Todd Gurley finding ways to participate in Rams OTAs

By Nick Wagoner

ESPN.com

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/13019961/todd-gurley-st-louis-rams-progressing-rehab-acl-tear

EARTH CITY, Mo. — Although St. Louis Rams running back Todd Gurley isn’t technically participating in organized team activities this week, he is doing everything he can to get a reasonable approximation.

Gurley is still rehabilitating from the torn left ACL he suffered in November. For now, Gurley is mostly limited to hanging out on the sideline with the athletic trainers. But he is not just standing around with nothing to do.

Near the start of the team’s Thursday practice, Gurley worked with athletic trainer Byron Cunningham on the side. As his teammates went through individual drills, Gurley did some high leg kicks and running. He was mostly limited to linear work that doesn’t require him to move much laterally, but he was able to do a few agility drills that required change of direction.

Gurley also stayed on the field after practice was over, running a few routes for rookie quarterback Sean Mannion. Gurley worked at about half speed and wasn’t cutting like he would in a game, but he did get some extra repetitions.

Coach Jeff Fisher said Gurley, the No. 10 overall pick in this year’s draft, is progressing well. The Rams have put no timetable on when Gurley will return to practice or games, but Fisher has indicated a willingness to be as patient as necessary.

“Todd’s doing a great job with his rehab,” Fisher said. “He’s very anxious. He’s probably a little frustrated, probably deep down inside not really happy right now, but he’s anxious to get out there right now, so that’s going well.”

During Friday’s OTAs, the Rams appeared to dial it back with Gurley. Near the end of the session, Gurley did get some one-on-one time with running backs coach Ben Sirmans.

Sirmans walked Gurley through some runs, and Gurley ran at about half speed, mixing in a couple of small cutbacks.

“I feel good. I just can’t play football right now,” Gurley said. “I’m running around and doing agility stuff. It’s just day by day.”

When not doing work on the side, Gurley said he is doing his best to stay attuned to what’s happening on the field. When the Rams switched from individual drills to team sessions, Gurley stopped his sideline work and joined his teammates in the huddle, standing close enough to hear the plays and run through them in his mind.

“[It’s good] just being able to get my rehab during practice when they are doing individual, then when team comes, I get those mental reps,” Gurley said.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/rams-report/updated-heart-condition-ends-sasser-s-time-with-rams/article_0fa3ad7e-769e-59b0-aa99-35b2ec756554.html
Heart condition ends Sasser’s time with Rams
1 hour ago • By Jim Thomas

At least as far as the Rams are concerned, wide receiver Bud Sasser’s NFL career is over before it started because of a heart condition.

Rams coach Jeff Fisher confirmed after Thursday’s OTA practice what has been rumored for several weeks, namely that Sasser could not pass his physical because of the heart condition — known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM.

In layman’s terms, it’s a thickening of the heart muscle that can make it more difficult to pump blood.

“We did some extensive studies after the draft,” Fisher said. “And it was determined and concluded by numerous physicians that he had a pre-existing condition that we don’t feel will allow him to play.”

The Rams placed Sasser on the non-football illness list, and then placed him on waived/non-football inury on Thursday. The Rams did pay the former University of Missouri star his signing bonus of $113,000. It’s possible he could be claimed by another team, but his time with the Rams is over.

Sasser was not at Rams Park on Thursday, but told the Post-Dispatch via phone: “I’m all right. It’ll work out. I’m not down. You can put that out there.”

Sasser stopped just short himself of confirming the heart condition, saying, “it’s not 100 percent true,” and adding, “we’re going to figure it out.”

Those later comments by Sasser no doubt are related to encouraging medical reports he received from a cardiologist in Dallas as well as specialists from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

“The Mayo Clinic doctor did say Bud was such a low risk, he should be able to play,” said Scott Thiel, Sasser’s agent. “The doctors at the Mayo Clinic said they had several patients that came in with that exact case that are currently playing in the NFL.”

Thiel said the Dallas cardiologist also provided a letter in which he states Sasser should be able to play.

“He said it’s not an issue,” Thiel said, speaking of the Dallas cardiologist. “He said Bud’s stress test, and different tests like that were in the 99th percentile — that he has an extremely healthy heart.”

But the Rams obviously didn’t want to take the risk, which is something Sasser and Thiel totally understood.

“The Rams have been great, I want to make sure that’s known,” Thiel said. “They’ve been nothing but class. But at the end of the day, any risk for them was too much risk.”

According to Thiel, Sasser’s condition is genetic. He’s had it from birth. To his knowledge the heart issue either didn’t show up in tests at Mizzou, or wasn’t deemed a problem.

Privacy laws prevent the university from commenting on Sasser’s medical history, but Mizzou athletics spokesman Chad Moller said the Tigers wouldn’t clear a player to play if it suspected he had a serious health issue.

Following his Mizzou career, Sasser didn’t get invited to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, so he didn’t undergo the exhaustive battery of medical tests that take place there in February.

In addition, Sasser didn’t work out or pay a predraft visit to the Rams, so the team didn’t have much medical information on him prior to the draft.

“Typically what you do is you contact the university, which we did,” Fisher said. “And this was just one of those things that kind of slipped through the cracks.”

During the predraft process, Sasser paid visits to Green Bay, Houston, Kansas City and Oakland. (Reports that he also visited Denver were erroneous.) There were rumors that some teams backed off Sasser in the draft because of the heart issue. But if that was the case, Thiel said he was unaware of it — no team alerted him about any health concerns.

There’s no doubt the Rams wanted to make it work with Sasser. There was no guarantee he’d make the final roster on a depth chart that returned the top five wide receivers from 2014. But the Rams liked his size (6-3, 219), strong hands, catch radius and ability to come down with the contested throw.

Despite a breakout 2014 season, which saw Sasser finish among the Southeastern Conference leaders in both catches (77) and yards (1,003), plus score 12 touchdowns, it was surprising that he didn’t get a Combine invite. In addition, he was not invited to any of the postseason all-star games, such as the Senior Bowl.

It all added to the chip on Sasser’s shoulder and the determination to make it in the NFL. When he finally got the call May 2 in the sixth round at No. 201 overall, Sasser could hardly contain his enthusiasm.

“Oh my gosh, if this isn’t the greatest feeling I’ve ever felt in my life, then I don’t know what would be,” Sasser said that day on a conference call with reporters.

It was hoped that he could provide some of the “sixth-round magic” that former Mizzou teammate E.J. Gaines provided as a rookie sixth-rounder a year ago — having an immediate impact at cornerback.

But then came the results of his Rams physical, follow-up results and then Thursday’s release. Sasser never took part in a Rams practice.

“You definitely have to feel for the guy,” veteran Rams wideout Kenny Britt said. “Especially when you’re this close to making your dreams come true.

“He worked so hard from grammar school, to high school and to college. You know that you get this next step and your dreams come true. Something like that is kind of sad. My heart and prayers go out to him.”

(Dave Matter of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed to this story.)

Update on Bud Sasser heart condition story; apparently Mayo Clinic specialists felt it was OK for Sasser to play. http://t.co/dgYo05GsqC

— Jim Thomas (@jthom1) June 5, 2015

That sounds like he is OK. imo

Foles getting acquainted with new team, new offense

By R.B. FALLSTROM (AP Sports Writer)

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/foles-getting-acquainted-team-offense-222552308–nfl.html

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Quarterback Nick Foles is getting to know his new St. Louis Rams teammates.

”We love him,” wide receiver Kenny Britt said Thursday after the second OTA session and first open to reporters. ”Great deep ball, he puts it on the money every time.

”He can throw every pass in the book.”

Coach Jeff Fisher said Foles had a good grasp of the offense, which is important right now since he’s going against a front that was much improved last season.

Foles was 14-5 as a starter in Philadelphia and is recovered from a broken collarbone that sidelined him the last eight games of 2014.

