"To be embodied is to experience everything. When I am finely tuned and in touch with myself I visit the extreme emotions of ecstasy and despair but I abide in the moderate place of contentment. In neurosis (a word I hate) there is no center, only extremes; a constant oscillation between feelings of omnipotence and impotence, pseudo-joy and theatrical despair, striving after impossible ideals and dismal failure to achieve actual satisfaction. The way out is to learn to be at home in any moment, to live contentedly for the majority of the time in the middle range of feelings. The ideal is not to be burning up with passion all of the time but to live with warmth, enjoyment and awareness. Violent passions, like summer thunder storms, are occasional graces which sweep away stale tensions and clear the air for action.
"A linguistic corollary — the language of the embodied life. We need to devalue certain words and revalue others; a readjustment of our linguistic economy. Overpriced, inflated words: ecstasy, fulfillment, joy, love, far out, bliss, cosmic consciousness, the human potential. Underpriced words: good, nice, kind, fine, lovely, gentle, contentment. We need to revalue those words that give dignity to the middle range of human experience. There is nothing wrong with middle-class virtues or the middle range of emotions so long as we are not exiled from the extremes. The pathology of middle-class existence is the refusal to experience the ecstasy and terror of the human condition. The pathology of the extremes is the refusal to recognize the glory of the moderate and disciplined life."
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