“Imagine…that you are a deep souled, subtly mysterious cosmos of great spiritual beauty and creative intelligence. And imagine that you are being approached by two different…suitors, who seek to know you. “To whom would you open your deepest secrets?… Would you open most deeply to the suitor…who approached you as if you were essentially lacking in intelligence and purpose, as though you had no interior dimension to speak of, no spiritual capacity or value; who thus saw you as fundamentally inferior to himself…who related to you as though your existence were valuable primarily to the extent to which he could develop and exploit your resources to satisfy his various needs; and whose motivation for knowing you was ultimately driven by a desire for increased intellectual mastery, predictive certainty, and predictive control over you for his own self-enhancement? “Or would you, the cosmos, open yourself most deeply to that suitor who viewed you as being at least as intelligent and noble, as worthy a being, as permeated with mind and soul, as imbued with moral aspiration and purpose, as endowed with spiritual and mysterious depths as he?”
Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche - this is a beautiful quote, about our relationship to the universe, and it works just as well if you substitute human for cosmos
