Buhner Quotes & Sayings

The only real freedom any of us have is making our own decisions. — Shane Gericke

I'd rather die at the hands of a friend than an enemy. — Stephen King

Continually trying to look on the bright side interferes with our finding the wisdom that lies in the fruitful darkness. Continually striving upward toward the light means we never grow downward into our own feet, never become firmly rooted on the earth, never explore the darkness within and around us, a darkness without whose existence the light would have no meaning. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

The emergence of self-organized ecoranges generates the potential for highly adaptable responses to environmental perturbations that might affect that ecorange. Within that system, all the plants are continually communicating with each other, sending chemical communications along the mycelial network to other plants in the community. (Plants also speak using auditory signals through a complex sound-based language that is far more ancient than the human though it exists in a much subtler sound spectrum than our own.) — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Elena Ferrante is the author of several novels. There is nothing mysterious about her, given how she manifests herself - perhaps even too much - in her own writing, the place where her creative life transpires in absolute fullness. — Elena Ferrante

Laugh while you've got the chance, you won't laugh much when you are dead and buried. — W. Somerset Maugham

We have lost, as James Hillman once put it, the response of the heart to what is presented to the senses. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

When testosterone levels are low, vitamin D potentiates abnormal prostate tissue growth. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Though my natural instinct is to wish for a life free from pain, trouble, and adversity, I am learning to welcome anything that makes me conscious of my need for Him. If prayer is birthed out of desperation, then anything that makes me desperate for God is a blessing. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Even before the earthquake in Haiti, only half the country's population had a source of safe drinking water. — Marcus Samuelsson

The tree does not end at it's skin but exists also in the rain that falls downwind, many miles from the forest. In the seed exists the acorn, the oak, and the shade. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

human beings are not single egos but are instead composed of multiple ego states. multiple personality disorder is only a pathological expression of a general condition — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Researchers studying emerging viruses have noticed an interesting phenomenon. As more human beings are born, there is a consistent spread of human habitation into once undeveloped ecoranges. The previously existing environment is removed, houses are built, people move in. The former populations of plants and animals are displaced. However, one of the major things that has been overlooked is that viruses have also lived in those regions for a very long time - in a healthy symbiotic balance with their hosts, both plant and animal. It is possible to think of them as an invisible herd or pack species, spread with the same kind of density throughout those ecoranges just as deer or birds are. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

The killing of mature members of any species leads to a reduction not only in biomass and species density and diversity but also in that species' accumulated knowledge of how to most efficiently fill its ecological niche and interact with the rest of the ecosystem around it. The accumulated wisdom of the species is severely reduced or, sometimes, even lost in the process. Thus the tremendous loss of human languages around the globe that were generated out of thousands of generations of human interaction with specific habitats by unique groups and which encode unique understandings of ecosystem functioning is a tragedy greater than we yet know. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Michael Crichton comments, "Animals raised in isolation, without parents, without guidance, were not fully functional. Zoo animals frequently could not care for their offspring, because they had never seen it done. They would ignore their infants, or roll over and crush them, or simply become annoyed with them and kill them. . . . Adapative behavior was a kind of morality; it was behavior that had evolved over many generations because it was found to succeed - behavior that allowed members of the species to cooperate, to live together, to hunt, to raise young."59 — Stephen Harrod Buhner

deep humility. There is nothing the arrogant hate more. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

For a lack of education, a child's future may hold no fortune. — Dennis E. Adonis

Being interesting has been replaced by being identifiable. — Chuck Klosterman

Mark Lappe once put it . . . The period once euphemistically called the Age of Miracle Drugs is dead. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Zinc Zinc has significant effects on male sexuality, including sperm motility and production, erections, and even testosterone levels. Because the transformation of androstenedione to testosterone depends on a zinc-dependant enzyme, zinc intake significantly affects testosterone levels in the body. One study found that sixty milligrams of zinc daily for fifty days increased serum testosterone levels. Because DHT is metabolized from testosterone, a subsequent rise in DHT levels was also seen. Testosterone and DHT levels only increased in those men whose testosterone levels were low. Normal men experienced no increase. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

When your world falls apart and you're left with just yourself, you're forced to discover who you are without all the beliefs, expectations, views, & self-image provided by some teacher or system. The calculating mind gives way to the intuitive mind, Knowing without Thinking. — Gabrielle Roth

Changes in behavioral state are accompanied by internally coordinated changes in the information processing mode of local neuronal circuits. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Fifteen years ago I had an odd dream. In it, a medicinal plant that I was interested in, an Usnea lichen that is ubiquitous on trees throughout the world, told me that while it was good for healing human lungs it was primarily a medicine for the lungs of the planet, the trees. When I awoke, I was amazed. It had never occurred to me in quite that way that plants have some life and purpose outside their use to human beings. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Communicatory inputs from the world can occur through any of the six primary sensory modalities at any time. The important thing is to first develop the capacity to feel the deeper meanings inside any of the sensory modalities, second to seek their meanings, and third to craft congruent responses. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Good God. Johnny freakin' Ramos. Out in the hall. Of course, out in the hall. Hell, he'd spent half his life out in the hall,especially at Campbell Junior High,especially during seventh-grade social studies call. She'd gotten sent out in the hall with him once, her one and only time in the hall ever, the two of them put there to "work things out", and her poor little thirteen-year-old heart had barely survived the experience. — Tara Janzen

The boundaries of these ecoranges, by the way, like the boundaries of all self-organized systems, are very porous. There is a constant flow of energy, and information, into and out of them. They are all tightly interwoven into the larger ecosystem of the Earth itself. Each acts locally, each acts globally. They are part of a highly complex and redundant system for maintaining the homeodynamis of the Earth. They develop more complexity over time, for the greater the complexity, the greater the ability to maintain homeodynamis. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

In this wonderful book Stephen Buhner shows us that the heart is not a machine but the informed, intelligent core of our emotional, spiritual, and perceptual universe. Through the heart we can perceive the living spirit that diffuses through the green world that is our natural home. Required reading for all owners of a heart. — Matthew Wood

Measured with magnetic field meters, the electromagnetic field that the heart produces is some 5,000 times more powerful than that created by the brain. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

Older plants send out volatiles to younger plants that contain within them information about chemical responses to predation. A bean plant, being fed upon by a spider mite, can analyze from its saliva just what type of spider mite is feeding on it. It then will craft a specific pheromone, releasing it from its leaf stomata as a volatile chemical into the air. That pheromone will call to the plant the exact predator that feeds on that particular spider mite. Older plants store this information as a kind of cultural learning that is then passed on to younger generations. Old growth plants are repositories of the acquired learning of the species. Cultural learning and transmission is, in reality, common throughout the Gaian system. Chimpanzees teach their young to collect termites with a stick, and how to make the stick. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

I made a mock newscast with my friend Amy. We'd set up the camera, an old VHS camcorder, and I did the sports section and interviewed my brother who pretended to be Jay Buhner ... against his will, of course. — Charissa Thompson

I trust the universe to bring me everything I need at the right time context and order. — Tonto Dikeh

If he was so great, you'd still be together. — Greg Behrendt

the sensory inflows are gated differently as ego states change, both during the developmental stages of life or when previous developmental stages are intentionally regenerated later in life. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

The only way to retrieve a secret,once known, is to replace it with a lie. — Orson Scott Card