I dont know who wrote this, but my good friend Dustin gave it to me some time ago...

Build a monastery for your soul. Build it in a high sheltered place and let it fill with silence. Make it strong and secure, a refuge from confusion. Build in total concentration, single intent, with the dedication of a builder who loves his work. One day, perhaps before you are ready, (and it is never finished), you will find it inhabited. Turn inward and be glad, for your soul has found a temple.

Integrity is sanity. Anyone not at peace with himself is insane. A disintegrated personality is one in which there is no room for a conscience, in which the conscience is struggling to survive. The sane man does not violate his conscience. He builds an honorable seat for it and gives it first place in hi psyche. When he is under deadly attack, it is the very last thing to go to.

Give your soul the judgment seat in all life’s dealings. Let every act, great or small, be decided beneath this bar. Do not evade it, do not compromise it. Any act done with the soul’s approval is that much better, and any done against it destroys peace. Let the room of judgment be the most important part of your soul’s monastery. The sane man has an inner truth-sense that is delicate and precise. Its sensitive warnings will continue as long as they are not ignored. When ignored, the system is damaged. Rationalization can through the truth-sense off, and confusion results. When there is no longer a truth-sense, there is no peace. The insane man has been living so long without peace that he doesn’t believe it can exist at all. The insane man despairs.

Build a garden of beauty. Make it ordered and profuse, contained and infinite and wild and subdued. Let it contain all true paradox and opposites: let them exist in peace with each other. Do not shut out that which is not yet understood. Let it grow, but be careful. One false thing in this garden of beauty will be so jarringly discordant that will weaken all real opposites with doubt of their combined truth. Grasp the truth of paradox and accept it in yourself.

No human being is so simple that he does not contain opposites. When one is young, these conflicts seam irreconcilable. An aspect of maturity is the ability to say "I am this; and I am this also. My identity is not one thing to the exclusion of everything else; it is this, and this --all."

Make a library in your soul’s monastery. Fill it with books and music. Hang the walls with paintings. Let some books, music and pictures be your own souls creating. Combine art with the soul-thoughts of others. Let this room be well used. Do not be afraid to leave it unordered. It will be safe still when you return, and perhaps in your absence, a new creation will have begun, an assimilation of the unordered details.

Build an observatory for the viewing of life. Build a laboratory for experiments. Build an altar for worshiping God; let there be candles and ritual singing; let there be simple, direct communion. And lastly, when all this is finished, send an army out from the fortress; for the world needs an attack from your soul’s best soldiers. And no matter the fortunes of that battle, your soul will remain at peace.