I didn't fight or shame my thoughts, I questioned them, and they stopped shaming me.
Interpretation
Questioning negative thoughts can lead to self-acceptance and reduced shame.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-inquiry and mindfulness in managing negative thoughts. Rather than engaging in a battle with harmful beliefs or allowing them to control emotions, the speaker suggests that examining and questioning these thoughts can lead to greater awareness and ultimately relieve the shame associated with them. This process fosters a more compassionate relationship with oneself and encourages emotional balance.
In practice
In a workshop on mental health, this quote can inspire participants to rethink their inner dialogue.
When you stay present with your children, that’s where abundance is. And when you stay out of their business, that’s where everything you deserve in life is. When you’re in presence, there’s no story, and you are abundance. And you come to trust that space so often that you just eventually hang out as that, because there is nothing that can move you out of it, not even a perceived child or a perceived anything.
It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it's helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, "You're caught in the dream."
We don't attach to people or to things; we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to be true in the moment.
An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.
Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be cause by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I’m the one who can stop hurting me. It’s within my power.
I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.
When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, 'Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.'
Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.
At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.
Both tolerance and respect are empty virtues until we actually understand whatever it is we are supposed to be tolerating or respecting.
There is no creation without faith and hope. There is no faith and hope that does not express itself in creation.
Her mind lives tidily, apart from cold and noise and pain. And bolts the door against her heart, out wailing in the rain.
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