Rachel Naomi Remen Quotes
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.
The secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.
Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways.
Big messages come in small packages. All it may take to restore someone's trust in life may be returning a lost earring or a dropped glove.
In the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.
Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world.
Sooner or later we will come to the edge of all that we can control and find life, waiting there for us.
When you listen generously to people they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time.
Of course love is never earned. It is a grace we give one another. Anything we need to earn is only approval.
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen.
A loving silence often has more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
Deep inside, our integrity sings to us whether we are listening or not. It is a note that only we can hear. Eventually, when life makes us ready to listen, it will help us to find our way home.
Goose bumps happen when your soul is close to you, breathing lightly on the back of your neck, and wakes you up.
The spiritual is inclusive. It is the deepest sense of belonging and participation.We all participate in the spiritual at all times, whether we know it or not.
When we are seen by the heart we are seen for who we are. We are valued in our uniqueness by those who are able to see us in this way and we become able to know and value ourselves.
Being safe is about being seen and heard and allowed to be who you are and to speak your truth.
The worst thing that happens in life is not death. The worst thing would be to miss it. . . . I think the great danger in life is not showing up.
The choice people have to make is never between slavery and freedom. We will always have to choose between slavery and the unknown.
An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road.
If you carry someone else's fears and live by someone else's values, you may find that you have lived their lives.
If we fear loss enough, in the end the things we possess will come to possess us.
As I age I am grateful to find that a silence has begun to gather in me, coexisting with my tempers and my fears, unchanged by my joys or my pain. Sanctuary. Connected to the Silence everywhere.
I have no idea about what death is, but because I have been in association with it so intimately, I have a much greater sense of the value of life and of what life can be.
Perhaps wisdom is simply a matter of waiting, and healing a question of time. And anything good you've ever been given is yours forever.
It has been my experience that presence is a more powerful catalyst for change than analysis.
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.
Facts bring us to knowledge, but stories lead to wisdom.
What we do to survive is often different from what we may need to do in order to live.
My sense is that you can never teach anybody anything, or change anybody in ways that they don't already have in mind.
From a good teacher you may learn the secret of listening. You will never learn the secret of life. You will have to listen for yourself
It has been said that sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. p 374
People have the natural capacity to affirm and embrace life in the most difficult of circumstances.
When people are blessed they discover that their lives matter, that there is something in them worthy of blessing.
There should be a word that means beginning/end because nothing begins without something dying.
Suffering shapes the life force, sometimes into anger, sometimes into blame and self-pity. Eventually it may show us the wisdom of embracing and loving life.