Reflections On Eyes Of Hate

This is my response to the piece that is written below. I share this as an antidote to the tendency to return  dehumanization with more of the same. And I'll add this piece that I wrote, among many others, regarding my mother, who was herself a malignant narcissist through most of her life — but not all: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2026/06/remembering-my-mom-on-what-would-have.html ...

Malignant narcissists have at their core self-loathing — something which they are compelled to project onto others rather than face and heal within themselves. And buried in their deepest unaddressed childhood trauma is the terror — the overwhelming fear that they will be exposed as flawed, unlovable, unworthy, shameful, rejected, a “loser.”

The projections of hatred and violence, grandiosity and entitlement, righteousness and power, total lack of empathy and compassion, an intolerance for narcissistic injury, and the devastating harm projected onto scapegoating others all arise as the result of severing their connections with their hearts as tiny vulnerable children in order to survive childhood trauma. The unbearable internalized experience of fear, shame, and not being safe and loved and held with compassion when they were young must be buried deeply inside and beyond all consciousness because it is too painful to bear.

My once malignant narcissist mother had these same eyes of hate which she projected onto everyone around her, including myself and my twin brother who committed suicide at age 26. 40+ years of healing and unburdening and transforming PTSD and complex trauma has freed me from addictions and many other symptoms of trauma. And today I don’t need to return hate with more hate, but I can clearly understand the circumstances and conditions that lead human beings to be so dangerous, delusional, and disconnected from reality, wisdom, and love. It doesn’t excuse their actions at all. I just don’t need to be a mirror for dehumanization.

We live in a culture awash in hatred, greed, and delusion — which are the roots of our individual and collective suffering. Understanding how the imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal systems long embedded in American society have impacted us can empower us with the capacity to recognize larger pictures and understand the ancestral and cultural legacy burdens that we have absorbed.

Monsters don’t just fall from the sky. Hurt people hurt people. That is unless they and we are able to connect with the wise, compassionate, and loving resources that help us all remember who we truly are. At least this has been my experience. 🙏 Molly

EYES OF HATE

by LeeAnne Pantuso Clark

Some photographs are so iconic, they will go down in history. They capture a moment so perfectly that, decades later, we can look at them and immediately understand something about the people and the time in which they live.

One of the most chilling examples is the famous photograph known as “Eyes of Hate” - that 1933 photograph of Joseph Goebbels, captured in the moment after he learned that the photographer assigned to photograph him was Jewish.

Look at his eyes. You don't need a caption. You don't need an explanation. The hatred is right there.

And now, we have a new “Eyes of Hate” photograph for our generation - this one, snapped yesterday during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit.

Look at their eyes. Really look at them. They show the very essence of these two people. There is no warmth. No joy. No humanity. Just that cold, unmistakable look of contempt.

And the question isn't whether they hate someone. The question is who they hate.

They hate the people who stand in their way. They hate the people who challenge them. They hate the people who refuse to bend the knee. They hate the journalists, the critics, the protesters, the immigrants, the political opponents, the institutions that constrain them, and anyone who dares to say, “No.”

Ultimately, they hate the very idea that the American people are supposed to be their masters - not the other way around.

That is what makes this photograph so chilling. Because sometimes a photograph captures far more than a facial expression. Sometimes it captures an entire moment in history.

We will look back at this photograph years from now and remember exactly what we were seeing. Eyes of hate.

And they were looking straight at us.

Pema Chödron: Cultivating Kinship

Photo by Molly

Cultivating Kinship

Whatever you are doing, take the 

attitude of wanting it directly or indirectly 

to benefit others. Take the attitude 

of wanting it to increase your experience 

of kinship with your fellow beings.

—  Pema Chödron

EXCELLENT — Cristina Breshears: Inheriting and Perpetuating the Normalcy Of White Supremacy and Racial Terror

WOW! Thank you, Cristina Breshears! This is so excellent, so deeply important, so incredibly relevant to the collective tragic and violent patterns that we see playing out on repeat over and over again! That is, if we are courageous enough and care enough to see.

I deeply appreciate and respect Cristina’s courageous journey of inquiry and bravely and wisely following the threads wherever they may lead. This process is what I believe and experience is one of breaking our hearts open and leading us ever more deeply into fierce love and caring for all of life.

May we all be inspired to look and learn and love and care more deeply about all of our sisters and brothers everywhere. — Molly

What Story Do These Fragments

Tell Together?

