“Using phrases or mantras to encourage and comfort myself has been a powerful practice for me. For years, I would say to myself ‘Remember the purple sky’ when I was feeling anxious, which to me meant remember a sense of internal spaciousness and kindness toward myself.”
“’Pyrapshere’ began as a sketch for a variety show I produced called ‘A Pretty Good Show.’ My partner, Andersen Gabrych, and I expanded it into a full-fledged faux-religion, including a list of 21 tenets, sacred symbols, testimonials, and even a clothing line. Many people believed it was a real thing and wanted to join.”
“Today, I regularly attend two Buddhist organizations, the Zen Center of Los Angeles and Against the Stream, but I also attend certain Christian functions. I try to cultivate a generous, kind spirit and am open to anything to help get me there.”
“I continued to suffer from anxiety and obsessive thoughts, although the thoughts stopped centering on hell. I moved into an ashram called the Himalayan Institute after college and studied meditation, which made an enormous difference.”
“My parents were wonderful Christians. They were religious, but they were not fanatical in any way. I was the one who took it to the extreme. I was told in Sunday school that you had to accept Jesus into your heart if you didn’t want to go to hell. So of course I did that a thousand times. But the catch was you had to mean it with all of your heart.”
“There was a verse that said if you are lukewarm rather than hot or cold, God will spit you out of his mouth on Judgment Day. And I felt like, I mean, I don’t know. I’m lukewarm.”
“I’m not on fire for the Lord, so I tried to make myself generate this fire for the Lord.”
“When I went to college, I was so focused on this new experience of my life that I really just pushed down all of my fears of hell and damnation.”
“I’ve been able to sell a number of pilots. Most have been based on my personal experience, so basically, my pitches have been like ‘Sit-‘n-Spin’ pieces.”
“My spiritual evolution I would describe as journey from literalism to figuratism. I now see all religious texts as pointing to an ineffable truth.”
“In high school and college, I did not have any Christian friends except my best friend Sarah, who I actually ‘brought to Jesus.’”
“The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral – whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love? I want to foster eulogy virtues when I’m in a yoga class or meditation session or any spiritual gathering. Especially if I’m lying in corpse pose. It just makes sense.”
“I know career motivation and encouragement up the ladder of success have their place in the world. But I don’t want them anywhere near my spirituality.”
“I want to have my desperate need for personal success shrunk, not enlarged.”
“The term ‘personal ambition’ immediately puts me off. It feels like finding a sliver of onion in my ice cream. There’s nothing wrong with a sliver of onion, but I don’t want it in my ice cream.”
“I have slavishly dedicated myself to the construction of an image that nobody but me sees. Nobody but me is pondering the question: How does Maggie Rowe stack up against others as an overall human being?”
“How is Maggie Rowe compensating for her decision to not have a child? Is what she is doing instead enough to justify that decision? What is she doing instead, and why can’t she be better at it? What’s keeping her from getting a better overall existence score in comparison to an arbitrary sampling of other human beings?”
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