The program of the soul

The relentless desire for satiation, desire for escape from struggle, desire for flesh, for success, for any sweet taste in the mouth - all may come at the expense of fealty to the soul. All may imprison the person in the narrowest of cells. This is not to suggest that asceticism equals love of the soul. Sometimes the soul wishes to savor flesh, good food and wine, and the raucous, raunchy, erotic, ecstatic joie de vivre that serves the life force - Eros. The soul desires ever-greater life, and what it desires may have little to do with any of our ego's schemes - for satiation, for peace, for release from struggle and conflict. The program of the soul will seldom be found in flight, but rather in places of spiritual risk and psychic danger - all in service to larger life.

James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

That bewildered and fearful recoil

Rather than face the contingency of my existence, I flee it. This existential flight is the diabolic undercurrent of human life. It is that bewildered and fearful recoil against having been born and having to die, that brooding anxiety that is not anxious about anything in particular. Its quivering unease is like the lazy collision of two rings of ripples on water: one a reverberation from the shock of birth, the other an inimation of the shock of death.

Stephen Batchelor, Living With the Devil