By Cristina Breshears

For the past several years, I have spent hundreds of hours following my grandfathers through four centuries of American history. I’ve not been looking for villains, but I am finding patterns.

One deed meant very little by itself. Or one sermon or military record or newspaper clipping or family story. None of them individually explained a life much less my family. But eventually the documents began speaking to one another. Small repetitions became larger currents. What first appeared to be isolated incidents slowly revealed an inheritance.

I think we all know that patterns become habit. On average, it takes about sixty-six repetitions to build a habit (this is why I fail at my New Year’s Resolutions). Habit becomes tradition. And tradition becomes culture, it becomes etched into our national story.

My grandfather James probably never woke in the morning asking himself how he might uphold white supremacy. By the time he was born, much of it had become ordinary. His own father, my great-grandfather Joshua, had belonged to a generation that helped build that racial order through war, racialized terror, Jim Crow, and the mythology of the Lost Cause.

But Grandpa James inherited something different, something quieter and easier to overlook. He inherited its normalcy. White supremacy was already baked into Oklahoma law. It was writ large across political campaigns throughout the 1920s-1970s. And I remember the segregated hours at the swimming pool in that Oklahoma sundown town -- in 1972. I remember discovering the Anadarko lynching postcard tucked deep inside our family Bible.

None of these things announced themselves as extraordinary to the people living among them. They were simply the atmosphere. Accumulated dust particles that could lead to a dust storm.

That is how cultures perpetuate themselves. Not only through explicit hatred, but through an accumulation of inherited assumptions, familiar symbols, and habits so commonplace they become almost invisible.

Perhaps that is why certain images have unsettled me this year. Pantone's Cloud Dancer (I wrote about that earlier this year). A Target Halloween costume reminiscent of a minstrel performer. The Sydney Sweeney "Good Jeans/Good Genes" campaign. And now Converse advertisements whose imagery has prompted many people to see echoes of nooses, Klan hoods, or chilling photographs from America's long history of racial terror.

[Re the Converse print advertisement and commercial: the print ad is a composite of different historical traumas. It is a stark, high-contrast silhouette composed of a geometry of hate and empty shoes. The specific framing in the commercial with dangling jewelry and hands reaching upward closely mimics horrific historical photographs from the American South such as infamous Mississippi lynchings. Westerns and southern gothic films frequently use this exact framing to build tension right before a hanging like in the classic films like The Ox-Bow Incident, or dark thrillers where a character reaches up to a makeshift noose in a moment of despair.]

I don't know what any designer intended. No one does. So yes, some of these associations may be accidental and my own overactive mind being saturated with the acts of my great-grandfathers.

The images that are conjured may arise from simply careless choices on the part of the marketing team. But none of these examples passed through only one set of hands. A lot of time and a lot of attention from many, many people went into these choices.

The truth is, individual examples can almost always be explained away in isolation. But after spending years tracing my own family's inheritance, I have learned that history rarely repeats as a single event. It repeats as a pattern. And patterns deserve our attention.

Cultures often reveal what they have not fully examined through the symbols they continue to reproduce. That doesn't mean every image is secretly communicating hate. It means symbols carry memory whether we intend them to or not.

A noose is never just a rope in America. A hood is never simply a hood. "Strange Fruit" is never merely a song. ((There have been no fewer than ten incidents of “Strange Fruit” in this country this year.)) History leaves emotional fingerprints on ordinary objects. These are part of our cultural memory whether advertisers intend them to be or not.

When the same visual motifs keep appearing, especially at a time when our public discourse is increasingly comfortable with dehumanizing language and our institutions are under strain, dismissing every concern as "people are just looking for racism" misses something important. Cultural meaning isn't created only by artists or advertisers. It's created by history and by the people who have lived through it.

Intent matters. But impact, I think, matters more. My father taught me this without ever realizing it.

After he died, he left behind a box of maps, courthouse records, yellow sticky notes, penciled arrows, photocopies from archives scattered across the country. For years I thought he had simply collected boring genealogical facts. Now I think what he was really leaving me was a way of paying attention.

One arrow on a map means very little. But ten arrows begin pointing somewhere. One family story can be dismissed. A hundred years of repeating stories become inheritance. And four hundred years of perpetuating these patterns (even unconsciously) become who we are.

I think my father was trying to understand our family in the years before his death. In leaving me with his genealogical archive, he unknowingly taught me how to read history differently.

