Grace & Grit Quotes

“I was slowly learning that love did not mean holding on, which I had always thought, but rather letting go.”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“We’re in the same position as any scientist. All we have to go on is experiential evidence. And sooner or later we have to trust our own experience, because that’s all we really have. Otherwise it’s a vicious circle. If I fundamentally distrust my experience, then I must distrust even my capacity to distrust, since that is also an experience. So sooner or later I have no choice but to trust, trust my experience, trust that the universe is not fundamentally and persistently going to lie to me. Of course we can be mistaken, and sometimes experiences are misleading, but on balance we have no choice but to follow them. It’s a type of phenomenological imperative. And especially mystical experiences—if anything, as you say, they are more real, not less real, than other experiences.” I”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“continuously horrific hell permeated by a constantly perfect heaven.”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: A Love Story

“Ingredients 2–3 cans dark red kidney beans (drained) 2 stalks celery, chopped 2 onions, chopped 2 green peppers, chopped 2–3 T olive oil 1 28-oz. can whole tomatoes 3–4 cloves garlic 3–4 T chili powder 1–2 T cumin 2–3 T fresh parsley 2–3 T oregano 1 can beer 1 cup cashews 1/2 cup raisins (optional) Heat oil in large pot; sauté onions until clear, then add celery, green pepper, and garlic; cook for 5 minutes or so. Add tomatoes (with juice; break the tomatoes into small chunks) and kidney beans; reduce to simmer. Add chili powder, cumin, parsley, oregano, beer, cashews, and raisins (opt.). Simmer as long as you want. Garnish with fresh parsley or grated cheddar cheese.”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“For you soon learn that there are some things that simply should not be discussed with the loved one; and conversely, there are some things the loved one ought not discuss with you. I think most of my generation believes that “honesty is the best policy” and that spouses should discuss every single thing that bothers them with the other spouse. Bad plan. Openness is important and helpful, but only so far. At some point, openness can become a weapon, a spiteful way to hurt someone—“But I was only telling the truth.”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“The only way I could discover how to help someone was by listening. Only when I heard what they were trying to say could I get a sense of what they needed, of the issues they were confronting at that time, of the kind of help that would really help at that specific moment.”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“Since nobody knows what caused your cancer, I don’t know what you should change in order to help cure it. So why don’t you try this. Why don’t you use cancer as a metaphor and a spur to change all those things in your life that you wanted to change anyway. In other words, repressing certain emotions may or may not have helped cause the cancer, but since you want to stop repressing those emotions anyway, then use the cancer as a reason, as an excuse, to do so. I know advice is cheap here, but why not take the cancer as an opportunity to change all those things on your list that can be changed?” The”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

“She could be obstinate; strong people often are. But it came out of that core of vivid presence and wakefulness, and it was bracing. People often came away from Treya more alive, more open, more direct. Her presence changed you, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but it changed”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: A Love Story

“It’s not hard to understand why people felt alive in her presence, vivified, awakened.”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: A Love Story

“This radical Love made this five-year period not only the worst hell I have ever endured, but by far the happiest period in my entire life.”
― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: A Love Story

“One has to die to the separate self in oder to find the universal Self or God […] as the mystics everywhere have repeatedly told us, it is only in accepting death that real life is found. (A Universe within, p. 79)”
― Ken Wilber, Grace & Grit: Spirituality & Healing in the Life & Death of Treya Killam Wilber