Women have been driven mad, "gaslighted," for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a prima...
Even though peak experiences might show us the truth and inform us about why we are training, they are essentially no big deal. If we can't integrate them into the ups and downs of our lives, if we cling to them, they will hinder us. We can trust our...
The scientific study of suffering inevitably raises questions of causation, and with these, issues of blame and responsibility. Historically, doctors have highlighted predisposing vulnerability factors for developing PTSD, at the expense of recognizi...
We can make room for more experiences of radiance, peace, and beauty; and when we do, they arrive. When we make an intention to experience peace, when we value it enough to make room for it and invite it into our busy lives, it arrives bearing gifts....
Why do so many today want to wander off to South Africa or Kenya or India or Russia or Honduras or Costa Rica or Peru to help with justice issues but not spend the same effort in their own neighborhood or community or state? Why do young suburbanites...
You cannot have qualifications without experience; and you cannot have experience without personal interest and bias. That may not be an ideal arrangement; but it is the way the world is built and we must make the best of it. p 242
If the foreman had no experience in bossing a mob, they had no experience in being one. Members of a community, not elements of a collectivity, they were not moved by mass feeling; there were as many emotions there as there were people. And they did ...
But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see... I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.
The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly ...
Unlike the clonal longevity of asexual organisms, sexually reproduced plants and animals usually have briefer, individual life cycles. In short, the enormous diversity afforded by the evolutionary invention of sexual reproduction came with a price—...
I guess we'll never know exactly what ... the reasons behind the losses we experience in this life. But being angry doesn't make them any less devastating. It only robs us of the happiness and love we can experience. Only forgiveness can set us free.
How can we know something that surpasses or is beyond knowledge? How can we know something that is beyond words?... We can and do use words to point to all of our human experiences. However, the experience of "God as Agape" is beyond words, beyond th...
I breathed deeply of Sam’s manly scent – his pheromones – as his tongue burned in my mouth, his lips joined mine with violent softness, and his hands pulled my head even closer to him.
Every art communicates because it expresses. It enables us to share vividly and deeply in meanings… For communication is not announcing things… Communication is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and si...
If you want to experience enlightenment, take a deep breath in and relax. As you are releasing the air forget, for a moment, about all your worries and desires. Just appreciate yourself the way you are in the very moment. Then, just lighten up. Keep ...
Sketches are social things. They are lonely outside the company of other sketches and related reference material. They are lonely if they are discarded as soon as they are done. And they definitely are happiest when everyone in the studio working on ...
Every human being relies on and is bounded by his knowledge and experience to live. This is what we call “reality”. However, knowledge and experience are ambiguous, thus reality can become illusion. Is it not possible to think that, all human bei...
This wobbly world host to insects and lint and a thousand pithy ways to feel unserious each minute It brings about a great softening of the mind, like the clouded edges of sea glass (this filter you could download and apply) A poultice or an opiate, ...
Though loyal and able and brave, Pea had never displayed the slightest ability to learn from his experience, though his experience was considerable. Time and again he would walk up on the wrong side of a horse that was known to kick, and then look su...
What I never expected is how much nothing there is afterwords. In life,, he was not nearby. Now he is everywhere I dream and every place I wake. Or if not him exactly, then a nothing so much like him I cannot seem to wish it goodnight.
I know you like to be in control and you operate a lot from fear but you have to break the bounds of your past Nicole and rewrite the story you’ve been telling yourself based off of others experiences. You have to create your own experience, write ...