Pamela > Pamela's Quotes

“I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.”
― Brian Andreas, Story People

“If the whole universe can be found in our own body and mind, this is where we need to make our inquires. We all have the answers within ourselves, we just have not got in touch with them yet. The potential of finding the truth within requires faith in ourselves.”
― Ayya Khema

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves.”
― James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life

“There was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

“Hope,’ he said. ‘Damn thing never leaves you alone.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

“Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose
loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

“You have to open yourself up and let the pain move through you,” Elisabeth said. “It’s not yours to hold.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“The more permeable I became, the more I realized that we humans are just bundles of ever-changing conditions. We ought to hold ourselves more lightly. Taking ourselves too seriously is the cause of much suffering. We tell ourselves that we are in charge: “Buckle up! Get this done!” When in reality, we are quite helpless, subject to the events taking place around us. But that helplessness brings us into contact with our vulnerability, which can be a doorway to awakening, to a deeper intimacy with reality.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“I am not romantic about dying. It is hard work. Maybe the hardest work we will ever do in this life. It doesn’t always turn out well. It can be sad, cruel, messy, beautiful, and mysterious. Most of all it is normal. We all go through it. None of us get out of here alive.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“1. Don’t wait. 2. Welcome everything, push away nothing. 3. Bring your whole self to the experience. 4. Find a place of rest in the middle of things. 5. Cultivate don’t know mind.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“All tempest has, like a navel, a hole in its middle,
through which a gull can fly in silence.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“Love is what helps us accept ourselves, our lives and other people as is. When something unwanted--such as death, illness, loss of a job or relationship--approaches, it is natural for fear to arise. In such moments, we need to find some part of us that is not afraid.
When you are afraid, don't you know that you are afraid? That means some part of you, that part that is witnessing your fear, is not afraid. It is not caught by the fear. We can learn to relate to difficult thoughts, strong emotions, or challenging circumstances from the vantage point of the witness, of loving awareness.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with him, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough. Whatever his story, he no longer needs to be alone with it. This is what will allow his healing to begin.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“To welcome everything and push away nothing is an invitation to discover a deeper dimension of our humanity, to tap into something beyond our habitual selves. We can gain access to some part of us that includes, but is not driven by, our reactivity.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“This person has a body, heart, and mind, just like me. This person worries and gets frightened, just like me. This person is trying their best to navigate life, just like me. This person is a fellow human being, just like me. Now, allow some benevolent wishes for well-being to arise: May this person have the strength and support to face the difficulties in life. May this person be free from suffering and its causes. May this person be peaceful and happy. May this person be loved.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“At the entrance to most Zen meditation halls, there is a han: a large, solid wooden block that the monks strike with a mallet to call students to the zendo for meditation. Written across the block in black sumi ink is the teaching: Be aware of the Great Matter of Birth and Death Life passes swiftly, Wake up, Wake up! Do not waste this life.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“It seems this is what comes of being vulnerable. When we relax the clinging to our treasured beliefs and ideas, soften our resistance to the blows of life, stop trying to manage the uncertainty and hold ourselves more lightly, then we become a less solid thing. Less of a fixed identity.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“Suffering is exacerbated by avoidance. The body carries with it any undigested pain. Our attempts at self-protection cause us to live in a small, dark, cramped corner of our lives. We accept a limited perspective of the situation and a restricted view of ourselves. We cling to what is familiar simply in order to reassert control, thinking we can fend off what we fear will be intolerable. When we push back, hoping to get rid of a difficult experience, we are actually encapsulating it. In short, what we resist persists.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“The hope is in the potential for our awakened response, not in things turning out a particular way. It is an orientation of the heart,”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“love, is intimate, and that intimacy is the condition of the deepest learning.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“Our thoughts are not harmless. Thoughts manifest as actions, which in turn develop into habits, and our habits ultimately harden into character.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“Exploring our own hurt, in addition to contributing to our healing, helps us feel empathy for others who have suffered similar injuries.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“We cannot be truly alive without maintaining an awareness of death. Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight. She helps us to discover what matters most. And the good news is we don’t have to wait until the end of our lives to realize the wisdom that death has to offer.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“Which brings us back to the ocean, in which each of us are individual waves, unique yet inseparable from the whole.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“Victor Frankl identified self-transcendence as an indispensable human capacity for meaningful living when he wrote, “Man is not destroyed by suffering; he is destroyed by suffering without meaning.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“What he meant is the self is not a separate static thing but a process, or actually a network of interconnected processes. When we realize this, we see that there is always an opportunity to respond to a situation creatively. Nothing is holding us back from change and transformation—and nothing ever was.”
― Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“be easy.
take your time.
you are coming
home.
to yourself.
— the becoming | wing”
― Nayyirah Waheed, Nejma

“Rather than wandering around in problem-solving mode all day, thinking mainly of what you want to fix about yourself or your life, you can pause for a few moments throughout the day to marvel at what’s not broken.”
― Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself

“As the seventeenth-century French philosopher Montaigne once said, 'My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.”
― Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself