Sonderquotes

A Life of Loving

Loving others will definitely improve your life right now.  Take that passion that is God’s gift to you and lavish it on others.  Think of yourself as being loved, because you are.  God loves you, and probably many others do as well.  Once you move from focusing on an absence of love to recognizing the abundance of love already within, you will stop postponing happiness.  A life of loving is available now.

– Mary Manin Morrissey, No Less Than Greatness, p. 72

Healthy Selfishness

Some healthy selfishness now can rekindle the excitement and joy in your life — feelings that are nearer to the surface than you might imagine.  Best of all it can help you realize some of your most private and most precious dreams — now, while there’s still time.

– Dr. Rachael Heller and Dr. Richard Heller, Healthy Selfishness: Getting the Life You Deserve Without the Guilt, p. 53

Finding Joy

Joy is of our making, and it is most easily made when we acknowledge God.  I am inclined to say that acknowledging God is a necessary exercise.  At least I have found it so.  As I have said already, our minds can hold but a single thought.  If God is in that thought, every experience has the capacity to instill joy in us. . . .

Joy is always available to us moment by moment.  But we must keep our minds open and pay attention.  A closed mind or a mind filled with fear or judgment will never know joy.  A red rose beginning to open, a willow tree swaying in the breeze, the rainbow after a shower, the dew glistening on each blade of grass in the early morning, a baby taking her first steps — all of these moments hold the potential for joy.  Every moment of every day we can see evidence of God everywhere.  And we can feel overjoyed by this evidence if we want to.  The decision is ours.

– Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 30-31

Being Lavish

Stinginess sits at one end of the continuum.  At the other end is the experience of being lavish.  For many of us, that word produces an instant response: Oh, I couldn’t, I shouldn’t!  But if you don’t give to yourself, how will your life become abundant?  Lavish means stepping wholeheartedly into the big middle of life, rather than just tiptoeing partway in.  Lavish means letting the flow of life move freely through you.  Lavish isn’t busy trying to control everything (that’s stingy).  Lavish is juicy, and yes, it’s messy.  It’s alive.

– Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity, p. 43

Responsibility is Power.

When I talk about responsibility, I am really talking about having power.  Blame is about giving away one’s power.  Responsibility gives us the power to make changes in our lives.  If we play the victim role, then we are using our personal power to be helpless.  If we decide to accept responsibility, then we don’t waste time blaming somebody or something out there. . . .

If we can use our problems and illnesses as opportunities to think about how we can change our lives, we have power.

Louise L. Hay, The Power Is Within You, p. 5

Forgiveness, a Comprehensive Topic

When I first turned my attention to forgiveness, it seemed a worthwhile, if unexciting, topic.  But as I immersed myself, I realized that forgiveness is as fundamental and important as any topic in psychology.  There are few places it can’t take you.  It embraces the meaning of love and hate, the nature of dependency, the torments of envy, the problems of narcissism and paranoia, as well as the tension between self-hatred and self-acceptance, between striving for maturity and refusing to grow up. . . .

In our capacity or failure to forgive we reveal our ability to recognize the humanity in someone who has hurt or disappointed us, as well as to see our own limitations and complicity.  It represents an ability to imagine what life is like on the other side of the fence, where another human being is engaged in his own struggle, to let go of the expectation that people exist to be just what we need them to be.  And this sensibility applies to our view of ourselves, too:  for forgiving others is nothing but the mirror image of forgiving oneself.  Significant acts of forgiveness also entail letting go of a precious story we tell about ourselves, risking the awareness of a larger, less self-justifying truth.

What we do in the realm of forgiveness . . . speaks to the magnitude of our self-centeredness and the extent to which we organize the world into a simple pattern of good versus bad, as opposed to a more mature ability to tolerate ambiguity and ambivalence.  In the capacity to forgive we see our largeness of heart.  And, in struggling to forgive what is most difficult for us to forgive, we reveal our courage, imagination, and potential for growth.  The development of forgiveness is, I now think, as clear a marker of general psychological development as there is.

– Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 9-10

Don’t Get Ahead of Your Nose

God’s presence can’t be experienced except moment by moment, and that means we have to show up in each moment.  Getting ahead of this moment in regard to our relationships, our vocations, our dreams, and aspirations simply prevents us from knowing God. . . .

In my role as a mentor to a number of young women, I often say, “Don’t get ahead of your nose.”  It’s a great reminder that one is projecting, and it quickly brings us back to the present.  I also suggest that whenever thoughts of the future come into your mind, you envision blowing them away.  This may sound silly but it’s effective.  I have used it for years.

Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 29

A Higher Way

It is not punishment.  God never punishes.  And He well knows how you have been longing to do His will.  This sickness has been given you as a loving message to help you understand that there was a still higher and more heavenly way of reacting to the wounds and troubles that you were experiencing than you knew about.  Certainly God gave you a glorious victory even though your feelings were so wounded; you were delivered from resentment and were able to accept it all with forgiveness.  But perhaps there was a little self-pity because you did not realize about the glorious principle I have been sent to share with you.  For there is a still higher level of acceptance possible, and that is to accept everything that happens with praise, thanksgiving, and joy, knowing that every seeming affliction is really a blessing in disguise.  God allows only the very best things possible to happen to you at any particular time; that is to say, exactly the things and situations that are best fitted to help you, because they afford you the opportunity of reacting just as Jesus did.  Learning by His grace to react with praise and thanksgiving even to things that appear most evil, unjust, cruel, and deplorable, because God is allowing this opportunity to bring good out of evil, is just like waving a magic wand over an evil enchantment and being able to replace cruel spells with heavenly miracles.

– Hannah Hurnard, Eagles’ Wings to the Higher Places, p. 56-57

Upgrading Your Stories

When we upgrade, we are trading . . . Story for Story.  We’re not trying to convince ourselves we can change the truth about ourselves by reciting endless affirmations.  That hardly respects our intelligence and, furthermore, it doesn’t work.  As long as we hold that something is the truth, it is unchangeable.  As soon as we recognize it for what it is, however, a story, the story buffer line is open and we can help ourselves to a better one.

Regarding our Stories, the question is never “Is it true?” because it can’t be true; it’s just a Story.  The question also isn’t “Is it the right Story?” because that implies there’s only one correct choice.  The most helpful question is “Is this Story useful?”  Given what I care about, what I want to contribute, and what matters to me, is the story I’m telling myself a useful one?  Most of us constantly replay hundreds of inherited default Stories that trample our life energy and steal our peace of mind.

– Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity:  Stop Holding Your Breath and Start Living Your Life, p. 35-36

The Present

Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future.  Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.” It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for.  The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

– C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time” (The Weight of Glory), quoted in A Year with C. S. Lewis, p. 323