The inner tale transforms by reorienting us to new truth and insight, breaking open the hidden holy that dwells in our experience. The word story actually means “to know.” In the act of creating story there is always an event of coming to know. God surprises us with glimpses and truths we did not grasp until we tried to tell the story. As we shape the experience, an “aha!” emerges, a revelation.
— Sue Monk Kidd, Firstlight, p. 19
The search for happiness is a spiritual quest, but it’s a material quest, too. We want to find meaning and joy in this life on this earth. We can see that the prize we’re after might be considered selfish, but it isn’t a selfish happiness we want.
Happy people do not colonize land that already belongs to other people. They do not drop bombs, exploding lives and earth. Happy people do not lie to our face, stab us in the back, then scamper home muttering self-righteous justifications. . . .
Happiness may be uncool, but our refusal to be happy doesn’t make us more compassionate — it makes us mean.
— Ariel Gore, Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness, p. 31
People who believe they’re victims get to be right. Each experience they have convinces them of that. They don’t open themselves to the lessons, the growth, and the beauty of each situation they encounter. All they can see is their victimization….
People who believe they have powers get to be right, too. Although we know there is much in life we can’t control, we also know we have the power to think, to feel, to choose, and to take responsibility for ourselves and our lives. We’re discovering our creative powers, and our power to love, including our power to love ourselves. We’ve embraced our power to grow, to change, to move forward. We know we have the power to claim our lives and take responsibility for ourselves in any situation life brings. Although life may deal us certain hard blows, we’ve learned to see beyond that. We see life’s beauty, gifts, and lessons, and its mysterious and sometimes magical nature.
On the road to freedom we may have made a stopover. We believed we were victims and we got to be right. Now, our journey has led us someplace else. We know we have powers; we know we have choices. And we no longer need to be right. Just free.
— Melody Beattie, Journey to the Heart, p. 36
All the painful and horrendous things I was imagining were not present, and I realized suddenly and completely that it was my thoughts — and only my thoughts — that were tormenting me. If I stopped my thoughts, the pain stopped. And so it had. For about nine seconds. Then it all came flooding back, although from that moment on I understood one very, very important thing, perhaps the most important of all: learning to work with the pain of a broken heart was about learning to work with thoughts, not about changing any kind of reality. Because in reality, right this second now, nothing is happening.
— Susan Piver, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, p. 25
“Human being” is more a verb than a noun. Each of us is unfinished, a work in progress. Perhaps it would be most accurate to add the word “yet” to all our assessments of ourselves and each other. Jon has not learned compassion. . . yet. I have not developed courage. . . yet. It changes everything. I have seen the “yet” become real even at the very edge of life. If life is process, all judgments are provisional. We can’t judge something until it is finished. No one has won or lost until the race is over.
“Broken” may be only a stage in a process. A bud is not a broken rose. Only lifeless things are broken. Perhaps the unique process which is a human being is never over. Even at death.
— Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. 223
There’s nothing but this moment. The past has gone and cannot be changed. The past is for us to learn from. No more. And the present? It’s to be lived to the full, every moment, one at a time. If I’m willing to be present, attentive and ready to learn, I can suck the juice out of every experience. Whether it feels good or bad, it always has something to teach me.
And the future? Well it isn’t here yet, is it, and if I dwell on it I’ll miss this moment and will never catch it again. I may think I can catch up, but I never can. Each moment I miss by worrying about the past or dreaming of the future robs me of the wonder and beauty of now….
Change is a constant. Nothing stays the same, but it can all get better. Even the experiences we don’t like are teaching us valuable lessons. Certainly I haven’t liked some of the changes in my life, and there’ve been times when I would have loved things to stay as they were. But that’s not what being alive is about. In the end it’s more comfortable and sensible to relax and allow change to occur with an open mind, welcoming whatever we can learn from it.
— Dr. Brenda Davies, Unlocking the Heart Chakra, p. 80-81
If you’re going through something in your life that isn’t what you planned, a transformation is at hand. While we might prefer to be transformed in the twinkling of an eye, it usually doesn’t happen that fast. It takes all the moments added together, and sometimes those moments go on and on. But one day when you least expect it — a phoenix rises from the ashes. That phoenix is you.
Some of us encounter a lot of pain. Some of us have less. If I could sit across from you right now, I’d look into your eyes and say these words to you: “I know you’ve been through a lot. But there’s a new cycle coming. You’re going to learn about joy.”
— Melody Beattie, More Language of Letting Go, p. 380
Sometimes, the picture isn’t finished yet. Ideas, possibilities, hopes, dreams float around, circling us like asteroids around a planet. We may think events in our lives are happening aimlessly, without purpose. All we see are disconnected, floating blobs. We reach for them, try to grab them in our hands so we can connect them, force them into a whole, force them into a picture we can see, something that makes sense.
Let the pieces be. Let yourself be. Let life be. Sometimes, chaos needs to precede order. The pieces will come together in a picture that makes sense, in a beautiful work of art that pleases.
You don’t have to force the pieces to fit together if it’s not time. You don’t have to know. There is power sometimes in not knowing. There is power in letting go. Power in waiting. Power in stillness. Power in trust. There is power in letting the disconnected pieces be until they settle into a whole. The action you are to take will appear. Timely. Clearly. What you’re to do will become clear.
— Melody Beattie, Journey to the Heart, p. 356
We’re all beautiful and unique, but none of us is perfect, thank God. What a pain that would be!…
So all this striving for perfection is a bit sad. How about settling for being a great human being with flaws like everything else, including your Persian carpet? The need to be perfect does nothing but restrict us: restrict us in our creativity, in relationships, in work, in dealing with our children (whom we then also expect to be perfect) and in dealing with others who can never live up to our expectations. Look at all we’re losing. Not satisfied to be ourselves, we’re in constant competition with others, looking over our shoulder at what everyone else is doing and how much better or worse it is than our effort, and the moment, the experience, the wonder and the juice are lost forever.
Try to accept life and yourself as a constantly changing masterpiece with shape and color and texture that offer you a new adventure every day. Not perfect. Not complete. But developing and exciting, with every day a new brushstroke and a step towards perfection. The masterpiece is not meant to be complete until the final brushstroke has been placed upon it and the artist finally retires.
So experiment with life and don’t worry about getting it wrong. You can’t! Whatever you do, no matter how it turns out, you’ll have learned something that you wouldn’t have learned had you done it differently. Nothing is a failure. And nothing is lost.
Dr. Brenda Davies, Unlocking the Heart Chakra, p. 80
There’s nothing to fear from thought itself, once we understand that it’s just thought.
Perhaps the greatest misinterpretation of this principle is to believe that the goal is to control what you think about. It isn’t. The goal is to understand thought for what it is: an ability you have that shapes your reality from the inside out. Nothing more, nothing less. What you think about is not ultimately going to determine the quality of your life, but rather the relationship you have to your own thinking — the way you manufacture your thoughts and respond to them. Do you hear your thinking as reality, or as thought?
— Richard Carlson, PhD, You Can Be Happy No Matter What, p. 16