Photo by Molly |
Quotes by Rachel Naomi Remen
Our purpose in life is to grow in wisdom and in love.
Those who don’t love themselves as they are rarely love life either.
There are only two kinds of people in the world. Those who are alive and those who are afraid.
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.
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.
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.
Belief traps or frees us.
It has been said that sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live.
When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do.
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.
Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns.
It is not that we have a soul, but that we are a soul.
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