”He’s got his hands full because we’ve got great defensive team speed and they’re doing a lot of things over there right now,” Fisher said. ”We’ve just really been pleased.”

There have been a multitude of changes on offense.

Frank Cignetti was promoted from quarterbacks coach to coordinator. A number of young offensive linemen could be pressed into action right away. Veteran guard Rodger Saffold is rounding into form after offseason shoulder surgery.

”It’s a different offense, different terminology,” Foles said. ”But that’s the fun of it. I get to learn more football.”

It’ll be awhile before Foles works with the entire group. First-round pick Todd Gurley is rehabbing from left knee surgery and is getting limited work on the side, but might not be ready for the start of the season.

Fisher said the former Georgia star running back was ”very anxious and probably a little frustrated, probably deep down inside not very happy right now.”

View galleryFoles getting acquainted with new team, new offens …
St. Louis Rams quarterback Nick Foles throws a pass during an NFL football organized team activity, …
”You know how it is sitting out for a long time,” Gurley said, ”but I’ve got to be patient. I feel good but I can’t play right now.”

Foles hasn’t forgotten the surprise of getting dealt for Sam Bradford in the offseason.

”I did not expect the trade and that’s the truth,” Foles said. ”Once I started talking to coach Fisher, I was excited to get to know him because that’s where my life was taking me.”

St. Louis released veteran offensive linemen Scott Wells and Jake Long after last season and devoted much of the draft to the offensive line.

Tackle Rob Havenstein was taken in the second round, followed tackle-guard Jamon Brown in the third, tackle Andrew Donnal in the fourth and guard Cody Wichmann in the sixth.

View galleryFoles getting acquainted with new team, new offens …
St. Louis Rams quarterback Nick Foles takes part in a drill during an NFL football organized team ac …
Havenstein and Brown spent a lot of time with the first unit Thursday.

”They’re going to do a great job,” Foles said. ”I remember my rookie year, what it’s like for these OTAs. This is really the foundation and you’re going to have those growing pains.”

The players who spoke on Thursday said the possibility the franchise might move to Los Angeles at some point is not on their minds.

”Right now I’m here and that’s all I worry about,” Foles said. ”That’s all out of our control.”

Fisher coached the Houston Oilers when they moved to Tennessee and said he’d rather not be apprised of developments.

”It’s been my opinion really from the start that when all this stuff started happening I’m better off probably not knowing the specifics,” the coach said. ”That way, when someone asks me I can say I don’t know.

”That way, I can say I’m telling the truth.”

Rams’ war-room drama reveals team on a familiar track

By Michael Silver

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000490604/article/st-louis-rams-warroom-drama-reveals-team-on-a-familiar-track

EARTH CITY, Mo. — At certain uncomfortable junctures throughout his 20-year career as an NFL head coach, Jeff Fisher has had to adapt to circumstance, reshaping his offense as a pass-heavy attack, or one that takes advantage of a quarterback’s mobility.

Yet the times when Fisher’s teams have been most effective — the times when the man with the sublime ‘stache has been most at peace with his situation — have coincided with the presence of an elite, eminently productive running back. When Fisher coached the Titans to Super Bowl XXXIV, and later to the 2002 AFC Championship Game, the ultra-physical Eddie George was the offensive focal point. Tennessee’s romp to the 2008 AFC South title, meanwhile, was fueled by the emergence of rookie speedster Chris Johnson.

And Friday night, for the first time in the three years and three months that have passed since Fisher took over as the St. Louis Rams’ coach and top football decision-maker, he exuded a deep-seated satisfaction impossible to ignore — that of a man who feels his team will play football the way he prefers it, with no ambiguity about its mission.

As he sat in his office following the second day of the 2015 NFL Draft, leaning back in a cushy chair while sipping a glass of bold red wine, Fisher didn’t shy away from statements that might sound like hyperbole to some: Former Georgia star Todd Gurley, the swift and powerful runner he’d taken 10th overall in Thursday night’s first round, is “a once-every-10-year back” who, along with the upgrades made to the offensive line in Rounds 2 (former Wisconsin tackle Rob Havenstein) and 3 (ex-Louisville guard Jamon Brown), will change the Rams’ offensive identity.

“We’re trying to become more physical on offense,” Fisher said. “We did that today. We got two guys who are gonna go downfield and finish blocks — and clear space for that guy we got last night to do what he does. It’s not complicated: Hand it off, run play-action passes, get the ball out quickly, keep your defense off the field.”

Or, as secondary coach and former collision-happy NFL safety Chuck Cecil had put it about 20 minutes earlier: “We’re gonna be going old-school on ’em.”

Fisher has, along with general manager Les Snead, already assembled an aggressive defense — led by a star-studded stable of pass rushers and run-lane-cloggers up front. The coach believes he now has a suitably relentless offense to go with it. With a new quarterback in Nick Foles, acquired in a March trade with the Philadelphia Eagles for injury-prone passer Sam Bradford, Fisher isn’t looking for big fantasy numbers or cutting-edge passing concepts. Rather, he and newly promoted offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti, who replaced Brian Schottenheimer after the 2014 season, will be quite comfortable handing the rock to Gurley and letting him grind his way down the field.

On paper, the Rams are bucking a trend. As the NFL becomes increasingly pass-centric, teams consistently unearth short-term answers at running back from later rounds and productive veterans struggle to get lucrative, long-term contracts, the Death of the Marquee Running Back has become a trendy talking point. In fairness, it’s not just talk: No running back was selected in the first round of the 2013 or 2014 drafts, with Gurley and Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon (who went 15th overall to the Chargers) breaking the ignominious streak on Thursday.

Going all-in with Gurley, who tore his ACL last November, could be construed as a gamble. When I interviewed the newest Rams runner Friday on NFL Network, he expressed confidence in his recovery, and his new bosses obviously feel similarly. Fisher and Snead locked in on him as their top target midway through April and sweated out the draft’s first nine picks before happily pouncing.

A couple of weeks before the draft, in an act that was part superstition and part subterfuge, Fisher moved Gurley’s player card well below his actual slot on the draft board in the team’s war room, placing him in the second-round range. “At that point,” Fisher said, “(our interest in him) was on a need-to-know basis.”

That set up quite the draft-room scene Thursday: After the Giants selected Miami guard Ereck Flowers with the ninth overall pick, Fisher instructed Sean Gustus, the area scout who’d given the initial grade on Gurley, to put the magnetic card “where it really belongs” on the draft board.

Gustus, Fisher recalled, “tried to stick it on the ceiling,” as the scouts, coaches and other team officials in his midst broke out in celebratory laughter.
St. Louis Rams’ 2015 NFL Draft

Round 1, Pick 10 (10): Todd Gurley, RB, Georgia

Round 2, Pick 25 (57): Rob Havenstein, OT, Wisconsin

Round 3, Pick 8 (72): Jamon Brown, OT, Louisville

Round 3, Pick 25 (89): Sean Mannion, QB, Oregon St.

Round 4, Pick 20 (119): Andrew Donnal, OT, Iowa

Round 6, Pick 25 (201): Bud Sasser, WR, Missouri

Round 6, Pick 39 (215): Cody Wichmann, G, Fresno St.

Round 7, Pick 7 (224): Bryce Hager, ILB, Baylor

Round 7, Pick 10 (227): Martin Ifedi, DE, Memphis

Predictably, there were no dissenters. Snead, who’d been speaking glowingly about Gurley since the runner’s true freshman season, put it thusly: “When you’d pick out a game and watch his film, it was like watching a highlight reel. He just kept doing special things, play after play.”

Said Fisher: “If it weren’t for the injury, he probably wouldn’t be a Ram. Because in everybody’s opinion, he was a top two or three pick. When they say running backs don’t have value anymore, that’s not the case when it’s a once-every-10-year back. That was the consensus in the building, and it was basically the consensus around the league.”

