Too much time in an injection-molded plasticizing culture means that one must swerve every day, and hard, against being absorbed by a learned blindness to the interior life. But for many, a weakening of sight, a dropping of the hands, a kind of non-righteous surrender insinuates itself anyway.
Pressure to conform for scant reward, and/or threats of marginalization because of one's beliefs, may force an individual to attempt to assimilate into the least layer of culture, thereby causing one's relationship to all beings to slowly become defective. There, one becomes disconnected from the observable essence, from the affecting vitality of all things. It is not supposed to be that way for humans. Relationship to all matters and aspects of the world is meant to be complementary, wherein one is able to feel the electricity, and the conditions of that electricity, inside all things.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés
***
I found this quote in Francis Weller's beautiful
book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of
Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
YES!!!!!!!! I love Clarissa Pinkola Estes <3
ReplyDeleteThanks, Pamela. Me too!
ReplyDelete