• Mary
• Kate

From Mary:

But discovering the divine light within is more than a matter of being told that it is there, for such vision shatters one's identity: "When you see your likeness [in a mirror] you are pleased; but when you see your images, which have come into being before you, how much will you have to bear!" Instead of self-gratification, one finds the terror of annihilation. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke gives a similar warning about encountering the divine, for "every angel is terrifying." Giving oneself over to such an encounter, he says, involves terror, as if an angel

would come more fiercely to interrogate you,
and rush to seize you blazing like a star,
and bend you as if trying to create you,
and break you open, out of who you are.

What "breaks [us] open, out of who [we] are," shatters the ways in which we ordinarily identify ourselves, by gender, name, ethnic origin, social status.

From the Gospel of Thomas:
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] destroy you.

From Kate:

TEN RULES FOR BEING HUMAN

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works”.
4. A lesson is repeated until it is learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better than “here”. When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will, again, look better than “here”.
7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie inside you. The answers to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.