For all of the Rams’ rich history at the position — which includes Hall of Famers Eric Dickerson, Jerome Bettis and Marshall Faulk, as well as another current St. Louis scout, Lawrence McCutcheon, who got especially fired up in the war room as Gurley’s card was pulled — they haven’t ranked in the top half of the NFL in rushing yardage for the past 15 years. Tre Mason, selected in the third round last year, showed promise as a rookie, which will allow Fisher the luxury of easing Gurley back from his injury. Mason projects as the clear No. 2 behind Gurley; third-year pro Zac Stac was traded — he had requested the move — to the New York Jets on Saturday.

There was plenty of drama in the war room Friday night, as the Rams — who had a cluster of offensive linemen stacked in the second-round range and were thus open to trading down — fielded a fast and furious barrage of trade offers for their second-round pick (41st overall).

For five-and-a-half minutes, the room resembled a Jerry Lewis-sponsored telethon, with president Kevin Demoff, Snead and Fisher fielding simultaneous calls from teams making offers — and in some cases, ringing back with sweetened trade proposals.

“I’ve never seen (a war room) quite that crazy,” Fisher said later.

The Chiefs, Eagles, Texans, Steelers and Panthers all offered trade-down prospects, and the Cowboys called to gauge the market before bowing out. With four-and-a-half minutes on the clock, Fisher chose the Panthers’ deal. The Rams got Carolina’s second-round pick (57th overall), along with selections in the third and sixth round, and hoped one of the linemen they liked would last another 16 spots.

Mission accomplished: Four of the linemen the Rams coveted were there for the taking when the Rams went on the clock at 57, and after much back-and-forth at the board (with offensive line coach Paul Boudreau and assistant line coach Andy Dickerson joining Fisher, Snead and Demoff in the discussion), it was decided Havenstein would be the choice.

“We got a road-grader, boys,” Fisher announced triumphantly. “A big-ass road grader.”

Or maybe they hadn’t: With a phone at his ear, Demoff informed Fisher that the Buccaneers were offering a trade prospect in which the Rams would move down eight spots (receiving the first pick of the third round) and swap a sixth-round pick for Tampa Bay’s fourth-rounder. After a quick discussion, Fisher decided to take the deal.

Moments later, Demoff called the Bucs back, only to learn that they had chosen to rescind the offer.

Gesturing toward Boudreau, Fisher said, “OK, this guy can exhale now. Get him a glass of wine.”

To the delight of Fisher and Boudreau, Brown — another of the linemen being discussed as the possible second-round choice — was still there when the team’s third-round selection (72nd overall) rolled around. (And the Rams — who later took ex-Oregon State quarterback Sean Mannion with the third-round pick acquired from the Panthers — weren’t done beefing up the line; they selected former Iowa tackle Andrew Donnal in the fourth round and ex-Fresno State guard Cody Wichmann in the sixth round Saturday.)

On Friday night, as he rocked back and forth in the chair behind his desk, Fisher was the emblem of serenity and satisfaction. After three seasons in which the Rams have shown occasional promise but lacked consistency — and were unable to overcome the damage inflicted by season-ending knee injuries to Bradford — Fisher has heard the noise that he is in a win-or-else situation for 2015.

Logic suggests this is in fact the case: Fisher’s teams have gone 7-8-1, 7-9 and 6-10 since he arrived in St. Louis, and with a possible move to Los Angeles looming, there’s a lot of uncertainty about the future.

Fisher, however, isn’t carrying himself like a coach worried about his job security.

“I think this reflects a stability in the organization,” he said of Gurley’s selection. “You know, we’re not impatient. We’re going to bring him along and make sure he’s ready to go and then hand him that little brown thing a bunch.”

For this coach, at this moment, nothing could be more fulfilling.

ST. LOUIS RAMS ROUND ONE PRESS CONFERENCE – HEAD COACH JEFF FISHER AND GENERAL MANAGER LES SNEAD – APRIL 30, 2015

(On first round pick RB Todd Gurley)
Snead: “Coach Fisher would tell you, we’ve been discussing it a while. Obviously we felt he was a unique talent. That’s subjective, but definitely thought he was a unique talent that only comes around once in a while. So, we thought he might have fallen…could have gone earlier if it hadn’t been for the injury, so it was kind of a bonus to maybe be sitting there at 10. We’ve got a lot of things we’ve got to do, but I think it was a consensus that that player helps everybody: our defense, it helps our offense, our offensive line, our wide receivers, our QB. So, that’s the pick in a nutshell.”

(On why they think Gurley is a unique talent)
Fisher: “His body of work speaks for itself. What he was able to do at the University of Georgia was very impressive. Clearly, he was set back because of the injury, but the athletic ability, the strength, the explosion, the acceleration, the instincts that he has as a runner, and he’s also got great hands out of the backfield. He’s that complete back. We have a good group. We really like our group in the room, but this is an opportunity that as Les said, that we could not pass up. There were good players. The board was right. We had a sense for where it was going to go. We’ve been talking about Todd for well over a week now. We were there at the re-check. The rehab’s coming along fine. We don’t know when he’s going to be on the field competitively. We do know that he’s not having any issues right now and as the doc’s typically say, he’s ahead of schedule. So, this is kind of one of those players at the position that really only comes around once in a great while. So, we’re very excited about him.”

(On when they became comfortable with Gurley’s knee and how comfortable they are being patient with him)
Fisher: “Well we’re comfortable with the process, the evaluation process. We’re comfortable with what happens at the Combine. Now, he did not allow anybody to manipulate him at the Combine just because the doctor didn’t want 32 teams jerking on the knee. So, he went through his rehab, went back to the re-check. We were there. Our doctors were there and there’s really no concern with where he is right now.”

(On if Gurley will be ready for the regular season)
Fisher: “There’s always that possibility, but we’re not going to be specific as to when. I will tell you this: we’re not going to rush it. We may be a little on the conservative side. This is the running back of our future, and it makes no sense to subject him to…put him in a bad situation sooner than we have to. Like I said, we’ve got outstanding backs on our roster. He’s going to add to that group. When that happens, we don’t know. But, he’s going to be the running back of the future for a number of years.”

(On the depth at the running back position)
Fisher: “We’ve got a good group, yes.”

(On if Gurley’s injury history factored into the decision to select him)
Fisher: “Well, obviously it’s been a concern of ours, but every situation is different. We don’t have any reservations whatsoever about him getting back to full-speed and 100 percent. That’s not going to be an issue with him. He’s endured a lot too. His road’s pretty impressive. He’s had some hard times, went and endured the suspension, but everyone you talk to absolutely loves the kid. Just loves the kid.”

(On selecting a running back in the first round this year despite one not being picked in the first round the last two years)
Snead: “I think you take Gurley, obviously we thought he was a unique talent and I think the next guy to go was a pretty damn-good player in the Wisconsin kid. He can hit some home runs and I think that’s why San Diego made a move to go get him. It’s really like I’ve said many times before, the position – that’s just letters in the alphabet. But you take players – they’re humans, you take the ability. I think that’s why you’re seeing the running backs go maybe two, maybe three go off the board this year because they’re skilled people.”

(On Gurley’s suspension in college)
Snead: “I think, obviously the Georgia people, he’s a hero to their people. I don’t know if I want to use the word hero, but well-respected throughout their fans. I’ve spent a lot of time in Atlanta so my texts are probably blowing up with UGA fans. We’ve got one on the staff who knows (University of Georgia Head Coach) Mark Richt well and he sent him a text right after the pick saying, ‘Hey, great pick. You guys got a stud.’ That’s coming from his head coach and a lot of the fans there. They respect him. He made a mistake. He got punished for it. He’s moving on.”

