Serenity

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity. –Lao-Tze

Authenticity

"Take your life in your own hands and what happens.  A terrible thing; no one to blame."  Erica Jong

Sacrifice and Cost

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required in exchange for it, immediately or in the long run."  Henry David Thoreau

Individuality

"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying 'amen' to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive."  Robert Louis Stevenson

How Many?

How many people who believe they never dream are sleepwalking in their marriage, in their job, in their church, blindly adhering to ideas they never question, with no heart in what they are doing?"  Marion Woodman

"If you see yourself
as no one worth looking at;
if you believe you are
not worth listening to,
if they told you,
"That's not what you saw,
not what you heard,
not what you think
you cannot trust yourself"
You are lost.

Don't look to others to find you,
to love and take care of you now.
You'll suck them dry.

No one out there
is responsible.
Go back and find
your soul.
Be mother and father
to yourself,
Until the divine parents
arrive.

Christina Baldwin

Samsara

"Buddhists talk about Samsara, the world of illusion.   It is the place that most of us live.   Mistaking illusion for reality is said to be the root cause of suffering.   Yet in some immensely elegant way suffering itself can release us from illusion.   Often in times of crisis, when we reach for what we have considered our strength we stumble on our wholeness and our real power.   How we were before we fixed ourselves to win approval."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Perfection

"Few perfectionists can tell the difference between love and approval.   Perfectionism is so widespread in this culture that we have had to invent another word for love.  "Unconditional love", we say.   Yet all love is unconditional.   Anything else is just approval."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Wholeness

"Parts of ourselves which we may have hidden all our lives out of shame are often the source of our healing.   We make ourselves less whole.  It is only human to trade wholeness for approval.  Yet the parts we disown are not lost, they are just forgotten.   We can remember our wholeness at any time."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Approval

"Some people spend enormous amounts of time considering the impression that their words and behaviors create, playing always for approval.   A great deal of energy goes into this process of fixing and editing ourselves.   We have changed ourselves into someone that the people who matter to us can love.   Sometimes no longer know what is true for us, in which direction our integrity lies."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Approval

"To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary.   Approval encourages constant striving.   It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value.   Approval can't be trusted.   It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been.   It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy.   Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it."  Rachel Naomi Remen