History leaves breadcrumbs. Years spent tracing my grandfathers have changed how I see the world. I no longer dismiss recurring symbols simply because each one can be explained away in isolation. I have learned to ask a different question: What story do these fragments tell together?

Standing on the shore, the ocean appears calm. Each wave looks separate from the last. Orderly. But beneath the surface, powerful currents move in directions we cannot see. They gather strength not because of one wave, but because of thousands moving together.

History feels much the same. One advertisement is probably just an advertisement. One slogan is probably just a slogan. One image may be coincidence. But when the same motifs return again and again, when they echo our deepest national wounds, when they stir memories we have not yet fully confronted and reckoned with, it is worth asking what current we are drifting into.

The opposite of forgetting is not remembrance. It is attention. And the work of history is not simply to remember what happened, it is to recognize when old currents begin moving beneath new waters.

Because undercurrents are easiest to escape before they become strong enough to pull us under. We do not honor history by memorizing it or by performing patriotism . We honor it by recognizing its patterns before they become our habits. It is a civic responsibility.

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." ~ Maya Angelou

bell hooks: A Wise and Loving Politics

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and practice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.

― bell hooks

https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/bell-hooks

Reflections On the "Extreme Left" and Transforming Harmful Narratives Into Ones That Heal, Connect, Empower, and Awaken

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words."

— Ursula K. Le Guin

 

Can you imagine our nation no longer under the ideology and influences, practices  and policies, propaganda and politics of neoliberal capitalism? For those who listen, try taking NPR for instance. Imagine if "Planet Money" were instead named "Planet Earth", if "How I Built This" was called "How We Built This", if "Market Place" was reframed as "Community Place." Just imagine the impact of this transformation in how we think, perceive, and care.

The author, poet, and activist bell hooks spoke of the pervasive influence of "imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy," something which I believe, on a continuum, has impacted us all. This includes our vulnerability to being misled, propagandized, polarized, disinformed, and disempowered. It is a toxic status quo that we have been indoctrinated to believe in and hold as sacred truth. 

Millions of us cling to the belief that there is nothing better, no alternative to capitalism that would better serve ourselves, our nation, and the world. And those who question, challenge, and envision another way are often silenced, dehumanized, demonized, and called "communist." Just look at the new Red Scare underway mirroring the McCarthy era of the 1950s. 

* * * * *

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

— George Orwell, 1984

I am inspired today to once again shine light on the subtle and blatant narratives which cut us off from our larger wisdom and capacity to recognize and embody love, truth, care, compassion, and connection with ourselves and all of life on Earth. Over the many years that I have been following both corporate funded media and independent media, I have increasingly been empowered to discern what is being left out or distorted in the narratives that we are exposed to — and when we are being empowered to connect the dots of larger pictures and deeper truths that are essential for us to be aware of, absorb, and act upon.

The lack of pushback that I continuously witness in resources such as NPR, in all honestly, just infuriates me. There is no discussion related to fascism when talking about the "right." Where Amy Goodman and those she interviews have been shining bright light on the connections between burning fossil fuels and the horrifying climate catastrophes — how Amy refers to them — that we are witnessing and experiencing across our country and world, NPR and other mainstream media most often frame them as "natural disasters" and leave it at that. 

It is also true that corporate funded media completely fails to expose the genocide in Gaza and the Republicans and Democrats in the pockets of AIPAC. And when discussing the "left", again and again I hear the words "extreme left" and how "middle America" is in support of "moderate centrist" democrats. Really?? In these narratives that perpetuate left vs right, the truth gets buried in the polarizing propaganda. We don't hear in-depth discussion of facts and policies. And what is left out is profoundly dangerous, disturbing, distracting, and disempowering.

What I imagine sweeping across our country and beyond is something that is vastly different and inherently grounded in integrity, courage, commitment to truth, and free from the influences of the toxic greed that is embedded in wealthy individual and corporate interests. What I am referring to here are independent resources of information such as Amy Goodman and Democracy Now!, Chris Hedges, Henry Giroux, Rebecca Solnit, and a whole host of other independent sources of integrity and truth such as those I have listed on the sidebar of my blog. As Amy Goodman has said — the commitment is to holding the powerful accountable rather than being their voice pieces.

* * * * *

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem."

— Howard Zinn

Just imagine if the policies and goals of democratic socialists and other progressives were presented to us in detail. Just imagine if we were actually informed! 

