“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver

Passionate Living

"There is no passion to be found playing small, settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."


- Nelson Mandela

Coming Down to Earth

"In the East and the West, there is a deeply rooted desire or need to transcend who we naturally are.  Some higher power, some God, finds us unacceptable as we are.  We've spent thousands of years learning the art of self-transcendence.   But life is a matter of of incarnation.  The soul is an entity that lives within our human body.  The problem is too many people in our culture try to skip over this step and go straight up into spirit.   Over-spiritualization is a real danger but usually the body starts to scream.   If we can learn to listen to our body's symptoms or to our addictions or to the symptoms of the planet, we can start coming down to earth again.  If you want to heal - heal your body and your soul - you have to surrender; you have to give up control; you have to stop trying to be perfect, because eventually you have to face the fact that you are not God and you cannot control your life."  Marion Woodman

Vanity

"Don't let the sellers of stuff,
power enough,
to rob you of your grace.
Love is all over the place.
There's nothing wrong with your face."

Ani DeFranco

Namaste

“See the Light in others and it is easier to feel good about yourself. See the Light in yourself and it is easier to feel compassion for others.” — Paul Ferrini

Belief

"What we believe about ourselves can hold us hostage.   A belief is more than an idea - it seems to shift the way in which we actually experience ourselves and our lives."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Risk

"Those who don't love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either.   In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness.   Or even that the love we have been given can be trusted."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Belief

"Belief traps or frees us.  Labels may become self-fulfilling prophecies.   A label is an attempt to assert control and manage uncertainty.   It may allow us the security and comfort of a mental closure, but life never comes to a closure, life is a process."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Wholeness

"We surrender our wholeness for a variety of reasons.   Among the most compelling are our ideas of what being a good person is all about.   The nature of self, a complex living inter-change of seemingly opposite characteristics get whittled down against some acquired standard of social and spiritual acceptability."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Judgment

"The life in us is diminished by judgment far more frequently than by disease.   Our own self-judgment or the judgment of other people can stifle our life force, it's spontaneous and natural expression."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Stillness

"When we avoid the emptiness, when we fill the stillness with too much doing, we are often trying to outrun our sometimes unconscious conviction that who we are will never be enough."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Self Esteem

"The lack of faith in who we are is embedded in the bones of the culture we have created.   We are surrounded by the assumption of our innate inadequacy, the notion of original sin made implicit in a secular culture preaching achievement, improvement, and change."  Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Care of the Soul

"Care of the soul speaks to the longing we feel and to the symptoms that drive us crazy, but it is not a path away from shadow or death.   A soulful personality is complicated is complicated, multifaceted, and shaped by both pain and pleasure, success and failure.   Life lived soulfully is not without its moments of darkness and periods foolishness.   Dropping the salvation fantasy frees us up to the possibility of self-knowledge and self-acceptance, which are the very foundations of soul."    Thomas Moore

Santa

"The Santa myth is one of the most effective means ever devised for
intimidating children, eroding their self-esteem, twisting their behavior,
warping their values, and slowing their development of critical thinking
skills."   Tom Flynn, The Trouble with Christmas

Personal Sovereignty

"Personal sovereignty is the ability to know and practice self-determination in whatever circumstances you find yourself.   When you feel in control of your life, you know yourself to be the author of your own actions, and know that you always have choices."   Polly Young-Eisendrath

Claiming your needs

"Attempting to evoke responses from others without claiming one's needs not only is confusing but carries the hidden meaning of danger-that something is so troubling it cannot be put into words.   It is only when we speak directly, with a secure self-confidence, that we step outside this negative meaning of female desire."  Polly Young-Eisendrath

Image

"The compulsion to be desired and desirable undermines self-direction, self-confidence, and self-determination in women of all ages, in all our roles, whether or not the affliction is conscious.  Wanting to be wanted is about finding our power in an image rather than in our own actions.   We try to appear attractive, nice, good, valid, legitimate, or worthy to someone else, instead of discovering what we actually feel and want for ourselves.   Other people are expected to provide our own feelings of power, worth or vitality, at the expense of our own authentic development.   In place of knowing the truth of who we are and what we want for our lives we become trapped in images."    Polly Young-Eisendrath

Self Esteem

"When you need more of anything to feel positive about yourself, you are always in a race without a finish line."  Wayne Dyer