If you happen to hold that human consciousness is no more than the epiphenomenon, or secretion, of our individual brains then you are more or less trapped in your own skull. But if consciousness is open, if it can partake in a more global form of being, if it can merge with the natural world and with other beings, then, indeed, it may be possible to drop, for a time, the constraints of one's personal worldview and see reality through the eyes of others.

Human beings possess the gift of personal freedom and liberty of the mind. We each possess the sovereignty over the body and mind to define ourselves and embrace the values that we wish to exemplify. Personal autonomy enables humans to take independent action and use reason to establish moral values. We are part of nature. Consciousness, human cognition, and awareness of our own mortality allow us to script an independent survival reality and not merely react to environmental forces.

To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy.

Empathy was written from many male and female points of view because each character reacts differently to the emotional fallout from one binding circumstance

Often, the greater our ignorance about something, the greater our resistance to change.

When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what's left?