Robert A. Johnson Quotes

#1. For many years of my life I thought one came down with a mood just as one comes down with a cold. But slowly I learned that moods are a product of purposeful unconsciousness and can be rectified by the very consciousness one worked so hard to evade.

Robert A. Johnson

#2. Just As Soon As" should be printed on dollar bills, replacing "In God We Trust" as the great American slogan.

Robert A. Johnson

#3. ...it is almost always the case that whatever has wounded you will also be instrumental in your healing.

Robert A. Johnson

#4. The difference in a teacher and a mentor is that a mentor is interested in our soul.

Robert A. Johnson

#5. To suffer one's confusion is the first step in healing.

Robert A. Johnson

#6. The essential ingredients for relationship are affection and commitment.

Robert A. Johnson

#7. The place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise.

Robert A. Johnson

#8. It wounded me enough to ground me, but not so much as to knock all the life out of me.

Robert A. Johnson

#9. The only hope for healing is to offer a better form of ecstasy, to upgrade so the addict will give up the stupid one.

Robert A. Johnson

#10. The message is unmistakable; our own healing proceeds from that overlap of what we call good and evil, light and dark. It is not that the light element alone does the healing; the place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise. This middle place is a mandorla.

Robert A. Johnson

#11. There is a story of a spiritual seeker who one day came to his master and asked, "In the olden days it is said that there were people who walked and talked with God. Why doesn't this happen anymore?" The master replied, "Because nowadays no one will stoop so low.

Robert A. Johnson

#12. The object of life is not happiness, but to serve God or the Grail. All of the Grail quests are to serve God. If one understands this and drops his idiotic notion that the meaning of life is personal happiness, then one will find that elusive quality immediately at hand.

Robert A. Johnson

#13. Love is not a doing but a state of being - a relatedness, a connectedness to another mortal, an identification with her or him that simply flows within me and through me, independent of my intentions or my efforts.

Robert A. Johnson

#14. Modern western man has some basic misconceptions about the nature of happiness. The origin of the word is instructive: happiness stems from the root verb to happen, which implies that our happiness is what happens.

Robert A. Johnson

#15. Someone observed darkly that it is always two A.M. when one is in the 'dark night of the soul.

Robert A. Johnson

#16. A man must consent to look to a foolish, innocent, adolescent part of himself for his cure. The inner fool is the only one who can touch his Fisher King wound.

Robert A. Johnson

#17. If you can touch your shadow - within form - and do something out of your ordinary pattern, a great deal of energy will flow from it.

Robert A. Johnson

#18. The unchosen thing is what causes the trouble. If you don't do something with the unchosen, it will set up a minor infection somewhere in the unconscious and later take its revenge on you. Unlived life does not just "go away"...

Robert A. Johnson

#19. To consent to paradox is to consent to suffering that which is greater than the ego. The religious experience lies exactly at that point of insolubility where we feel we can proceed no further. This is an invitation to that which is greater than one's self.

Robert A. Johnson

#20. Most men get their deepest conviction of self-worth from a woman, wife, mother, or if they are highly conscious, from their own anima. The woman sees and shows the man his value by lighting the lamp.

Robert A. Johnson

#21. All psychological suffering (or happiness, taken in its usual sense) is a matter of comparison.

Robert A. Johnson

#22. The mystery is this: there is one right thing and only one right thing to do at every moment. We can either follow or resist the slender threads.

Robert A. Johnson