“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

Self Love

Wouldn’t it be powerful if you fell in love with yourself so deeply that you would do just about anything if you knew it would make you happy? This is precisely how much life loves you and wants you to nurture yourself. The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. Then you can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from inside out.
~Alan Cohen

Addiction/Obsession

"Freedom from obsession is not about something you do; it's about knowing who you are. It's about recognizing what sustains you and what exhausts you. What you love and what you think you love because you can't have it." Geneen Roth

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

"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

Book of Love

"So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love."
— Omar Khayyám

A Blessing

"A blessing is a moment of meeting, a certain kind of relationship in which both people involved remember and acknowledge their true nature and worth, and strengthen what is whole in one another."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Subject or Object

"Those who identify with being objects rather than subjects function more in terms of what they "ought" to do, what they "have" to do, or what the "should" do because their sense of worth arises from others evaluations, reflections, desires.   They have missed out on learning how to be self-determining, although they may believe they have learned.   The telltale sign that they are functioning as objects rather than subjects is, as we have repeatedly seen, is feeling resentful and overwhelmed by their daily activities- feeling as though someone else were in charge."  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