Quotes of 2022
Here are quotes I came across while reading, listening, and scrolling. They felt meaningful enough to me to take the time to capture them. Enjoy!
Book: Interpreter of Maladies
Story: The Third and Final Continent
“…there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”
Wisdom From Higher Dimensional Beings 166
"Be different. It is not the primary function of a society to create norms from which everybody can hope live to up to. The true function of a society is to embrace all of its elements. So if you do not fit into your community, then you are giving others the opportunity to see the strength that is inherent in a diverse culture. Being like everyone else may allow you to live in comfort and may prevent you from experiencing raised eyebrows and dirty looks. But when you are not who you really are, you are in no way serving the greater good. There is no bigger role for you to play than the role of being yourself. Anyone who cannot see your value probably does not see their own either. There's always room for that that is unusual in every society. Not everyone in that society will recognize the value in your uniqueness. But the more you are unwilling to fit in, the more you are giving others permission to be who they are. Slowly, but surely all in your society will take off their masks, will step out of line, and will dare to be who they really are. Be different without being defiant or rebellious and you will not create the need for anyone to push against you. Be different and love yourself unconditionally and you will find others will do the same."
“Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.”
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
101 Ways to Transform Your Life by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
#7 Write down this ancient truth and reread it on a daily basis. When you seek happiness for yourself it will always elude you. When you seek happiness for others, you will find it yourself.
#12 Work at being content with who you are rather than pleasing others by being unauthentic. Say to yourself, I am what I am and it is okay as long as I am not hurting anyone else in the process. You have a right to be who you are and the only morality you have to be concerned with is whether somebody else is being hurt by you being who you are. You don't have to apologize for anything or anyone. You don't have to apologize to anyone for anything that you are. It is a wonderful affirmation: I am what I am.
#80 Examine everything that offends you and see if you can get your ego out of the picture. When you are offended you are actually thinking this is awful. How can God allow it? Release your ego. Then react upon that which you are for. Then there will be no need to fight. Everything that you are for empowers you. Everything you are against weakens you. Whenever you have to fight something you are weaker from the effort.
#100 Demonstrate tolerance and love by ignoring what may have transpired in the past. Avoid the inclination to make someone else wrong by pointing out the fallacies of their point of view with examples from their past. Let go of the desire to win and cultivate the desire to communicate.
Pain body remnants of past pain that are still alive that have accumulated inside of you as a little entity. The personal plus the collective part of it is the collective pain body.
Ekhart Tolle the Art of Presence
“We are a group of beings sharing consciousness. Sharing our hearts. Sharing the road maps of our journeys. What we are here for is a transformation of being, not the collecting of experiences. For no matter how many experiences we collect, it will never be enough. But we the experienced will always be a breath away from this moment.”
Ram Dass
Bringing the human race together
We have discovered that the greatest strength humanity has is their ability to listen to one another and understand where the other is coming from. This ability that you have is what gives you compassion and that compassion helps you tap into the unconditional love that makes you source energy beings. The opposite of what we are talking about here is also present on planet earth. You do have plenty of people who are unwilling to see or even attempt to see her another’s perspective. We find this to be what polarizes you on many issues.
′′ You don't need coffee; you need sleep.
You don't need nicotine; you need to walk.
You don't need to get drunk; you need to laugh out loud.
You don't need wild sex; you need connection.
You don't need to scream; you need to express yourself.
You don't need to be tragic; you need to listen.
You don't need synthetic drugs; you need art.
You don't need stimulants; you need a hug.
You don't need TV; you need poetry.
You don't need to buy; you need Nature.
You don't need to judge, you need empathy.
You don't need religions; you need questions.
You don't need a partner; you need self-love.
You need yourself.
I need me.
Above everything, you need inner peace, which requires harmony between the inside and the outside.
Do what you believe and believe in what you do."
Painting by Vasil Woodland
“We are so frightfully concerned with our own deaths, we sometimes forget the purpose of our lives.”
Many Lives Many Masters
Brian Weiss
“What you most fear is what will most plague you. Fear will draw it to you like a magnet…
Thought is creative. Fear attracts like energy. Love is all there is... Love is the answer.”
...“We would see, that when others suffer the collective human body is set back from the progression of our species. A world without caste would set everyone free.”
-Trevor- This Place Satsang
Where we come from is where we go
Don’t ya fight with what you don’t know
Live the song and then soon we’ll flow
Water that seed and it will grow
On a journey to see that place
Take your mask off and see your face
Let it all go and then embrace
Cook it up now and get that taste
What your seeking is inside you
Always one it was never two
What to follow and what to do
Sit and rest in the absolute
We will go there when we are called
Love is mighty it will not fall
Like a mountain, we’re stand-in tall
All in one and the one and all
“It’s not the problem or the pain, it’s our resistance to it that harms us.”
-Peret
Codependent No More
“We can be gentle, loving, listening, attentive, and kind to ourselves, our feelings, thoughts, needs, wants, desires, and everything we’re made of. We can accept ourselves—all of us. Start where we’re at, and we will become more. Develop our gifts and talents. Trust ourselves. Assert ourselves. We can be trusted. Respect ourselves. Be true to ourselves. Honor ourselves, for that, is where our magic lies. That is our key to the world.”
“Yoga is stilling the fluctuations of the mind. Then one abides in their own true nature.” -Chopra's app
"Expectations are premeditated resentments." 12 Step Program
The thing you love least about yourself is your ceiling for love. -Aubrey Marcus
“The resistance against something exasperates any and all fears about it.” Ram Dass
Book: The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
“Solidarity is identifying with one another without feeling like you have to agree on every issue. It’s unity, not uniformity. It’s listening without rushing in to fix the problem. It’s going deeper than typical ways of talking and sharing—going down to the place where souls meet and love comes, where separateness drops away and you know these women because you are these women.
