Elizabeth Lesser Quotes
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I really knew how to speak - from my female voice, that "different voice" that Carol Gilligan so presciently described many years ago in her groundbreaking book. Because if we try to speak in a voice that isn't ours, we lose our power.
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I recommend learning how to come into the presence of stillness and vastness. Learn any form of meditation. Spend twenty minutes every day if possible, in meditation, listening to the crazy monkey mind inside you, and learning how to still the thoughts and discover that big, deep soulful part of yourself.
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Spirituality is a brave search for the truth about existence, fearlessly peering into the mysterious nature of life.
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If humanity does not evolve spiritually - each one of us and collectively - our species won't make it. So following that back to each individual - every day you are faced with choices.
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Life is like a school; one can learn, one can graduate, one can skip a grade or stay behind.
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As humans try to evolve out of greed, let's put aside some wild places, protected lands, protected farms, things like that, since we may not evolve fast enough to protect nature.
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What mothers do - they act with love, at least good mothers do! They have a spirit of strong, fierce, protective energy - the way a mother would put her life on the line for her children - we need to put our life on the line for each other.
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Every day we're given a choice: We can relax and float in the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it. If we go with the river, the energy of a thousand mountain streams will be with us . . . if we resist the river, we will feel rankled and tired as we tread water, stuck in the same place.
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Sometimes to speak as a woman is to cry, and to speak from our emotional, intuitive knowing, as opposed to graphs and charts and vertical lines. And that's scary - that's scary to do. And the fallout from it can be brutal.
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I'm very much a family person, and that's always my first priority.
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Not only must we follow the golden thread towards spiritual freedom, but we must also unravel the garden-variety twine that is wrapped tightly around our hearts and minds.
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May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired. When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding and leads you to freedom.
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Don't persuade, defend or interrupt. Be curious, be conversational, be real. And listen.
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I don't enjoy the diminishing agility of the body!I had knee surgery and I no longer can go do three yoga classes and run. It's not as much fun, physically. But emotionally, it's way more fun. I am so much happier and contented and less agitated - I'm just calmer. So it's like everything in this human existence, it's a trade off - it's like you trade the virility of the body for the agility of the spirit. That's a good line. I have to remember that!
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The soul is the river of energy that animates who we are.
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Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.
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We think that maybe feminism isn't appropriate anymore, since Western women have really made enormous strides. But check out the rest of the world if you'd like to not be able to sleep tonight.
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To be human is to be lost in the woods.
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I think if you asked people "what's the biggest problem in your life?" They'd say, "I just don't have time for anything!" And at our fingertips, if it isn't e-mail, it's our Blackberry, and it's our iPods and telephones - we never stop. We never take those moments to stop the stimulus to find out "what's going on in there? What's really happening?" And then things start to build up. And then we are almost afraid to slow down.
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We must pay attention to the voice that calls us out of the safety zone.
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I hope this is the lesson we women really commit to memory - we learned that it doesn't work to try be someone other than who you really are.
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Talking to each other instead of talking about each other is not some kind of nicey-nice (ph) idea. It's the difference between societies falling apart and societies getting something wonderful done.
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We need to claim our power for something beautiful, something harmonious and something globally healthy.
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How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.