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A dark night may appear, paradoxically, as a way to return to living. It pares life down to its essentials and helps you get a new start.
The lesson I take is that there is no loss too great or challenge too overwhelming, provided you are anchored in your vision and your values, while following your destiny.
You have to avoid being just one of the crowd and instead take the chance of being born an individual.
Look deeply into your fears. Take serious note of your defenses. See where and how you elude the demands of your existence.
Ancient rituals teach us that our ordinary pains and shocks can stir us into awareness.
First, you take your life seriously. You don’t have to be morose about it, but you must realize that you can’t pass on the responsibility for your life to anyone else.
To be an independent and mature adult, you may have to dump all kinds of things that get in the way. Then your thoughts and judgments become leaner and clearer.
“It has occurred to me since that perhaps what we call depression isn’t really a disorder at all but, like physical pain, an alarm of sorts, alerting us that something is undoubtedly wrong; that perhaps it is time to stop, take a time-out, take as long as it takes, and attend to the unaddressed business of filling our souls.”
Addictions of all kinds signal that life is stuck and blocked.
Suppress the uncomfortable ones, and all the others will go into hiding, too.
You have to be alert and make difficult decisions when they are called for. Many sensitive people disown their capacity to criticize, to speak loudly for the truths they perceive, and to struggle against ignorance and prejudice.
The person who thinks he’s humble is probably unconscious of his haughtiness. The person who feels powerless and cheated is probably controlling.
Instead of making mutual care an absolute principle, you could understand that need, absence, and ignorance allow wonder and new life.
“He who speaks doesn’t know; he who knows doesn’t speak.”
You have to turn the tables on what appears to be fate or the full weight of society.
Robert Stein’s insight into the coupling/uncoupling paradox is crucial. You might realize, when you feel a strong desire for union, that an opposite desire lies in the background. The more you press for connection, the more you may be setting yourself up for disconnection.
We repress and we idealize. We repress the child by forcing children into religious and character-building camps, by excluding them from social life, by containing them in poorly equipped and dispiriting schools, and by demanding that they grow up quickly through extra lessons and limits on play, and by surrendering them to too many au pairs and babysitters.
Anger transformed into personal strength also helps marriages and other partnerships. Most people want to be with someone who takes responsibility for his own life and offers leadership and support. Relationships begin to fail when one of the partners collapses under the weight of life’s challenges. Anger may be the beginning of a creative response, and that is a significant contribution to a partnership.
They may be passive-aggressive in a number of ways—being silent, uninvolved, offering insincere love and friendship, being available for people but making them suffer for it. When anger is clean, it can accomplish a great deal for a person and a relationship; but when it is camouflaged and indirect, its impact is just the opposite.
You can’t see that your passivity is a symptom of your failure to allow, tolerate, and cooperate with life as it comes along. Your very passivity is a form of control.
