Rachel Naomi Remen: Our Purpose In Life Is To Grow In Wisdom and In Love

It has probably been about 25 years since I first read Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal, and then later My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging. That was when, in the early years of my own process of healing and awakening, I found the tender-strong compassionate wisdom of Rachel Naomi Remen to be an incredibly soothing balm for my hurting heart and frightened mind. Over the years, I have adopted Rachel Naomi Remen and so many others to be my teachers and mentors for how to simply love and hold myself with compassion right where I'm at. It is such a long journey, this process of integrating our life experiences and gradually birthing the greater wholeness of who we truly are. Deep bow of gratitude for the understanding I have today for how it is that each and every place of pain that we carry as human beings holds the potential to be a doorway into our greater awakening. We do not need to try to get rid of anything, for anything we try to push away and deny only grows stronger. Rather, we get to gradually open to the experience of acceptance of who we are and where we're at — with our foibles and fears, our messiness and triggers, and other unskillful patterns we may have developed. AND all is impermanent — including where we find ourselves right now.

So many of us seek healing and wholeness, and yet can also be led astray by those seemingly wise teachers who tell us that the path is simple and easy and quick. And certainly that puts us at risk of developing unrealistic expectations, which only causes us more harm. Without careful choosing of the teachers and healers and mentors we may find ourselves drawn to, we can end up being pulled in by those who actually haven't engaged in their own deeper work. And this can result in belief systems and ideologies which ultimately feed our shame and our shoulding on ourselves and others — we "shouldn't" still be struggling with ______, "you shouldn't feel that way," etc. Instead of deepening in self-acceptance and in understanding and compassion for others, we succumb to shame and wearing a mask of being "fine" and "good" and "nice" and "perfect." We're then — and often unknowingly — hiding from ourselves and others the truth of what lies neglected, abandoned, and unresolved in our deepest heart. It then becomes pretty inevitable that we will unconsciously act in or project outward our unknown and unembraced hurt and fears and shame. It is very difficult for us as human beings to not become empathically impaired if we are limited in the tender and compassionate wisdom that we are able to bring to ourselves. And where we fall on the continuum of cultivating empathy and compassion for ourselves determines the degree that we are able to bring those qualities to all others, including our loved ones.

I share all this with the deepest humility. I understand this so deeply because I have experienced all of the above. There are those who remark that I am so compassionate and kind and safe and trust-worthy, but this certainly has not always been true. There were many years where I lived with addictions, unhealthy relationships, a relentless inner and outer critic, deep shame and fear, and a very protected rather than open heart. Today I understand through many painful and hard earned life lessons that I cannot truly and deeply and consistently experience connection and compassion with others until I first cultivate and strengthen these qualities within myself.

It is my belief that today we are all asked to engage in "shadow work," in unearthing what it is that needs healing within ourselves so that we are better able to love and to be in service to the healing and awakening of others and this beautiful hurting world we share. We are all needed in this effort. And, as Rachel Naomi Remen affirms, "When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do."

Bless us all on our journeys,

Molly

 The Healing Wisdom 

of Rachel Naomi Remen

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.

Those who don't love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either. Most people have come to prefer certain of life's experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain or even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness. Or even that the love we have been given can be trusted. It is natural, even instinctive to prefer comfort to pain, the familiar to the unknown. But sometimes our instincts are not wise. Life usually offers us far more than our biases and preferences will allow us to have. Beyond comfort lie grace, mystery, and adventure. We may need to let go of our beliefs and ideas about life in order to have life.

Wounding and healing are not opposites. They're part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to to find other people or to even know they're alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.   

Every great loss demands that we choose life again. We need to grieve in order to do this. The pain we have not grieved over will always stand between us and life. When we don't grieve, a part of us becomes caught in the past like Lot's wife who, because she looked back, was turned into a pillar of salt.

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.

Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again. 

Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. 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. It is a real world. In calling ourselves "heads" or "tails," we may never own and spend our human currency, the pure gold of which our coin is made.

But judgment may heal over time. One of the blessings of growing older is the discovery that many of the things I once believed to be my shortcomings have turned out in the long run to be my strengths, and other things of which I was unduly proud have revealed themselves in the end to be among my shortcomings. Things that I have hidden from others for years turn out to be the anchor and enrichment of my middle age. What a blessing it is to outlive your self-judgments and harvest your failures.  

Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.  

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. 

It has been said that sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. 

Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don't do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering. 

Facts bring us knowledge, but stories lead us to wisdom.

The willingness to consider possibility requires a tolerance of uncertainty.

Life is found 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.

I think that people get experiences, and out of those experiences come meaning and ideas. It's like watching a rose bush grow.

Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company. 

An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road.

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.

Belief traps or frees us. 

A label is a mask life wears. We put labels on life all the time. "Right," "wrong," "success," "failure," lucky," " unlucky" may be as limiting a way of seeing things as "diabetic," "epileptic," "manic-depressive," or even "invalid." Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is often so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are. This expectation often gives us a false sense of familiarity toward something that is really new and unprecedented. We are in relationship with our expectations and not with life itself. 

If you carry someone else's fears and live by someone else's values, you may find that you have lived their lives.

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.

Many times when we help we do not really serve. . . . Serving is also different from fixing. One of the pioneers of the Human Potential Movement, Abraham Maslow, said, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' Seeing yourself as a fixer may cause you to see brokenness everywhere, to sit in judgment of life itself. When we fix others, we may not see their hidden wholeness or trust the integrity of the life in them. Fixers trust their own expertise. When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness for themselves for the first time.

Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.

There are only two kinds of people in the world. Those who are alive and those who are afraid.

Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns.

Of course love is never earned. It is a grace we give one another. Anything we need to earn is only approval.

Our purpose in life is to grow in wisdom and in love. 

When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do.

It is not that we have a soul, but that we are a soul.