Elizabeth Lesser Quotes
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The world needs women to redefine what it means to be a person of power.
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The great loneliness- like the loneliness a caterpillar endures when she wraps herself in a silky shroud and begins the long transformation from chrysalis to butterfly. It seems we too must go through such a time, when life as we have known it is over- when being a caterpillar feels somehow false and yet we don’t know who we are supposed to become. All we know is that something bigger is calling us to change. And though we must make the journey alone, and even if suffering is our only companion, soon enough we will become a butterfly, soon enough we will taste the rapture of being alive.
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What do you want in your life? What do you want in your relationships? And if you say, I'd like them to be harmonious; I'd like them to be free; I'd like not to be in a state of blame all the time or shame. If you answer like that, then I would say, look at what's unforgiven. Look at where you know you did wrong and you would like to go to that person and say - I'm sorry. Can we start over? If you want to have a happier life, I would say, practice forgiveness.
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Grief is good...it is a sign of how well we have loved.
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I think that life is a friggin' magic carpet ride - it's amazing. Everything about life is mysterious and beautiful and touching and tragic and lovely and mystical.
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There's something in our makeup and in our bodies that really wants to luxuriate more in just the joy of being alive and not always consuming, creating, building. There's something inside of us that wants desperately to stop and experience and just be - not just always do.
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How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change.
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Fear is a sneaky thief, stealing away precious moments of your life.
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It isn't so much that God is the unified state of consciousness that each of us came from and will return to, but more so that God is the creative energy flowing between all states of consciousness. God is in the land beyond the mountains, but God is also in the mountains and in the valley of illusions cradled within the mountains. God is not one thing or another, rather God flows between and through all things.
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Many people don't wake up. They fight against a difficult time, shut the window and become more bitter. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you see it, we are served up those opportunities over and over in our life. So if you've shut the window, don't worry, another hard time is going to come around the corner - to give you that chance all over again.
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When we slow down, quiet the mind, and allow ourselves to feel hungry for something that we do not understand, we are dipping into the abundant well of spiritual longing.
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See what's happening to our sisters around the world. I'm very interested in the protection of women globally.
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I pray that each one of us stays awake as we fall. I pray that we choose to go into the abyss willingly and that our fall is cushioned by faith--faith that at the bottom we will be caught and taught and turned toward the light. I pray that we don't waste precious energy feeling ashamed of our mistakes, or embarrassed by our flaws. After years of teaching, I know only a few things for sure. One of them is this: We are chunks of dense matter that need to be cracked open. Our errors and failings are chinks in the heart's armor through which our true colors can shine.
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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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What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do.
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When the fire is over, always, in the ashes, our opportunities to repair, to move forward without vengeance being required - that's kind of the way us humans seem to live. We make massive mistakes. We do stupid things. We do things to survive. And then there's an opportunity to learn from them and move forward with grace. And forgiveness and that gracefulness are very connected.
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Diversity is good. We need each other's ideas.
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First we love within, then we love the world.
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If you're interested in the door to the heavens opening, start with the door to your own secret self.
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I actually don't think we're more divided than we were. I think it's more evident. It's more evident because of the internet.
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I can only do what I do with a spirit of humor, and faith and give the controls over to something else.
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I actually don't think we're more divided than we were.
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Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans - I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment.
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Some people, who are deeply involved in an organized, traditional religion, find it very difficult to accept that their way isn't the only way. And that their sacred text isn't the only text and it must be taken literally.