Crown of Thorns

Short Quotes

[T]he crown of thorns that you wear ... represents your attempt at fulfillment in the world.

• Step 96

Great effort is exerted in building things that can fall apart in a moment, things that have no stability or permanence.

• Continuation Step 3

Some people can walk away from a relationship, but they are so bound to their ideas, their beliefs or their assumptions that they are not free to leave them. This is what it means to wear a crown of thorns. This is when the mind is a crown of thorns. You wear it, but it torments you. It seems to give you a kingly title, but in fact it is a harness of misery. It seems to elevate you and give you stature in the world, but in fact it cuts you and hurts you, binds you and mocks you.

• Greater Community Spirituality chap. 14, p. 171

Quotes from Outside the New Message from God

what Got him was Noth
ing & nothing's exAct 
ly what any one Living
(or some
body
Dead like even a Poet)could 
hardly express what 
i Mean is 
what knocked him over Wasn't 
(for instance)the Knowing your

whole(yes god

damned)life is a Flop or even 
to 
Feel how 
Everything(dreamed 
& hoped & 
prayed for 
months & weeks & days & years 
& nights & 
forever)is Less Than 
Nothing(which would have been

Something)what got him was nothing

e. e. cummings