Would we Americans then see it as "extreme" to want an end to endless wars and trillions of dollars poured into the imperialist wars of our government? Would we want to dismiss the wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr. when he said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

Would we Americans object to removing the takeover of our politicians and political system by the most wealthy 1% among us? Would we reject taking action to remove Dark Money out of our politics?

Would it be "extreme" to implement Medicare For All, to recognize healthcare as a right rather than a privilege, and to ensure that millions of human beings stop dying or being driven into bankruptcy because of a healthcare system built on profit and greed? 

Would most Americans see it as too "extreme" to seek economic justice and completely overhaul our tax system, end the obscene redistribution of wealth upwards, ensure that a social safety net is in place to ensure that no one need live in abject poverty, and guarantee that food, housing, childcare, education, and our basic needs are met? Would that be too extreme for a nation that is considered to be the wealthiest on Earth?

And what about the climate crisis that is now impacting everyone across our nation and the world? Just look at Tibet. Tears... The reality is that all around us are catastrophic wildfires, floods and droughts, tornadoes and hurricanes and tropical storms, frigid winter storms and summer heat domes, melting glaciers and rising seas, critical water shortages and drying lake beds, dying coral reefs and mass extinctions, shrinking habitable places to live and climate migrations, resource wars and unimaginable desperation and destruction and death. "Unprecedented" is now the new normal. 

And yet, here in the United States there is still a debate about whether or not there even exists a human caused climate crisis. No administration has declared a climate emergency and acted to implement the radical changes vital to saving ourselves and giving us any chance of preserving a habitable planet. This is madness. And this puts my children and grandchildren and all of the children of all of the species everywhere at risk. Infuriating, heartbreaking, horrifying!

And for so many years now I have been noticing the damning and glaring differences between a mainstream for-profit media and independent media. Rather than calling them "natural disasters," resources such as Amy Goodman — and the experts she consistently interviews on Democracy Now! — illuminate that what we're witnessing and experiencing everyday are not natural, but are "climate disasters." And again and again the links are made connecting these human caused climate catastrophes and the criminal greed and delusion embedded in the failure to transition off of fossil fuels and onto renewables. Imagine if we had long been told the truth!

 

And then there is the genocide. Instead of giving power and credence to the voices of those such as the psychopath Netanyahu, independent journalism gives us the horrifying truth about the genocide in Gaza and its ongoing support by our government under both Democratic and Republican administrations. This empowers us to stop our collusion with atrocities, war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. 

Once we recognize that Palestinians are experiencing what the Indigenous Peoples here in America did when they were annihilated in that genocide, we humans can then understand why standing up to and exposing rather than supporting AIPAC funded politicians in our country becomes a priority. Truly, what we would have done during the genocide perpetrated by Hitler is what we are doing now. And as Omar El Akkad has said, we all need to fight against the theft of our souls. (https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2026/06/omar-el-akkad-at-least-fight-against.html)

And this leads me into ICE... More tears of grief and outrage. I have to stop and breathe... The utter cruelty, the intentional brutality, the racism and scapegoating and horrifying terrorism perpetrated on our immigrant sisters and brothers simply shatters my heart into pieces. Like the genocide does. 

Because of the independent voices of truth, courage, and integrity that I have long sought out, today I am acutely aware of so much that is happening in our nation and worldwide. I see the utterly heartless, sociopathic, criminal acts of profound dehumanization and violence perpetrated by our government on the peoples of our country and other nations and on all of life on Earth. The trauma impacting billions of beings is so hard to look at, to hold in conscious awareness, and to act upon individually and collectively in everyway that we possibly can. That said, this is the imperative our of times.

* * * * *

“You don’t need to do everything. Do what calls your heart; effective action comes from love. It is unstoppable, and it is enough.” — Joanna Macy

What comes to me in this moment is a vision of courage, individual and collective courage that is contagious and expanding its reach ever more deeply into our own hearts and the hearts and minds of our planetary sisters and brothers everywhere. Because it takes courage to truly and deeply look and recognize how we've been hoodwinked and that it isn't just those nasty ________ (fill in the blank with republicans, democrats, immigrants,  socialists, communists, etc.) who are destroying our lives and causing us to suffer. 