Jack Kornfield’s analogy. He says when you start to meditate your mind is like a puppy you’re trying to house-train. You place it on a piece of newspaper. “Stay,” you tell it. “Stay.” But does it stay? Of course not. It wanders off, and you have to bring it back. It doesn’t help to punish the pup. The pup learns by being gently brought back over and over again.
Sue Monk Kidd
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
The first step toward lyricism is simply acknowledging our creativity. Second, we must explore it. Ask yourself, “What is my deepest passion, really? What moves me profoundly?” And let the answer float up from the truest, most vulnerable place in your heart. Greet this answer like it is your own newborn self being placed in your arms. Love it. Bond with it. Feed it. Don’t push it aside, minimize, make excuses, and starve this thing of beauty, because this answer is the window into your creative life.
Walt Whitman (preface to Leaves of Grass)
Reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
In general, people are not drawn to perfection in others. People are drawn to shared interests, shared problems, and an individual's life energy. Humans connect with humans. Hiding one's humanity and trying to project an image of perfection makes a person a person vague, slippery, lifeless, and uninteresting. -Robert Glover
Comfort is a drug. Once you get used to it, it becomes addicting. Give a weak person consistent stimulation, good food, and cheap entertainment and they'll throw their ambitions right out the window. The comfort zone is where dreams go to die. @astraltruth
Maya Angelou's "And Still I Rise"
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
...........................................................
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I rise.
Make friends with pain and you'll never be alone. Cam Hanes
..."I pounded pillows. I poured the anger into my journals. I let it come. Yet anger needs not only to be recognized and allowed; like grief, it eventually needs to be transformed into an energy that serves compassion... Anger can fuel our ability to challenge, to defy injustice. It can lead to creative projects, and constructive behavior acts that work toward inclusion. In such ways, anger becomes a dynamism of love.
Sue Monk Kidd's The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
"[The female soul] resides in the guts, not in the head. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
In that experience of being formed anew, I may often feel torn asunder; old aspects of my self-conception must die in order for my new transformation into selfhood to take place. Penelope Washbourn
Patriarchy had created a world where the spirit is split from body, humans from nature, and natural from the divine, and I could feel those splits in myself.
I mourned those gaping holes. During those isolated days, I sometimes stood before the mirror, inwardly saying the first of many goodbyes to the woman I had been.
In crossing the unexplored gorge (an act that cannot be accomplished in several days)...Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
Wolf
The world of men is dividing into egalitarians and patriarchalists--those men who are trying to learn the language and customs of the newly emerging world, and those who are determined to keep that new order from taking root. The former group welcomes these changes, seeing that though they are painful in the short term, over the long term they provide the only route to intimacy and peace. But the latter group sees only loss...The patriarchalists' worldview, shared by women as well as men, is battling the emerging egalitarian worldview, which is also shared by people of both sexes. Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter- Sylvia Plath's Diary...
describes graphic battles with the Minotaur whom she described as an "inner voice," "a demon of negation." He would seize her, saying, "Oh, you can't teach, can't do anything. Can't write. Can't think." He robbed her of confidence, froze her into a "quivering jelly," and pressured her to run away from tasks where she would be fallible and flawed. Finally, she described how she mobilized herself to battle him:
I cannot ignore this murderous self: it is there. I smell it and feel it. ...When it says: you shall not sleep, you cannot teach, I shall go on anyway, knocking its nose in. Its biggest weapon is and has been the image of myself as a perfect success: in writing, teaching, and living. ...My demon of negation will tempt me day by day, and I'll fight it, as something other than my essential self, which I am fighting to save.
Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
By blindly following the script, we tend to become what Ursula K. Le Guin calls "male constructs" or, in Madonna Kolbenschlag's words, "formula females." It is sort of like filling in a paint-by-number canvas, creating ourselves within the outline of stories, wishes, and mindsets projected onto us by a faith and culture that have been shaped and regulated by men. By blindly following the script, we forfeit the power to shape our own lives and identities.
“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 frighten us.” Marianne Williamson. Found in the Book: The Opening by Randy Ferguson
Patience visited me
And it reminded me
That good things take time to come to fruition
And grow slowly with stability
Peace visited me
And it reminded me
That I may remain calm through the storms of life
Regardless of the chaos surrounding me
Hope visited me
And it reminded me
That better times lay ahead
And it would always be there to guide and uplift me
Humility visited me
And it reminded me
That I may achieve it
Not by trying to shrink myself and make myself less
But by focusing on serving the world and uplifting those around me
Kindness visited me
And it reminded me
To be more gentle, forgiving, and compassionate toward myself
And those surrounding me
Confidence visited me
And it reminded me
To not conceal or suppress my gifts and talents
In order to make others feel more comfortable
But to embrace what makes me, me
Focus visited me
And it reminded me
That other people’s insecurities and judgments about me
Are not my problem
And I should redirect my attention
From others back to me
Freedom visited me
And it reminded me
That no one has control over my mindset, thoughts, and wellbeing
But me
And love visited me
And it reminded me
That I need not search for it in others
As it lies within me.
Words by Tahlia Hunter
Artwork by Jungsuk Lee
I’ve learned without exception, that when people drop their fear, guilt, resentment, attachment, and judgment (all their primary sources of pain and separation), what they discover is that who they are, is love itself. They experience a deep, organic adoration for themselves and every human being on the planet.
Randy Ferguson
The Opening
