Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are.
Interpretation
Healing involves releasing what doesn't define us rather than solely focusing on recovery.
This quote emphasizes that true healing goes beyond physical recovery; it involves a deeper process of self-discovery and letting go of external expectations and limiting beliefs. By shedding these layers, individuals can reconnect with their authentic selves and foster personal growth.
In practice
A therapist might use this quote to inspire clients to focus on personal growth rather than just symptoms.
Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
In this culture the soul and the heart too often go homeless. Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.
At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity.
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again.
Life is known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with change and the unknown. Given the nature of life, there may be no security, but only adventure.
Anger is energising. The opposite of anger is depression, which is anger turned inward.
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil - not the strength to choose between the two.
I must congratulate myself, in passing, for never having lost the ability to examine my conscience, never having lost the gift of finding myself wanting & defective. Why fear the criticism of others when you, yourself, are first out of the critical gate? If self-denigration is the race I am the winner, even before the starting gun. Collect the bets.
...never go to look on man till you have first looked on your God.
The power to think as you wish to think is the only power over which you have absolute control.
The pain of problems is a call to find solutions rather than a reason for unhappiness and inaction, so it's silly, pointless, and harmful to be upset at the problems and choices that come at you (though it’s understandable).
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