Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything - we need only listen.
Interpretation
Stories provide healing and insight without any action required from the listener.
This quote by Clarissa Pinkola Estes emphasizes the transformative and healing power of storytelling. It suggests that stories are a form of medicine for the soul; they can convey deep truths and emotions, fostering understanding and empathy, all while requiring nothing more than the willingness to listen.
In practice
This quote could be used in a workshop about the therapeutic effects of storytelling.
Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.
Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.
Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.
There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.
To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.
That is what the intuition is for: it is the direct messenger of the soul.
I have lost my smile, but don't worry. The dandelion has it.
I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don't believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody's that smart.
I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.
Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach.
I've spent my life trying to make things simpler. Because I find ultimately that complicated doesn't reach the heart.
There are few things more powerful than a life lived with passionate clarity.
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