When you listen generously to people they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. Rachel Naomi Remen More Quotes by Rachel Naomi Remen More Quotes From Rachel Naomi Remen To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary. Like all judgement, approval encourages a constant striving. It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value. Approval cannot be trusted. It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been. It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy. Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it. Rachel Naomi Remen track judgement real Most people have come to prefer certain of lifes experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, 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 Rachel Naomi Remen greatness pain compassion Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world. Rachel Naomi Remen integrity sometimes world The spiritual is inclusive. It is the deepest sense of belonging and participation.We all participate in the spiritual at all times, whether we know it or not. Rachel Naomi Remen participation all-time spiritual Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns. Rachel Naomi Remen offers teach life Of course love is never earned. It is a grace we give one another. Anything we need to earn is only approval. Rachel Naomi Remen grace love giving A woman once told me that she did not feel the need to reach out to those around her because she prayed every day. Surely, this was enough. But a prayer is about our relationship to God; a blessing is about our relationship to the spark of God in one another. God may not need our attention as badly as the person next to us on the bus or behind us in line in the supermarket. Everyone in the world matters, and so do their blessings. When we bless others, we offer them refuge from an indifferent world. Rachel Naomi Remen community prayer blessing We usually look outside ourselves for heroes and teachers. It has not occurred to most people that they may already be the role model they seek. The wholeness they are looking for may be trapped within themselves by beliefs, attitudes, and self-doubt. But our wholeness exists in us now. Trapped though it may be, it can be called upon for guidance, direction, and most fundamentally, comfort. It can be remembered. Eventually we may come to live by it. Rachel Naomi Remen hero attitude teacher The willingness to consider possibility requires a tolerance of uncertainty. Rachel Naomi Remen uncertainty possibility tolerance In the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you. Rachel Naomi Remen singing silence listening Our listening creates a sanctuary for the homeless parts within another person. Rachel Naomi Remen focus compassion listening Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention Rachel Naomi Remen listening-to-others silence giving I have even learned to respond to someone crying by just listening. In the old days I used to reach for the tissues, until I realized that passing a person a tissue may be just another way to shut them down, to take them out of their experience of sadness and grief. Now I just listen. When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them. Rachel Naomi Remen sadness grief listening The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Rachel Naomi Remen listening-to-others powerful silence We are, in a certain way, defined as much by our potential as by its expression. There is a great difference between an acorn and a little bit of wood carved into an acorn shape, a difference not always readily apparent to the naked eye. The difference is there even if the acorn never has the opportunity to plant itself and become an oak. Remembering its potential changes the way in which we think of the acorn and react to it. How we value it. If an acorn were conscious, knowing its potential would change the way that it might think and feel about itself. Rachel Naomi Remen eye opportunity thinking Goose bumps happen when your soul is close to you, breathing lightly on the back of your neck, and wakes you up. Rachel Naomi Remen breathing soul bumps Deep inside, our integrity sings to us whether we are listening or not. It is a note that only we can hear. Eventually, when life makes us ready to listen, it will help us to find our way home. Rachel Naomi Remen listening home integrity Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways. When we find new eyes, the unsuspected blessing in work we have done for many years may take us completely by surprise. We can see life in many ways: with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition. But perhaps it is only those who speak the language of meaning, who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served. Rachel Naomi Remen eye heart meaningful Sooner or later we will come to the edge of all that we can control and find life, waiting there for us. Rachel Naomi Remen sooner-or-later coaching waiting In our instinctive attachments, our fear of change, and our wish for certainty and permanence, we may undercut the impermanence which is our greatest strength, our most fundamental identity. Without impermanence, there is no process. The nature of life is change. All hope is based on process. Rachel Naomi Remen attachment change wish
