Suffering shapes the life force, sometimes into anger, sometimes into blame and self-pity. Eventually it may show us the wisdom of embracing and loving life. Rachel Naomi Remen More Quotes by Rachel Naomi Remen More Quotes From Rachel Naomi Remen From a good teacher you may learn the secret of listening. You will never learn the secret of life. You will have to listen for yourself Rachel Naomi Remen secret teacher life Life is known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with change and the unknown. Given the nature of life, there may be no security, but only adventure. Rachel Naomi Remen may adventure life Until we stop ourselves or, more often, have been stopped, we hope to put certain of life's events "behind us" and get on with our living. After we stop we see that certain of life's issues will be with us for as long as we live. We will pass through them again and again, each time with a new story, each time with a greater understanding, until they become indistinguishable from our blessings and our wisdom. It's the way life teaches us to live. Rachel Naomi Remen issues wisdom blessing We have become terribly vulnerable, not because we suffer but because we have separated ourselves from each other. A patient once told me that he had tried to ignore his own suffering and the suffering of other people because he had wanted to be happy. Yet becoming numb to suffering will not make us happy. The part in us that feels suffering is the same as the part that feels joy. Rachel Naomi Remen suffering-of-others joy people Our wounds are our sources of growth. Rachel Naomi Remen wounds source growth I had thought joy to be rather synonymous with happiness, but it seems now to be far less vulnerable than happiness. Joy seems to be a part of an unconditional wish to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet with whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us. Rachel Naomi Remen attachment expectations joy Freedom is as frightening now as it was thousands of years ago. It will always require a willingness to sacrifice what is most familiar for what is most true. To be free we may need to act from integrity, on trust, sometimes for a very long time. Few of us will reach our promised land in a day. But perhaps the most important part of the story is that God does not delegate this task. Whenever anyone moves toward freedom, God Himself is there. Rachel Naomi Remen freedom integrity moving If you carry someone else's fears and live by someone else's values, you may find that you have lived their lives. Rachel Naomi Remen live-by ifs may Big messages come in small packages. All it may take to restore someone's trust in life may be returning a lost earring or a dropped glove. Rachel Naomi Remen gloves messages may We are all healers of each other. Look at David Spiegel's fascinating study of putting people together in a support group and seeking that some people in it live twice as long as other people who are not in a support group. I asked David what went on in those groups and he said that people just cared about each other. Nothing big, no deep psychological stuff-people just cared about each other. The reality is that healing happens between people. Rachel Naomi Remen healing long reality When we pray, we don't change the world, we change ourselves. Rachel Naomi Remen praying prayer world Most of us encounter a great deal more Mystery than we are willing to experience. Sometimes knowing life requires us to suspend disbelief, to recognize that all our hard-won knowledge may only be provisional and the world may be quite different than we believe it to be. This can be very stressful, even frightening. But if we are not willing to wonder, we may have to hang up the phone on life. Rachel Naomi Remen phones knowing believe Facts bring us to knowledge, but stories lead to wisdom. Rachel Naomi Remen stories facts The choice people have to make is never between slavery and freedom. We will always have to choose between slavery and the unknown. Rachel Naomi Remen freedom choices people It has been said that sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. p 374 Rachel Naomi Remen stories order needs Ours is not a culture that respects the sick, the old or the vulnerable. We strive for independence, competence, and mastery. In embracing such 'frontier' values, we may become intolerant of human wholeness, contemptuous of anything in ourselves, and in others, that has needs or is capable of suffering. The denial of a vulnerability is the ultimate barrier to compassion. Rachel Naomi Remen sick compassion suffering I have no idea about what death is, but because I have been in association with it so intimately, I have a much greater sense of the value of life and of what life can be. Rachel Naomi Remen association inspirational ideas How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it in granite, as if only this would do full honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence... p 259 Rachel Naomi Remen pain blessed thinking Is it possible to live so defensively that you never get to live at all? Rachel Naomi Remen Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with him, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough. Whatever his story, he no longer needs to be alone with it. This is what will allow his healing to begin. (Carl Rogers) Rachel Naomi Remen humanity healing men
