The desire to force love to live only in its most positive form is what causes love ultimately to fall over dead. Clarissa Pinkola Estes More Quotes by Clarissa Pinkola Estes More Quotes From Clarissa Pinkola Estes Rather than chairs and tables, I preferred the ground, trees, and caves, for in those places I felt I could lean against the cheek of God. Clarissa Pinkola Estes cavestablestree Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one. Clarissa Pinkola Estes long-agoonenesstwo Mindful choosing of friends and lovers, not to mention teachers, is critical to remaining conscious, remaining intuitive, remaining in charge of the fiery light that sees and knows. Clarissa Pinkola Estes loverslightteacher To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one's own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one's own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know. It means to stand and live. Clarissa Pinkola Estes strengthstrongmean Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open. Clarissa Pinkola Estes swingskeysdoors Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. Clarissa Pinkola Estes endurancepsychicshealthy I call her Wild Woman, for those very words, wild and woman, create llamar o tocar a la puerta, the fairy-tale knock at the door of the deep feminine psyche. Llamar o tocar a la puerta means literally to play upon the instrument of the name in order to open a door. It means using words that summon up the opening of a passageway. No matter by which culture a woman is influenced, she understands the words wild and woman, intuitively. Clarissa Pinkola Estes doorsordermean For myself, solitude is rather like a folded-up forest that I carry with me everywhere and unfurl around myself when I have need. Clarissa Pinkola Estes solitudeforestsneeds To love pleasure takes little. To love truly takes a hero who can manage his own fear. Clarissa Pinkola Estes pleasureherolittles When you focus with soul eyes, / You will see home in many, many places. Clarissa Pinkola Estes focuseyehome The body remembers, the bones remember, the joints remember, even the little finger remembers. Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves. Like a sponge filled with water, anywhere the flesh is pressed, wrung, even touched lightly, a memory may flow out in a stream. Clarissa Pinkola Estes cellswatermemories It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires Clarissa Pinkola Estes psychicsdoelost It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What's needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take 'everyone on Earth' to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale. Clarissa Pinkola Estes giving-upearthjustice It is that holy poetry and singing we are after. ... It is the wild singing we are after, our chance to use the wild language we are learning by heart under the sea. When a woman speaks her truth, fires up her intention and feeling, staying tight with the instinctive nature, she is singing, she is living in the wild breath-stream of the soul. To live this way is a cycle in itself, one meant to go on, go on, go on. Clarissa Pinkola Estes fireseaheart we all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking. Clarissa Pinkola Estes stronganswersfeelings In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms. Clarissa Pinkola Estes darkheartchildren At bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground. Clarissa Pinkola Estes sowinghitting-bottomsoil When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer world. Clarissa Pinkola Estes oraclesvisionariesworld When women hear those words, an old, old memory is stirred and brought back to life. The memory is of our absolute, undeniable, and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may have become ghostly from neglect, buried by over-domestication, outlawed by the surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore. We may have forgotten her names, we may not answer when she calls ours, but in our bones we know her, we yearn toward her, we know she belongs to us and we to her. Clarissa Pinkola Estes namesmemoriesculture I have to go to the woods, and I have to meet the wolf, or else my life will never begin. Clarissa Pinkola Estes woods
