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"Yet in this moment, when you feel like you are about to become a total zombie controlled entirely by fate you realize there is no fate unless there is something to be fated. There is no trap without someone to be caught. There is no compulsion unless there is also freedom"

"This lack of freedom is what points to the existence of freedom. The fact that there is something at all always must point to its opposite. We watched helpless at the shadow before realizing that we do not only control the shadow but that we *are* the shadow."

(The above 2 are a bit woo. Taking a bit from The Elephant in the Brain, the unfree "self" can be thought of as the rationalization engine. It's an involuntary reaction to the environment. The shadow is "trapped" but the person is free.)

"To play to be relaxed for work is not to play, and so to work in order to play is not work. No work is done well unless it too is play."

"Though playing is trivial as in playing with toys, it is also sincere, when playing an instrument. To want love to be sincere is better than to want it to be serious."

"Anyone who brags about knowing this doesn't understand it and is a veiled ego using it in the game of spiritual one-upmanship."

"It is also deeply offensive to those who do not understand and who honestly believe themselves to be lonely spirits as you've created an in/out dynamic. "You're not good enough to be 'in', follow my teachings and you will be."

"Sages are not models of virtue, they come with all their human flaws. But involved as you may be in conflicts, you can no longer see the enemy as something to be eliminated but a partner in a game."