Dr. James Hollis

That is to say, do you have any concept of a story that's larger than the stories of your complexes?

You see, it doesn't mean one has to be part of a religious group.

It means that you have to question what quickens the spirit in me?

What stirs me inside?

What touches me?

Where do I encounter the numinous?

And the word numinous means there's something there that causes this reaction within me.

So if you and I walk into an art museum, let's say, and you're touched by a particular painting and frightened by it or moved to tears by it or whatever, and the other person walks by and is indifferent, which is a right?

Well, it's not right or wrong.

It's this here correlates with something in here.

That's what caused that resonance.

And that resonance is your engagement with something numinous for you.

You don't have to know it or explain it or whatever, but you have to value it and ask, what is it that was touched in me?

And if it doesn't speak to me, duty or convention or expectations are insufficient to make it happen.

We can't will these things to be numinous.

Numinosity is something that's defined by one's soul and not by the collective, that's for sure.

And women and men in time, I think, will find that they have very similar goals in their life, and that's how to balance

my journey with the legitimate commitments of relationship on the other side.

And that's why we have that wonderful word sacrifice, you know, not surrender.

Sacrifice is sacra facere, to make sacred.