The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

‘Goethe said that all things are metaphors.’

Love unlived is a sin against life, and mourning is one of the ways we love.

Loyalty is something you need for things you don’t love enough. When you love enough, loyalty isn’t even a question.

It’s a mess, but we didn’t make it.

‘Shame is the past. If it isn’t now, it soon will be.’

‘The only beauty the past has is that it can’t be changed.

‘Because we have a destiny, which is undeniable, our journey is a moral journey. Understanding what is Good, and what is Evil, and the differences between them, is a required step for us to assume our role as guardians of our own destiny.

Regret is a ghost of love. Regret is a nicer self that we send into the past from time to time, even though we know it’s too late to change what we said, or did. We do it because it’s human: a thing of our kind. We do it because we care, drawn by threads of shame that only fray and wither in the sea of regret.

Change is the blood of time.

Time is all wounds. Only love and forgiveness heal all wounds. Hatred always leaves a stain on the veil. But sometimes the hatred isn’t your own. Sometimes you’re chained, and the hatred beaten into you is another man’s, grown in a different heart, and it takes longer than a fading bruise to forget.

Counselling is for people too bored to tell the truth.’

‘The purpose of life is to express the set of positive characteristics to the most sophisticated degree that you can, by connecting with pure intention to others, and our planet, and to the Divine Source of all things.’

‘Express the set of positive characteristics to the best of your ability,’ Idriss replied. ‘That is the realisation of the soul, expressed in human kindness and courage.’