"We walk among art each and every day--not just the music and the buildings and the offerings of professional so-called artists. Examine a life--any life--and you'll find the artist at work. We survive by so many means, by the crafting of characters, the stringing together of words and biographies that get us from nine to five; from humiliation to humiliation; from sunrise to sunset. Study those artists as well. And ask all of us so-called professional artists how we might encourage everyone to build and honor that artistic impulse within all of us."
--Marlon Brando/Interview with James Grissom/1990/Photography by Cecil Beaton (1946)
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With practice, we can see that our wounded child is not only us. Our wounded child may represent several generations. Our mother may have suffered throughout her life. Our father may have suffered. Perhaps our parents weren’t able to look after the wounded child in themselves.
So when we’re embracing the wounded child in us, we are embracing all the wounded children in our past generations. This practice is not a practice for ourselves alone, but for numberless generations of ancestors and descendants.
~ Thich Nhat Hahn
@MissAdventurous I love your posts and YES! For the last quote.
“People are rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It is not fair to treat people as if they are finished beings. Everyone is always becoming and unbecoming”—Kathleen Winter
I am making a home inside myself.
A shelter of kindness where everything is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch of sunlight to stretch out without hurry, where all that has been banished and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to —released.
A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.
I am throwing arms open to the whole of myself—especially the fearful, fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing every seed and weed, every drop of rain, has made the soil richer.
I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through any perceived problem, any prescribed perfectionism, any lying limitation, every heavy thing.
I am making a home inside myself where grace blooms in grand and glorious abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows all the truest things.
I whisper hallelujah to the friendly sky. Watch now as I burst into blossom.
~ Julia Fehrenbacher, “The Most Important Thing”
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken—I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. ~Virginia Woolf
"Despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you, as deeply as they’ve met themselves."
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"At a certain point, a compliment you receive from another isn’t actually a person reaching out to you, but evidence of a soul reaching into itself.
Equally so, a judgment from another isn’t a projection against you, but a hurting heart pushing away its innocent nature while in your presence.
Just by noticing how another person’s actions is evidence of their own journey, you are freed from being victimized by the mysterious unfolding of personal circumstances.
From this space, another person’s joy or pain can be equally honored and accepted as the blossoming of spiritual evolution.
No matter how anyone experiences the emergence of their soul, it only offers evidence of your own growth by how you respond to them.
This means that despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you, as deeply as they’ve met themselves. ✨ This is the heart of clarity."
@MissAdventurous can't help agreeing with you, unfortunately
"Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.” Lao Tzu
Yuko Shimizu - Little Nemo Dream. (ravenous butterflies) Lao-TzuYuko Shimizu
Change is freedom, change is life.
It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed.
There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.
Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls. ~Ursula Le Guin
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”
Yeats
"My life exceeds far beyond the limitations of me" It's from Cloud Atlas and captures the essence of the effect we have on others, whether or not we know it.
Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. ~Don Miguel Ruiz