Elizabeth Lesser Quotes
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Сertainly there are people for whom anti-depression medication has allowed them to use difficulty to wake up, and I don't deny that at all, but as usual with us human beings, we've overdone it. We are self-medicating ourselves away from the great awakening moments, and losing our coping skills and losing wake-up calls.
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Every day we have the opportunity to make our relationships be on the outside what they really are on a spiritual level.
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If family and society tell you its unfeminine, not really womanly, to be aggressive, to speak up, to have strong opinions, to take up space, then women won't trust their own voice, because to be heard and to be influential, you've got to have a way to sing out with passion and love and self-trust - to sing out your song for everyone to hear.
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If we want liberation, we must rewrite the Sleeping Beauty myth. No one is coming and no one else is to blame.
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I think it's better that people actually are saying what they feel. Especially, people are saying, I'm not heard. I don't have a voice in America.
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...approach change with an understanding of the process and an openness to the pain.
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I do not wish upon anyone a descent into hell. But if your life has to be turned inside out in order for you to know yourself--if the shadow of a shaman crosses your path and you turn and follow it down--I pray that you use its force wisely. I hope that you take the ultimate responsibility for your actions and that you consecrate any destruction to the rebuilding of your higher self and a more radiant life.
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I think the gender story will become less fraught with hard edges - and not that we'll have androgyny, but that men and women will move more fluidly into each other's domains.
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Recognition of the harm that patriarchy has caused to people and the planet does not mean that men are wrong and women are right; rather it is a call for new organizational forms and for relishing gender differences within a context of equality.
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Life's always changing. We always are being called to adapt.
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Agree to these ground rules: Be curious, conversational and real. Don't persuade or interrupt. Listen, listen, listen.
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When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead.
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If you have fathered a child, if you have given birth, if sex is a source of healthy pleasure, thank your pelvis and your reproductive organs for allowing you to feel the creative rhythms of life.
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Our errors and failings are chinks in the heart's armor through which our true colors can shine.
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It's like you trade the virility of the body for the agility of the spirirt.
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Life actually is this mystery and gift. And every moment of it can be full of real radical joy and wakefulness. And for some reason in our most difficult times, we have the best chance to wake up. Many people will tell you that their divorce or illness or loss of job was the wake up call.
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I heard the term "mamisma" when describing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, how she was speaking from that place which is kind of like a strong mother. Like when your mom says like, "put that down!" you know that is coming from a place of both love and strength. And at this critical stage in human history we need both action and caring.
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Life is about change, it never stops, it's moving and it's moving this human body inexorably towards its demise.
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I hope we have learned throughout centuries of revolution and reaction that it's really a shift in consciousness that we need. And I think there is a shift in consciousness among our human species. I think the human species is evolving, spiritually.
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One of the reasons I love prayer is that it is an antidote to guilt and blame. If we are unhappy with the way we have acted or been treated, instead of stewing in self-recrimination on the one hand, or harboring ill will toward someone else on the other, prayer gives us a way out of the circle of guilt and blame. We bring our painful feelings into the open and say, "I have done wrong," or "I have been wronged." And then we ask for a vaster view--one that contains within it all the forgiveness we need in order to move forward.
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Adversity is a natural part of being human. It is the height of arrogance to prescribe a moral code or health regimen or spiritual practice as an amulet to keep things from falling apart.
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We have little control over the outer weather patterns as we make our way through the landscape of a life. But we can become masters of the inner landscape. We can use what happens on the outside to change the way we function on the inside.
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I'm calling my initiative take the other to lunch. If you are a Republican, you can take a Democrat to lunch or if you're a Democrat, think of it as taking a Republican to lunch because there is no shortage of the other right in your own neighborhood, maybe that person who worships at the mosque or the church or the synagogue down the street or someone from the other side of the abortion conflict - or maybe your brother-in-law who doesn't believe in global warming.
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The conversation people need to have is no longer about women assuming positions of leadership within the existing power structure, it's about the power structures themselves, it's about how to go about assuming power, how to change the structures.