(On if Gurley is similar to former NFL running back Eddie George)
Fisher: “He’s special. Yeah he is. I got a text from Eddie five minutes after the pick was over saying, ‘Congratulations, great pick.’ But they’re different. They’re running styles are different. When his career is all said and done he could be that guy, yes.”

(On the coach who got the text from Coach Richt)
Snead: “(Quarterbacks) Coach (Chris) Weinke.”

(On who’s going to block for Gurley)
Fisher: “We’ve got a group up front. We’ll be OK.”

Snead: “We’ve drafted some people in the past and they did make this thing a three-day event. I didn’t decide that. We’ve got to live through Friday and Saturday. We’ll see if we can help improve that position there, but we’ll still let the board guide us, but we’re well aware.”

(On if there were any surprises)
Fisher: “No, the board was perfect so far.”

(On if Gurley was ranked second on the draft board)
Snead: “You can’t always believe everything that’s reported. That one’s in-house.”

Fisher: “We intentionally hid him on the board. So, he was way down some place.”

http://nflfans.com/x/showthread.php?93570-Transcript-St-Louis-rams-round-one-press-conference-head-coach-jeff-fisher-and-ge&p=475285#post475285

Capabilities of ’15 O-line draft class align perfectly with what Rams need: versatility
Howard Balzer
FOX Sports Midwest

APR 24, 2015 11:28a ET
http://www.foxsports.com/midwest/story/capabilities-of-15-o-line-draft-class-align-perfectly-with-what-st-louis-rams-need-042415
LSU’s La’El Collins and Iowa’s Brandon Scherff

ST. LOUIS — Rams offensive line coach Paul Boudreau has often said he’d love to have all tackles starting on his five-man unit. That, of course, rarely happens, but Boudreau’s point is that the all-around ability and athleticism of tackles will often translate to other positions and provide a team with the best possible blockers.

With this year’s draft less than one week away, Boudreau might be getting closer to his wishes. After all, as the group stands now, the only sure starters are left tackle Greg Robinson and left guard Rodger Saffold, who was drafted as a tackle and switched to guard last season. To say the Rams need to solidify their offensive line with three months remaining until the start of training camp is a massive understatement.

Obviously, whoever starts at right tackle will make it three tackles on the line, but the biggest mystery of this offseason, now 45 days after the start of the league year on March 10, is the status of right tackle Joe Barksdale. Expecting to get a contract in the range of $7-8 million a year, Barksdale saw doors closed quickly on him and he remains unsigned.

If he doesn’t sign in the next week, the Rams will be in the market for a tackle, guard and possibly a center during the draft. If he does, at this point it would likely be a one- or two-year contract at best, so the Rams would be well advised to draft a tackle anyway.

While there has been a lot of chatter about the Rams selecting a quarterback or wide receiver in the first round with their 10th overall choice, it’s difficult to imagine them passing on an offensive lineman, and they could well add more blockers in two of the next three rounds.

The good news for the Rams is that this is a deep group of offensive linemen who also have significant position versatility. It’s not hard to picture Boudreau licking his chops in the team’s war room.

“Because this year’s class lacks an obvious Pro Bowl left tackle, it has been miscast as a below-average group,” says Rob Rang of NFLDraftScout.com. “In reality, clubs looking for help on the interior or right tackle can find players capable of competing for starting positions as rookies throughout the top 100.”

That’s music to Boudreau’s ears, and he knows it — especially since the Rams already have their left tackle, which means the available crop perfectly matches their needs. They can mix and match and be covered no matter what Barksdale does. Even if the Rams entertain thoughts of signing Barksdale after the draft, they just might get a tackle and guard in two of the first four rounds, possibly setting them up for the next four or five years and allowing them to move on from a steady but unspectacular player.

If they draft a tackle such as Iowa’s Brandon Scherff or LSU’s La’el Collins in the first round, and then still sign Barskdale, either of those prospects could immediately be placed at right guard. There’s that versatility at work.

Scherff started the last three seasons at left tackle but is viewed as either a right tackle or guard in the NFL. “He has enough skills to survive on the edges in the NFL, likely at right tackle,” NFLDraftScout.com’s Dane Brugler, who rates Scherff as a guard, wrote in his draft guide, “but his best position at the next level is inside at guard, which fits his skill set and mindset. (He’s a) safe player who can’t be drafted too early in the first round.”

Numerous mock drafts have him going to the New York Giants, one spot in front of the Rams at ninth overall. If that happens, the Rams couldn’t go wrong with Collins. “Any power-running team would love to have La’El Collins,” says Charles Davis of the NFL Network.

Wrote Brugler: “He is a wrecking ball in the run game. He has enough talent to survive on the edges, projecting as a starting swing tackle at the next level, but might be ideally suited inside at guard.”

At center, a lot depends on how much Boudreau and Co. truly like Barrett Jones and Demetrius Rhaney, but there could be temptation to add Florida State’s Cam Erving or even Mizzou’s Mitch Morse.
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Breaking down Rams’ best-case scenarios for ’15 NFL Draft
Take this virtual tour of the proposed Rams riverfront stadium

Erving played, you guessed it, tackle for the first 37 starts of his offensive line career after switching from defensive tackle, and then moved to center for the final five games last season. That’s where most scouts project him in the NFL, but some believe he could also play guard.

Morse started games for the Tigers at center and both tackle spots while also practicing and playing some at both guard spots. “He is patient, balanced and competitive with the high football intelligence desired,” Brugler wrote.

That’s not unlike former Mizzou lineman Justin Britt, who some said Seattle reached for in the second round last year. But Seahawks line coach Tom Cable knew what he was doing and Britt started every game as a rookie except for the NFC Championship Game because of a knee injury.

Other names to watch for the Rams include tackles Andrus Peat (Stanford) and Ereck Flowers (Miami of Florida) and guards Ali Marpet (Hobart), A.J. Cann (South Carolina), Tre Jackson (Florida State), Laken Tomlinson (Duke) and Jamon Brown (Louisville).

Becoming fast starters is the way of the world in the NFL. Last season, 26 linemen (10 tackles, 11 guards and five centers) were drafted in the first four rounds and 22 in the top 100. Five tackles started a total of 65 games, seven guards started 87 games and the five centers started 55 games.

Two guards, two tackles and one center started all 16 games, while another two guards, one tackle and one center started either 14 or 15 games. The Rams’ Robinson started 12.

Odds are, once all seven rounds are in the books, a few of the linemen discussed above will be Rams and could be expected to start Sept. 13 against the Seahawks.

Welcome to the NFL.

Howard Balzer can be heard daily on Lunchtime Live with Howard Balzer from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. weekdays on TalkSTL.com 1380 AM.

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/players/1996546/andrus-peat

Strengths Weaknesses
STRENGTHS: Peat is impressive on the hoof and has long arms, broad shoulders and good weight distribution with tree trunks for thighs. Considering his monstrous frame, it is almost unfair that he gains an immediate advantage on his opponent with surprising quickness off the snap. He is balanced and light on his feet to slip out to the second level and can adjust to moving targets. In pass protection, Peat has the agility to slip wide to his left, sealing off speed rushers trying to turn the corner, as well the strength to latch and control defenders. Peat is patient, allowing the defender to come to him, showing good lateral agility and balance to mirror.

WEAKNESSES: Isn’t the dominating force in the running game that his great size implies. Comes off the ball too high and doesn’t explode through his hips to drive opponents backward, settling to turn and seal. In pass pro, he will occasionally get lazy and bend at the waist, leaning into pass rushers and inviting counter-moves back to the inside. Doesn’t play with the nastiness scouts would prefer and has drawn the “soft” label from some.

PLAYER COMPARISON: D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Jets — Like Ferguson, Peat has the length and athleticism scouts crave in a blindside pass protector. Neither, however, plays with the punishing, combative style that offensive line coaches would prefer.

