The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one’s whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.
–C.G.Jung
_______________________________________________
Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest, or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation, and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a sense of security- religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominates man’s thinking, relationships, and daily life. These are the causes of our problems, for they divide man from man in every relationship…The uniqueness of the individual does not lie in the superficial but in the total freedom from the content of consciousness.”
_______________________________________________
Life does not accommodate you; it shatters you. Every seed destroys its container, or else there would be no fruition.
–Florida Scott-Maxwell
_______________________________________________
Ultimately (we) should not ask what the meaning of Life is, but rather must recognize that it is (we) who are asked. In a word, each is questioned by Life, and we can only answer to Life by answering for our own life: to Life we can only respond by being responsible.
–Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
_______________________________________________
On every fourth step,
you are meant to fall down.
Not occasionally, not once, not twice,
but on every fourth step.
The ground opens up, the wind blows,
a branch hits you on the head,
you trip on stones,
your heart breaks,
you’ve got to fold the laundry,
and they’ve closed the two left lanes.
Here on the fourth step,
all the forces gather together to stop you.
And some people, when they fall down,
they lie there for the rest of their lives.
And some people learn
how to fall-down-get-up.
That is one move. Fall-down-get-up.
–Naomi Newman
Snake Talk: Urgent Messages From the Mother
_______________________________________________
Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.
– Betty Friedan
_______________________________________________
Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,
made nothing?
Are you willing to be made nothing?
Dipped into oblivion?
If not, you will never really change.
The phoenix renews her youth
only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down
to hot and flocculent ash.
Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest
with strands of down like floating ash
shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,
immortal bird.
– D.H. Lawrence, Phoenix
_______________________________________________
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone.
And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
– Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
