“The Incarnation shows us that the divine world and the personal world coexist within each human being. It is when the two natures live together in a conscious synthesis that a person becomes a conscious self.” (Robert A. Johnson)
“The lack of authentic self-knowledge nags at our souls. We sense we should be able to know our own hearts—consciously or unconsciously, we attempt to resolve this fundamental confusion with all kinds of lesser remedies, without success.” (Father Barnabas Powell)
“Because we are conscious of the self, we realize the pending obliteration of this life and the destruction that one day will come upon our being. Our self-consciousness ushers in an awareness of death, which in turn draws us toward the voices of the world encouraging us to pursue various “necessities” that will stave off this loss of self and “save” us from death. They delude us! We need a Savior to rescue us from the death of our souls, for death of the body is one thing, but death of the soul is everything.” (Dynamis 10/21/2014)
“Consciously or unconsciously, greed leads us to believe that God has not given us everything we need for real life; therefore, we take things into our own hands. Ultimately, greed leads to idolatry because it makes possessions, not God, the focus of goodness and life.” (Kevin Scherer)
“Heaven is not a place but a Person. It is personal communion with the Triune God and experiential knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is eternal Life (John 17: 3). Hell is the loss or refusal of this communion, whether by our conscious rejection or the denial of it by our lives.” (Archimandrite Sergius)