It takes courage to seek to truly know and understand a larger picture. It takes courage  and commitment to explore and question what we've been propagandized to believe and to cultivate a profound commitment to truth. And it takes love to increasingly embody a commitment to doing whatever our part is in alleviating the suffering within ourselves and our shared beautiful hurting world.

I imagine that more and more of us are awakening to the realization that what is often framed by those in power — including those aligned with both neoliberal democrats and fascist republicans — as "extreme" are in reality communicating what they do not support. As we look deeply into the specifics of what is being said in mainstream media and by most, but not all, politicians to be "extreme", it becomes clear what they are standing in opposition to. 

On that list of fierce opposition — by both corporate funded republicans and democrats — is getting Dark Money out of our political system. There is opposition to anything that threatens the status quo. And this absolutely includes empowering those we elect to actually represent We The People and the planet — rather than their wealthy donors — and to act of the consciousness of the highest good for us all. There is a very tight clinging to and justification for power, control, and greed. Full stop.

Time and time again, wealthy individual and corporate interests have in reality stood against any depth of true democracy, justice, peace, equality, a nation that cares for all, and respect for the basic needs of humans and nonhumans across America and beyond. And those who have repeatedly worked for justice, worked to end the vast immoral and criminal redistribution of wealth upwards, worked to address and meet our authentic needs and ensure our basic rights, and worked to heal and transform our nation have been sabotaged and shut out of positions of power. And any time that we hear the words  "extreme left" we can be assured that that is what is happening.

This truth-seeking has been a long, humbling, disillusioning, painful, empowering, and amazing journey for me, one for which I am eternally grateful. As my heart has been broken open again and again, my capacity to act out of fierce love has grown, evolved, deepened. And, ultimately, today my heart holds with care all of life everywhere. 

May we humans awaken our vast capacity to act

out of wisdom, generosity, and love...

🙏💜🙏

Molly

Photo by Molly

Reflections On Our Innate Capacity to Care

Photo by Molly

 

In a recent dharma talk given by Alexa Redner, who is now a guiding teacher at PIMC (Portland Insight Meditation Center — https://www.portlandinsight.org/), Alexa spoke of care as something that we are all born with and a quality that is intrinsic to our human nature. It is simply there, a core and sacred aspect to who we humans are.

Alexa also reflected on how through the challenges of our human lives and our struggles to embody our wholeness, this embodiment of care gets covered over. There can be layers of delusion, greed, hatred that we've absorbed in our unhealthy culture and through ancestral legacy burdens blindly passed down to us. Addictions, anxiety and depression, dehumanization and disassociation, and other symptoms of trauma serve as impediments to our own true nature. Yet, and despite all appearances to the contrary, the beauty and truth of who we most wholly are remains. It just gets covered over.

Today I can think of countless experiences in my own life where this has been true.  And there was one example that came to me to share with our Sangha on that Sunday morning. I spoke of how for years I would turn away from anyone standing on a street corner with their little signs asking for help. They were invisible to me. I didn't want to see them. I didn't want to see their pain. And my capacity to care was covered over with judgment and fear and an unwillingness to truly see and feel the pain of other suffering human beings.

One of the profound blessings of my path of healing, unburdening, and transforming my own suffering is an ever expanding capacity to be with the pain and trauma of another. As long as I was holding within my heart layers of unattended grief and fear and shame and loss, I couldn't look into the eyes of another human being who reminded me of what I was avoiding within myself.

Over the many years of embracing what I had been avoiding — and learning to hold myself with the deepest tenderness, compassion, generosity, kindness, and love — everything has been shifting and evolving. This very much includes my ever growing capacity to extend care.

Gradually, I began to not turn away and to increasingly notice the human beings standing on corners asking for help. And initially I would discern who I felt was worthy of a dollar bill. Then, over time, I came to not separate out who was worthy of care and who was not. It no longer mattered what their sign said, what gender or age they were, what race or ethnicity they were, or if they were alcoholic or drug abusers. I came to recognize these human beings as my sisters and brothers and who, like me, had suffered great pain and trauma.

Today my hand with a $1 or a $5 bill and a granola bar extends to any hand I can reach. Sometimes I've gotten to know names and a bit of history of the person before me asking for help. And, more than anything, I try to meet eyes with the warmth of my eyes that communicates I see you, you matter, I care.