–Rob Rang

Player Overview
During the Jim Harbaugh-David Shaw era, size and strength have been prioritized over athleticism at virtually every position. In Peat, however, the Cardinal boast a massive blocker with rare athleticism.

Peat signed with Stanford as a highly regarded prep and he’s proven worthy of his praise, earning playing time as a true freshman on an offensive line filled with NFL talent. He started every game the past two seasons at left tackle for Stanford, earning All-American honors and the Morris Trophy in 2014. The Morris Trophy is a unique award given annually to the best offensive and defensive linemen in the Pac-12, with only rival players – and not coaches or media – given votes.

Massive and surprisingly athletic, the game appears to come easily for Peat and he is one of the few in the 2015 tackle class who possesses the combination of length, balance and fluidity to remain outside at the next level. While boasting undeniable talent, some question whether Peat has the nastiness to ever maximize his full potential, however.

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/players/2028286/dorial-green-beckham

Strengths Weaknesses
STRENGTHS: Physical specimen with rare athleticism and triangle numbers (size/speed/strength) for his frame. Plays with balance and core power to keep his center of gravity. Uses long-striding acceleration to get vertical in a hurry and create separation in his routes. Strong plant-and-go burst in his breaks, effortlessly shifting his momentum in his patterns, not having to gear down when changing directions. Physical leaper with high-pointing prowess to climb the ladder and play in the clouds. Uses his body beautifully in coverage to tower over defenders with an outrageous catching radius. Aggressive at the catch point with loose body control, easy adjustments and large hands to pluck with an attacking mentality. Not a push-over and shows a ?take charge? on-field personality. Swats corners away in his path and won?t let defenders dictate his pattern. Productive when on the field with 87 catches in two seasons at Missouri, averaging a touchdown every 5.1 receptions.

WEAKNESSES: Functional strength is average-at-best, before and after the pass. Still learning the route tree and took advantage of mostly packaged and vertical patterns. Bad habit of getting lazy in his routes at times and doesn’t consistently read coverages to set up his movements. Will allow the ball to reach his body at times, which leads to drops. Needs seasoning and on-field reps after not playing since the 2013 season. Not a consistent finisher with questionable work habits ? uncertain accountability, both on and off the field. Strong red flags and immature make-up. Multiple off-field incidents, including two arrests for marijuana possession: first in Oct. 2012 with four other teammates; and then in Jan. 2014, although those charges were later dismissed when another person in the car where the drugs were found took ownership. Was dismissed from Missouri after allegedly ‘forcing himself into an apartment and pushing a female down the stairs’ wasn’t formally charged because no one pressed charges, but could enter the NFL with a strike against him when it comes to domestic abuse.

–Dane Brugler

COMPARES TO: Julio Jones, Atlanta Falcons ? Although the off-field issues cannot be ignored, Green-Beckham has a physical skill-set that rivals Jones on the field with rare athleticism and ability for his size

Player Overview
A NFL prospect with rare physical traits, Green-Beckham is the type of wide receiver that even when covered, he is open due to his gargantuan size and freakish athleticism. He is still unpolished in several areas, but there is a ton of untapped potential with on-field ability that would warrant top-five overall consideration in this draft class. However, there are strong red flags that will eliminate Green-Beckham from some NFL team?s draft boards and not just legal troubles, but also underachiever tendencies and doubts whether he has the work ethic and drive in his belly to reach his full potential. Fair or not, the Josh Gordon situation will be on the minds of any team that discussion the risks and rewards of drafting him.

A five-star wide receiver recruit out of high school, Green-Beckham had every major FBS program knocking at his door, but he decided to stay in-state and enroll at Missouri. He made an instant impact as a true freshman with 28 catches for 395 yards and five touchdowns in 2012, earning Freshman All-American honors by several outlets. Green-Beckham blossomed further as a sophomore starter in 2013 with a team-high 59 receptions for 883 yards and 12 touchdowns over 14 starts, earning Second Team All-SEC honors. He was dismissed from Mizzou after a third off-field incident (April 2014) and enrolled at Oklahoma, although he had to sit out the season after his waiver to play immediately was denied. Green-Beckham decided to give up his remaining eligibility to enter the 2015 NFL Draft, having never played a down for the Sooners.

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/players/1852914/preston-smith

Strengths Weaknesses
STRENGTHS: Boasts an impressive wingspan and heavy hands to engage and dispose of blockers, using an array of rush moves to tear through blocks. Smith also lines up as a 1-technique lineman inside on obvious passing downs, using his initial quickness and power to penetrate the A-gap and create interior pressure.

WEAKNESSES: Is not a quick-twitch rusher and rarely beats offensive tackles with speed off the edge.

–Dane Brugler

Player Overview
As a first-year starter as a junior in 2013, Smith finished with 2.5 sacks and 6.5 tackles for loss, but he has far exceeded those totals, leading the 2014 Bulldogs with 7.0 sacks and 11.5 tackles for loss.

While not a dynamic threat, Smith plays motivated and has the versatile skill-set that will be attractive to pro scouts.

I’ve saved over a thousand quotes now,
over the last five years or so. Like i wrote
i keep em organized in categories. But a month or so ago,
i decided, just for fun to go thru all of em, and pick my
favorites and put them in one unorganized lump. So, i first
cut the 1000 down to 500. Then the 500 down to 250. Etc.

This is the last group i ended up with. Fwiw.
(Course as one changes, one’s favorite quotes change…)

w
v
================================
Favorite Random Quotes

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that
in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
——————–

“It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human
problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than‘try to be a little kinder.’ “ Aldous Huxley

“We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.” ― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state–it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle…. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel

“You have come to the shore. There are no directions.” Denise Levertov

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.” ― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. And he is
not insensible who pays them the undemonstrative tribute of a
sigh which is not a sob, and of a smile that is not a grin.” Joseph Conrad

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, or to steal bread.” Anatole France

“..James Baldwin wrote in the ‘Fire Next Time’ that if you cant
suffer you cant really grow up— because there’s no real
change you go through. M.Scott Peck tells us “All change is
a moment of Loss.” And usually at a moment of loss we feel
sorrow, grief, pain even. And if people don’t have the apparatus
by which they can bear that pain, there can only be this attempt
to avoid it– and that’s where the place of so much addiction is
in our life….its in the place or ‘let me not feel it’….”
Bell Hooks

“The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between this profusion of matter and the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.” Les Noyers de l’Altenburg: Andre Malraux

“There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be.” Leon Bloy

“And throughout all eternity, I forgive you, and you forgive me…” William Blake

“Know emptiness, be Compassionate.” Milarepa

“There are no others.” Ramana Maharshi

“I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars; none of them seems to me important it itself, but only the whole. The whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one’s affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one’s self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions, the world of the spirits.”- Robinson Jeffers, 1934

“Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers. ” — Rainer Maria Rilke

“Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?” A. Dillard

“The love of our neighbor in all its fullness, simply means being able to say, “What are you going through?” Simone Weil

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in our hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” Henri Nouwen.

“…when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.” Sogyal Rinpoche

“The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no.” ― Gore Vidal

“…Becker argues that… since man has a dualistic nature consisting of a physical self and a symbolic self, man is able to transcend the dilemma of mortality through heroism, a concept involving his symbolic half. By embarking on what Becker refers to as an “immortality project,” in which he creates or becomes part of something which he feels will last forever, man feels he has become heroic and, henceforth, part of something eternal…”(Wiki – “Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker)

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. ”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti

“In fact, I suspect that our only hope is disaster. Cruel tho’ it is to say it, there has got to be a vast die-off in the human population — likely including us and our families — before the survivors find themselves in a world where a new and humble and ‘religious’ adaptation with nature is possible. Disaster is not necessary; the better world could be achieved through reason and common sense and a sense of fellowship — but most of the present human world is dead set against us…” Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity, or, it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” ― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.” ― Plato

“Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.” ― Joseph Conrad

“There is no neutral education. Education is either for domestication or for freedom.” -Joao Coutinho

“…Because the schools serve an economic system rather than a
political or philosophical idea, they promote, not unreasonably
, the habits of mind necessary to the preservation of that system,
which is why an American education resembles the commercial
procedure that changes caterpillers into silkworms instead of
butterflies. Silkworms can be turned to a profit, but butterflies
blow around in the wind and do nothing to add to the wealth
of the corporation or the power of the state. “ L.Lapham

“The river that flows in you also flows in me.” — Kabir

“Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”
Peter Ustinov

“Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.” — Henri J.M. Nouwen

“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in the darkness,
ghe Astonishing Light, of your own Being! — Hafiz

“Life is a shipwreck but we must remember to sing in the lifeboats” ― Voltaire

“Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.” — Barbara Kingsolver

“I’d tried to straighten him out, but there’s only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.” — David Sedaris

“Telling me I can do anything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and then telling the water it can go anywhere it wants. Try it, and see what happens.”
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

“I hate goddamn fruits and vegetables. And your omega 3’s, and the treadmill, and the cardiogram, and the mammogram, and the pelvic sonogram, and oh my god the colonoscopy, and with it all, the day still comes where they put you in a box, and its on to the next generation of idiots, who’ll also tell you all about life and define for you what’s appropriate. My father committed suicide because the morning newspapers depressed him. And could you blame him? With the horror, and corruption, and ignorance, and poverty, and genocide, and AIDS, and global warming, and terrorism, and-and the family value morons, and the gun morons. “The horror,” Kurtz said at the end of Heart of Darkness, “the horror.” Lucky Kurtz didn’t have the Times delivered in the jungle. Ugh… then he’d see some horror. But what do you do? You read about some massacre in Darfur or some school bus gets blown up, and you go “Oh my God, the horror,” and then you turn the page and finish your eggs from the free range chickens. Because what can you do. It’s overwhelming!” — Woody Allen

“God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, ‘Ah!” ― Joseph Campbell

“We’re in a freefall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective and that’s all it is… joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes. — Joseph Campbell

“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.” ― C.G. Jung

Shambhala: “Spiritual awareness isnt feelings?” Ken Wilber: “No, it is not feelings, it is the awareness of feelings. And that awareness itself is free of feelings and free of thoughts, and allows both feelings and thoughts to float by, just as clouds float by in the emptiness of the sky. But if you confuse experiential feelings with that emptiness, then you will confuse emotionalism and sentimentalism with spirit, and this is often the first step on a regressive slide into the unending world of your own subjective fascination. You don’t transcend the self, you simply feel the self intensely, and this is called “spiritual.” This is a bit of a mess, really….”

Pre-Trans Fallacy – Ken Wilber — Excerpt from “One Taste” p.103
“… “The Pre/Trans Fallacy”…is a simple concept. It says that because both pre-rational and trans-rational are non-rational, they are easily confused. And then one of two very unfortunate things happens: either mature, spiritual, trans-rational states get reduced to infantile, pre-rational states; or, infantile, narcissistic, pre-rational states get elevated to trans-rational glory. Reductionism and elevationism. Freud was a typical reductionist, who tried to reduce profound nondual mystical states to primary narcissism and infantile oceanic fusion: The Future Of An Illusion. And Jung was a typical elevationist, who took pre-rational myth, and elevated it to transcendental greatness….
….It used to be that the real threats to genuine spiritual studies were the reductionists, but an even greater threat has surfaced from the new-age movement, namely, the elevationists. These folks, with many good and decent intentions, nonetheless take some rather infantile, childish, egocentric states and simply because they are ‘nonrational’ re-label them ‘sacred’ or ‘spiritual’ which is definitely a problem….
…Alas, it seems to me, much of the ‘spiritual renaissance’ supposedly sweeping this country is really a case of pre-rational regression, not trans-rational growth…
…this entire package of ‘spirit’ is being sold by publishers and book clubs at an astonishing rate…. “

“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” E.Debbs

“Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.” Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

“I had once believed that we were all masters of our fate–that we could mold our lives into any form we pleased… I had overcome deafness and blindness sufficiently to be happy, and I supposed that anyone could come out victorious if he threw himself valiantly into life’s struggle. But as I went more and more about the country I learned that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about… I learned that the power to rise in the world is not within the reach of everyone.” — Helen Keller

“In practice legal mythology is primarily directed at obscuring
the bitter struggle between the classes and at articulating in
consciousness the view that law is unaligned with any interests…
…law can be characterized in its modern period, by the
conscious camouflaging of interests…expressing in human
relationships on one hand, while hiding its relation to
economics institutions on the other…legal theorists believe
‘will’, rather than material conditions to be the basis of law. …
the state is the political form through which the ruling class
controls and mediates class antagonisms…..law is fundamentally
class law…..
“The law is therefore a regulation of equality among unequals.
For those who believe the official slogans of the ruling class
— that we are a government of laws and not men,
and that our system guarantees equal protection —
Anatole France once answered by describing how
“the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well
as the poor from sleeping under the bridge.” …the law is an
expression of political ideology and propaganda as well as
an instrument of oppression….”
M.E. Tigar (radical lawyers)

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you
don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not
doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or
less sun. You never blame the lettuce…” — Thich Nhat Hanh

“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.” ― Thomas More Utopia

“Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“…Buddhist teacher Daisaku Ikeda told me there are three types
of love: dependent, independent and contributive….dependent
love is controlling, manipulative…independent is characterized by
mutual respect and a strong sense of individuality…the happiest and
least common type of love relationship is contributive — an
independent relationship in which the partners ALSO share a sense
of mission in life…” T.Gold

“If falling in love is not love, then what is it other than a temporary
and partial collapse of ego boundaries? I do not know. But the
sexual specificity of the phenomenon leads me to suspect
that it is a genetically determined instinctual component of
mating behavior. In other words, the temporary collapse of ego
boundaries that constitute falling in love is a sterotypic response
of human beings to a configuration of internal sexual drives and
external sexual stimuli which serves to increase the probability
of sexual pairing and bonding so as to enhance the survival of
the species. Scott Peck.

“…I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey
to find its source, and how the moon wept
without her lover’s warm gaze.” Meister Eckhart

“Where love rules, there is no will to power and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. – Carl G. Jung

“There is a way of loving
not attached to what is loved…
All love without an object,
is true love…” Rumi

“To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the Earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim — the rocks — the motion of the waves —
the ships with men in them.
What stranger miracles are there?” Walt Whitman

“Mysticism means nothing, absolutely nothing,
to the man who has no experience of it.” H.Bergson

“…. all blades of grass, wood, and stone, all things are One. “ – Meister Eckhart

“The overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual
and the Absolute Is the great mystic achievement. In mystic
states we both become one with the Absolute and we become
aware of our Oneness. …we feel them as reconciling, unifying
states. They appeal to the yes-funcion more than the no-function
in us. In them the unlimited absorbs the limits and peacefully
closes the account. … W.James

“All things in this creation exist within you, and all things
in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and
the closest things, and there is no distance between you
and the farthest things, and all things, from the lowest
to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are
within you as equal things. In one atom are found
all the elements of the earth; in one motion of
the mind are found the motions of all the laws of existence;
in one drop of water are found the secrets of all the
endless oceans; in one aspect of you
are found all the aspects of existence.” – Kahlil Gibran

“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the
miraculous in the common.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.” – William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 1863

“Mystical experience….is a direct intuition of ultimate reality.”
Aldous Huxley

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” ― Howard Zinn

“The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand. There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities, no place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insects’ wings. Perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand, but the clatter only seems to insult the ears.The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath – the animals, the trees, the man.Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench.” Chief Seattle – Suqwamish & Duwamish

“Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?” ― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“The earth laughs in flowers.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“ We need a wiser and perhaps more mystical concept of wolves. Man surveys the wolf through the glass of his knowledge, and sees a feather magnified, and the whole image is distorted. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therin we err. For no animal shall be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. Henry Beston, The Outermost House

“Butterflies are self propelled flowers. ~R.H. Heinlein

”The butterfly is a flying flower, The flower a tethered butterfly.
~Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun

”There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be
a butterfly. ~Richard Buckminster Fuller

“…Then came the embrace. There are ways to embrace a woman that are
standard and there are ways that are perfect. This was the latter. If
you are tall as I am, you begin to notice that men about your height
always try to arrange for the first embrace-kiss sequence to take place
while you are seated, so that they can subtly slide you down and deliver
the coup de grace of the embrace, the declaratory kiss, from above
with your head bent back and your throat exposed so you’re like an
animal signaling submission to a larger member of the species. The
nice thing with Nelson was that no kiss followed. The embrace was
not just the scaffolding for the great declaratory kiss. The best standing-up embrace
is like that one, slightly off-center so
that you have his leg and not his actual temeraire up against you,
one hand on the base of your spine, and you are brought in
against him but not smashingly. His cheek is at your ear, but not
occluding your actual ear canal. His breath is in your hair. Then
you want to feel him sinking against you, slightly, suggesting relief,
repose: the embrace from something, not simply stage one in a
campaign of possession…” N.Rush, in the novel “Mating”

“The sage must distinguish between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is of things, acts and relations….To become One with god is the only wisdom.” Upanishads

“Every creature is a word of God.” Miester Ekhart (1260-1328)
“In the East, disentangling oneself from the world and realizing the One is equated with wisdom. Subsequently descending and returning to embrace the Many is equated with compassion, and the integration of ascent and descent is “the union of wisdom and compassion”. From this nondual perspective, the world and the flesh are not evil or degraded. However, becoming entranced by them, that is, becoming entrapped in maya, illusion–what psychologist Charles Tart calls the consensus trance–and thereby losing awareness of the transcendental domains and our unity with them is disastrous. Once lost, the challenge is to regain this awareness through a discipline of “recollection” that opens “the eye of the soul” (Plato), “the eye of the heart” (Sufism) or “the eye of Tao” (Taoism). The goal is an illusion-shattering wisdom that recognizes our true transcendental nature and is variously known as Hinduism’s jnana, Buddhism’s prajna, Islam’s marifah and sometimes as Christian gnosis…” Roger Walsh
“Don’t make a self. There’s nothing more to say.” Ajahn Chah
“All there is, is Consciousness. And the mind is merely a reflection of that Consciousness.” Ramesh S. Balsekar

“The Buddha taught some people the teachings of Duality
that help them avoid sin and acquire spiritual merit.
To others he taught non-duality,
that some find profoundly frightening.” Nagarjuna

“The stream of human knowledge is impartially heading towards a non-mechanical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of this realm. “ Sir James Jeans

“..In other words, ‘in this model,’ consciousness is a function of the
subquantal implicate order of Bohm, functioning Non-Locally.
Consciousness, ‘in this model’ is not ‘in’ our heads. Our brains are
merely local recievers; consciousness is ‘an aspect of the non-local-field.
The ‘ego’ then is a LOCALLY TUNED IN aspect of this usually NOT tuned-in
Non-Local-Field. This sounds like Schrodinger’s notion that if you add up
all the ‘minds’ around, the total you will arrive at is one.
If this model has any value — if it is sensible to talk of ‘consciousness’ as
non-local ‘software’ rather than local ‘hardware’ — then it is
permissible to ask to what extent a local reciever, or ‘ego,’ can tune
in or influence the non-local-field…” Robert Anton Wilson

“Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world. —What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula

“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe … We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein

“All things come out of the One, and the One out of all things.” Heraclitus 500 B.C.

“Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. (Leibniz, 1670

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” ― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“To wound the heart is to create it.” Antonio Porchia

“The heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking
it is necessary to go through
dark and deeper dark
and not to turn ” ― Stanley Kunitz, The Testing Tree

“In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.” – Octavia Butler

“Difficulties are considered of such great value that a Tibetan prayer recited before each step of practice actually asks for them: “Grant that I be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey so that my heart may be truly awakened and my practice of liberation and universal compassion be truly fulfilled.”
J.Kornfield

“Letting go is the central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. When letting go is called for, if we have not learned to do so, we suffer greatly….letting go and moving through life from one change to another brings the maturing of our spiritual being. In the End, we learn that to Love and Let Go can be the same thing. Both ways do not seek to possess. Both allow us to touch each moment of this changing life and allow us to be there fully for whatever arises next… “ J.Kornfield

“Our present economic, social, and international agreements are based, in large measure, upon organized lovelessness.” Aldous Huxley

“For the poor, the economic is spiritual.” Gandhi

“The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.” Theodor Adorno (1903-1969
“Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation to man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations: as long as you have not shown it to be “uneconomic” you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.” ― E.F. Schumacher

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.” Karl Marx

“The cannon thunders…limbs fly in all directions…one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice…it’s Humanity in search of happiness” ― Charles Baudelaire

“My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.” Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United State

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ” ― Paulo Freire

“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” ― Denis Diderot

“The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago… had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.” ~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life

“A hierarchal society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. The war is waged by the ruling group against its subjects, and its object is not victory, but to keep the very structure of society in tact.” -George Orwell

“The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. That is why, as one historian aptly has said, far from the heroic and romantic heraldry that customarily is used to symbolize the European settlement of the Americas, the emblem most congruent with reality would be a pyramid of skulls.” — David E. Stannard (American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World

“That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.” — Noam Chomsky

“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.” — Noam Chomsky

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” Noam Chomsky

“It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.” — Albert Camus

“Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.” Bertrand Russell

“In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercize their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies, but only to starve them.” Bertrand Russell

Marine Colonel, Smedley Butler (1933) — “War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses……I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist” Camara,Helder

“I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.” ~Eugene V. Debs

Louis Brandeis: “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.” ― Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

“Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever. ” ― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“On Prozac, Sisyphus might well push the boulder back up the mountain with more enthusiasm and creativity. I do not want to deny the benefits of psychoactive medication. I just want to point out that Sisyphus is not a patient with a mental health problem. To see him as a patient with a mental health problem is to ignore certain larger aspects of his predicament connected to boulders, mountains, and eternity.” ― Carl Elliott

“…Intimacy is telling your partner the main thing on your mind and feeling that he or she understands… On any given day people have certain feelings that they feel ashamed of ie, that they judge themselves to be weak, bad, crazy, immature, unmanly, or unfeminine for having. They react to such judgment by…doing the following: 1) Lose the ability to get these feelings across 2) Generate Symptoms [lash out for example] 3) snap into alienated states 4) experience decrease in intimacy 5) lose the capacity to think 6) become self-blaming. Mental life to a large extent is a struggle for self-justification. …the mind is a self-justifying organ…
….in response to self-blaming people do two further things 7) engage in self-justification 8) blame their partners…. Mental life is to an important extent an ongoing effort at self-justification to deal with self-blame….what do people do when they are harangued by their harsh internal voice….they run for cover…take warm bath…go to a movie, watch television, go shopping, run around the block, clean the closets, …anything to distract themselves and drown out their internal taskmaster’s voice “ Dan Wile

“I have been an outspoken critic of some New Age Spirituality.
I don’t like sloppy thinking, a refusal to ask questions, or an easy acceptance of things we cannot know to be true because we find them comforting or far more entertaining than our everyday busy lives, and I have seen too much of all this in some New Age philosophies and groups. I think its dangerous.
Of course there is some truth in all of these judgments, and I will continue to raise questions about the claims made by all spiritual paths because I am interested in learning the truth as far as we can know it. But there are ways to raise questions that open inquiry – that make it ‘our’ inquiry – and other ways to pose questions that close down communication. And there are ways intended to distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ ways that aim to make me feel right – more authentic, grounded, intelligent – by making the other wrong…” Oriah (the Dance)

