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Men who accept being lied to and manipulated are not only abdicating their power, they are setting up a situation where they can “blame” women or justify woman-hating.
When we hear another person’s thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, it is more difficult to project on to them our perceptions of who they are. It is harder to be manipulative. At times women find it difficult to hear what many men have to say when what they tell us does not conform to our fantasies of who they are or who we want them to be.
rather than asserting what they think at the appropriate moment, women say what they think will please the listener. Later, they gossip, stating at that moment their true thoughts.
A culture that is dead to love can only be resurrected by spiritual awakening.
“the principle underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible.”
if the will to power is paramount love will be lacking,
The need for instant gratification is a component of greed.
“dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love—which is to transform us.”
the mass media is the primary vehicle for the promotion and affirmation of greed; there is little information offered about the establishment and maintenance of meaningful relationships.
Greed is rightly considered a “deadly sin” because it erodes the moral values that encourage us to care for the common good.
To maintain and satisfy greed, one must support domination. And the world of domination is always a world without love.
Living simply makes loving simple.
Keeping family secrets often makes it impossible for extended groups to build community.
Forgiveness is an act of generosity. It requires that we place releasing someone else from the prison of their guilt or anguish over our feelings of outrage or anger. By forgiving we clear a path on the way to love. It is a gesture of respect. True forgiveness requires that we understand the negative actions of another.
“Forgiveness is a way of life that gradually transforms us from being helpless victims of our circumstances to being powerful and loving ‘co-creators’ of our reality. . . . It is the fading away of the perceptions that cloud our ability to love.”
Whenever we heal family wounds, we strengthen community.
There is no practitioner of love who deceives.
suffering and pain do not end when we begin to love.
Acceptance of pain is part of loving practice.
When we practice love, we want to give more.
Love is an action, a participatory emotion.
“A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on a deeper level. This kind of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension—seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence.”
we must befriend death and let it be our guide in life, meeting it unafraid.
Our first home in the womb is also a grave where we await the coming of life. Our first experience of living is a moment of resurrection, a movement out of the shadows and into the light.
“life is not promised.”
When we deny the full expression of our grief, it lays like a weight on our hearts, causing emotional pain and physical ailments.
Love is the only force that allows us to hold one another close beyond the grave.
“to abandon the present in order to look for things in the future is to throw away the substance and hold onto the shadow.”
people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are.”
Unless we can all imagine a world in which the family is not dysfunctional but is instead a place where love abounds, we doom family life to be always and only a site of woundedness.
Healing is an act of communion.
Embedded in our shame is always a sense of being unworthy. It separates. Compassion and forgiveness reconnect us.
Estrangement from the realm of the senses is a direct product of overindulgence, of acquiring too much. This is why living simply is a crucial part of healing.
LOVE REDEEMS. DESPITE all the lovelessness that surrounds us,
even if fear exists it can be released by the experience of perfect love.
The desire to be powerful is rooted in the intensity of fear. Power gives us the illusion of having triumphed over fear, over our need for love.
In representations they are most often given a childlike visage to remind us that enlightenment comes only as we return to a childlike state and are born again.
A man’s eros, his capacity for love and relatedness, must be freed from attachment to the mother, and able to reach out to a woman who is his contemporary; otherwise he remains a demanding, dependent, childish person.”
the presence of light is not a result of darkness ending. Peace is found not in the absence of challenge but in our own capacity to be with hardship without judgment, prejudice, and resistance.
Shame is like a wound made by an unseen hand, in response to defeat, failure or rejection. At the same moment that we feel most disconnected, we long to embrace ourselves once more, to feel reunited. Shame divides us from ourselves, just as it divides us from others, and because we still yearn for reunion, shame is deeply disturbing.”
As long as we feel shame, we can never believe ourselves worthy of love.
the moment in which we are touched by pain and “the unpredictability of life’s changes”
everything terrible is really something helpless that wants help from us.
Being loving does not mean we will not be betrayed.
