degree of his dream.

In other words to break an addiction we have to be able to face the unfaceable, think the unthinkable, bear the unbearable... The only way to go through them again is to go through them, to go down in that anxiety state and to feel what we really feel, is to go through and to break the tyranny of the addiction