“The perennial philosophy holds that the world’s great spiritual traditions, in spite
of their obvious differences, express the same fundamental truth about the nature
of reality, a truth that can be directly apprehended during mystical experience. Implicit
in the perennial philosophy is the notion that mystical perceptions transcend time, place
culture, and individual identity. Just as a farmer in first century China and a web sitedesigner in twenty-first century New York see the same moon when the look skyward,so will they glimpse the same truth in the depths of a mystical vision. J. Horgan

“Huston Smith likened religions to “a stained glass window whose sections divide the light of the world into different colors.” J Horgan

“Nondual Awareness does not make your problems vanish, Wilber said, so much as it distances you from them. Emotions pass through your awareness “like clouds in the sky” he said, pointing to the roof of our glassed-in chamber. “You have a sense of skyness and not a sense of contracting on everything that comes along.”
Enlightenment can also help you come to terms with your mortality. “To the extent’
that you stay relaxed in this open state, death doesn’t have this overpowering terror.”
But nondual awareness does not resolve the mystery of death, at least not in Wilber’s case. “There is a great Zen koan where a zen master was asked what happens when we die. The zen master says “I don’t know.” And the student says “But you’re a zen master.” And he says, “Yes, but not a dead one.”
Rational Mysticism. J.Horgan.

“…In Psychedlic Drugs Reconsidered, Lester Grinspoon suggested the
chief benefit of psychedelics is “enriching the wonder of normality”
— that is, enhancing our appreciation of ordinary consciousness
and ordinary life. …but psychedelics can have the opposite effect
This world may seem drab in comparison to the bizarre virtual realms
into which LSD or DMT propel us. Instead of opening our eyes to the
miraculousness of everyday reality, psychedelics can blind us. …
…to be enlightened Ken Wilber once wrote, “is to snap out of the
movie of life”. This is perhaps the greatest danger of mysticism,
that you will be left with a permanent case of dereallization and
depersonalization. If you are lucky your glimpse of the abyss will make this life seem more real, not less. J Horgan (Rational Mysticism

“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?” ― Mark Twain

“If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.” — Charles Simic

“The wedding of Christianity or Judaism with nationalism is lethal.” — Arthur Miller

“If triangles had a God, he would have three sides.
Baron de Montesquieu

“Christianity began to die in the moment when theologians began to
treat the divine story as history — when they mistook the story of God,
of the Creation, and the Fall for a record of facts in the historical past.
For the past goes ever back and back into nothing; it never leads to its
Creator, to its explanation — at least not in the backward direction. For
the past is the creation, the empty echo of the Now. Time does not
flow forward from a Creator who ‘made’ the world; if flows backwards
, like the tail of a comet, from a Creator who ‘makes’ the world and whom
no-one can remember.” Alan Watts

“The World is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can’t agree on whose fairy tales to believe. In the end, Religion will kill us all.” — Ed Krebs

“It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.” — John Steinbeck (East of Eden

“Can one be a saint if God does not exist?
That is the only concrete problem I know of today. A.Camus 1913-1960

“Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies. “
Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan

“ …what hurts you blesses you.
Darkness is your candle…
Rumi

“Become a moth: enter the flame! – Rumi

“…Galway Kinnell said that the core of soul art is a ‘tenderness toward existence.’
Coleman Barks

“… there are two major streamings in consciousness, particularly in the ecstatic life, and in Rumi’s poetry: call them Fana and Baqa, Arabic words that refer to the play and intersection of human with divine. Rumi’s poetry occurs in that opening, a dervish doorway these energies move through in either direction. A movement out, a movement in. Fana is the streaming that moves from the human out into mystery– the annihilation, the orgasmic expansion, the dissolving swoon into the all…. wild and
boundaryless absorptions….”What was in that candle’s light that opened and consumed me so quickly!”. That is the moth’s question after Fana, after it becomes flame. There is an extravagance in the magnificent disintegration of Fana… Three hundred billion galaxies might seem a bit gaudy to some, but not to this awareness….Fana is what opens our wings… Its human-becoming-God. …this is the ocean with no shore into which the dewdrop falls…
Baqa goes the other way across the doorsill. The Arabic word means a ‘living within’: it is the walk back down the mountain, where the vision came, life lived with clarity and reason… The concentration of a night of stars into one needle’s eye. …The absorbing work of ‘this’ day…. God-becoming-human. …compassion and work within a community…Baqa is also a return from expansion into each’s unique individuation work, into pain and effort, confusion and dark comedy….the deep knowing of absence. Baqa is where animal and angel meet in an awkward but truly human dance. It’s a breathtaking birth, the dying and then being born again that all religions know isthe essence of soul growth… Bodhisattval service… Baqa brings the next stage in the process of prayer: there’s the opening into annihilation, then the coming back to tend specific
people. A melody, the little band coming up through Beethoven’s Ninth. This is the ocean coming to court the drop! …
By letting these two conditions, Fana and Baqa , flow and exist simultaneously in his poetry, Rumi is saying that they are one thing, the core of a
true human being… The Soul of Rumi, by Coleman Barks

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”Always remember: the journey is all. The destination is beside the point”. Albert Einstein

“The tendency of modern physics is to resolve the whole material universe into waves, and nothing but waves. These waves are of two kinds: bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation or light. If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned wave-energy and setting it free to travel through space. These concepts reduce the whole universe to a world of light, potential or existent, so that the whole story of its creation can be told with perfect accuracy and completeness in the six words: ‘God said, Let there be light’.
— Sir James Jeans The Mysterious Universe (1930), 37-8.

“Something unknown is doing we don’t know what—that is what our theory amounts to.[Expressing the quantum theory description of an electron has no familiar conception of a real form.] Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington The Nature Of The Physical World (1928)

“There aren’t just bad people that commit genocide; we are all capable of it. It’s our evolutionary history. James Lovelock

“Everything you’ve learned in school as ‘obvious’ becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.” Buckminster Fuller

“I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process, an integral function of the universe.” B. Fuller

“…The statement that we are all “star stuff,” coined by the late astronomer Carl Sagan (not sure if this was before or after Joni Mitchell sang “we are stardust; we are golden. we are billion year old carbon”), is meant to imply more than that we are made of the same elements that stars are made of. Beyond that, the elements themselves (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc.) were synthesized, cooked up as it were, in the nuclear furnaces that are the deep interior of stars. These elements are then released at the end of a star’s lifetime when it explodes, and subsequently incorporated into a new generation of stars — and into the planets that form around the stars, and the lifeforms that originate on the planets. M. Loewenstein

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.” ― Max Planck

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” ― Werner Heisenberg

“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”
― Werner Heisenberg Across the Frontiers

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?” ― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“The reduction of the universe to the compass of a single being,
and the extension of a single being until it reaches God – that is love. .” — Victor Hugo

“There is a saying that ‘the psychotic drowns in the waters that the mystic swims in.’ The health and structural integrity of the ego means the difference between spiritual emergence, the unfolding of a transpersonal identity; and a spiritual emergency a crisis brought on by the same unfolding, during which the foundations of sanity can be shaken.” — Jason Kirkey (The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality

“All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love’s sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live. — Swami Vivekananda

“There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.” — Adrienne Rich

“Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they’re afraid
to plant themselves?” Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams, 1990

“I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk
ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war.” Robert Mueller
“We were together. I forget the rest.” — Walt Whitman

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.” — Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)

“These are the days that must happen to you.” — Walt Whitman

“A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” Walt Whitman
“And your very flesh shall be a great poem.” — Walt Whitman