“Most of us realize, when we are not too scared to look at it, that we are very lonely people. We don’t know why or how it happens, but even in our own families, even among our friends, and even with a boyfriend or girlfriend, we often feel isolated and lonely. Even in the most intimate relationship with somebody, we are thinking about ourselves, our fears of being abandoned, our insecurities. The result is even more loneliness, more dependency on people and things, and the suffering that comes from all that. We have made such a habit of all this fear and suffering, we forget, or have never been taught, that these habits, biological and cultural as well as personal habits, can be changed. It is true we have inherited aggressive survival and territorial instincts from our ancestors, the animals we once were; but our brains also have the intelligence to decide when those are appropriate and when to change our behavior…
If you don’t understand your own thinking, whatever you do think has little meaning. Without knowledge of your own biases and the impediments of bio-logical or personal prejudice, without understanding your fears, your hurt, your anger, without the ability to see through and beyond them, all your thinking, all your relationships will be fogged or skewed. After all, self-knowledge is the basis for relationship.”