Control is an Illusion.

Letting Go, Life 0

“I’m here to say we can’t control anything.  This is why being single doesn’t give us independence, why having personal wealth doesn’t give us protection, why having raised our children doesn’t set us free, or any of the zillion other conclusions our culture draws from the assumption that the key to control is to rely on ourselves first.”

— Hugh Prather, The Little Book of Letting Go, p. 107

A Gift

Letting Go, Life, Trials 0

“Although not knowing may itself seem like a bad thing, I am convinced it is one of the great gifts of the dark night of the soul.  To be immersed in mystery can be very distressing at first, but over time I have found immense relief in it.  It takes the pressure off.  I no longer have to worry myself to death about what I did right or wrong to cause a good or a bad experience — because there really is no way of knowing.  I don’t have to look for spiritual lessons in every trouble that comes along.  There have been many spiritual lessons to be sure, but they’ve been given to me in the course of life; I haven’t had to figure out a single one.”

— Gerald G. May, The Dark Night of the Soul, p. 15

Power in Waiting

Letting Go 2

“I’ve started to realize that waiting is an art, that waiting achieves things.  Waiting can be very, very powerful.  Time is a valuable thing.  If you can wait two years, you can sometimes achieve something that you could not achieve today, however hard you worked, however much money you threw up in the air, however many times you banged your head against the wal. . . .”

— Dennis Wholey, The Courage to Change, quoted in Codependent No More, by Melody Beattie

Your Emotions are Not Your True Self.

Core Value, Letting Go, Peace 0

“As the primary indicator of our ‘true feelings,’ emotions have become our new inner self, taking the place once occupied by the soul, the spirit, or the conscience.  Now to question our anger, infatuation, sadness, and many other emotions is to question what is most sacred about us.  It not only seems dishonest to let go of misery; it seems like a betrayal of who we really are.

“This redefinition of our core has thrown us deeper into chaos, especially since we have also redefined integrity, which used to mean being faithful to our core….

“Look at the dilemma we have gotten ourselves into by deciding that our emotions are our truest self.  How can we be ourself if our self is changing every few minutes, as emotions invariably do?  Not only are feelings never constant, we have layers of feelings heading in different directions….

“Emotions are like layers of files seen on a computer screen.  The one we notice is merely the one we have clicked on.  Even that analogy is an oversimplification because the contents of the files have lives of their own and the mouse likes to do a little extra browsing on its own.  The bottom line is that if you make your emotions your inner self, you have chaos at your core.

“There is a place within us where we can touch the changeless and beautiful, a place where our real self is experienced in peace.  This self does not have to be periodically vented, defragmented, or even defined.  In gentleness and ease it is clearly seen, and everything about it is familiar — because this self is consistently whole.”

— Hugh Prather, The Little Book of Letting Go, p. 90-91

Accepting Ourselves

Compassion, Healing, Letting Go 0

“Codependents cannot change until we accept our codependent characteristics — our powerlessness over people, alcoholism, and other circumstances we have so desperately tried to control.  Acceptance is the ultimate paradox:  we cannot change who we are until we accept ourselves the way we are.”

— Melody Beattie, Codependent No More, p. 121