Facing and healing and releasing my own history of deep trauma has transformed me in profound ways that I could not have imagined when I first began on this path of heart decades ago. And the truth of what Alexa Redner spoke of is today my own lived experience. This innate experience of care for all beings is simply there. It had just been covered over. Once I was blind. And now, increasingly with each year as I grow older, I can see. And I am filled with a depth of gratitude beyond measure.

May we all increasingly connect with the wise, compassionate, generous, and loving supports that we need to heal what covers over our capacity to see and to act out of care — deep caring for ourselves, our beloveds, and for all of life on our beautiful hurting Earth Mother. May we remember that we are all connected, all related, all family, all Sacred.

With Metta,

🙏💜

Molly

"Becoming Our Compassionate Self"

Gil Fronsdal: The Most Beautiful Qualities We Have As Humans

Photo by Molly

Generosity is not limited to the giving of material things. We can be generous with our kindness and receptivity. Generosity can mean the simple giving of a smile or extending ourselves to really listen to a friend. Paradoxically, even being willing to receive the generosity of others can be a form of generosity.

Mindfulness, by helping us notice our impulses before we act, gives us the opportunity to decide whether to act and how to act.

Buddhism’s cardinal ethical principle is to avoid causing harm.

Nothing whatsoever is worth the cost of a contracted heart.

Our intentions — noticed or unnoticed, gross or subtle contribute either to our suffering or to our happiness. Intentions are sometimes called seeds. The garden you grow depends on the seeds you plant and water. Long after a deed is done, the trace or momentum of the intention behind it remains as a seed, conditioning our future happiness or unhappiness.

The intentions to be kind, compassionate, helpful, happy, and liberated are among the most beautiful qualities we have as humans.

— Gil Fronsdal

Wisdom Quotes From Rachel Naomi Remen

I recently learned of the passing of Rachel Naomi Remen. And I am now once again moved to share these wise, compassionate, and loving quotes in honor of this remarkable woman and the incredible impact that she has had on my life and those of countless others. Rachel Naomi Remen will be missed. And her legacy lives on. Blessed be. 🙏💜 Molly

Photo by Molly

The Beautiful Heartfelt Wisdom 

of Rachel Naomi Remen

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

Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten. Integrity rarely means that we need to add something to ourselves: it is more an undoing than a doing, a freeing ourselves from beliefs we have about who we are and ways we have been persuaded to 'fix' ourselves to know who we genuinely are.

When I have forgiven myself and remembered who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see. The way to freedom often lies through the open heart.

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

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.

* * * * *

"Human being" is more a verb than a noun. Each of us is unfinished, a work in progress. Perhaps it would be most accurate to add the word "yet" to all our assessments of ourselves and each other . . . If life is process, all judgments are provisional, we can't judge something until it is finished. No one has won or lost until the race is over . . .

In our instinctive attachments, our fear of change, and our wish for certainty and permanence, we may undercut the impermanence which is our greatest strength, our most fundamental identity. Without impermanence, there is no process. The nature of life is change. All hope is based on process . . .

It is taken me somewhat longer to recognize that a diagnosis is simply another form of judgment. Naming a disease has limited usefulness. It does not capture life or even reflect it accurately. Illness, on the other hand, is a process, like life is.

Much in the concept of diagnosis and cure is about fixing, and the narrow-bore focus on fixing people's problems can lead to denial of the power of their process. Years ago, I took full credit when people became well; their recovery was testimony to my skill and knowledge as a physician. I never recognized that without their biological, emotional, and spiritual process which could respond to my interventions, nothing could have changed at all. All the time I thought I was repairing, I was collaborating.

* * * * *

Few perfectionists can tell the difference between love and approval. Perfectionism is so widespread in this culture that we actually have had to invent another word for love. 'Unconditional love,' we say. Yet, all love is unconditional. Anything else is just approval.

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.

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.

Belief traps or frees us.

* * * * *

I am no longer as inspired by expertise as I once was. Perhaps the worth of any lifetime is measured more in kindness than in competency.

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.

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.

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.

* * * * *

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

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.

We burn out not because we don't care but because we don't grieve. We burn out because we have allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care.

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.

* * * * *

The places in which we are seen and heard are holy places. They remind us of our value as human beings. They give us the strength to go on.

Sometimes just being in someone's presence is strong medicine.

From a good teacher you may learn the secret of listening. You will never learn the secret of life. You will have to listen for yourself.

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.

Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with him, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough.

* * * * *

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.

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

Sometimes when I ask people to tell me their story they tell me about their achievements, what they have acquired or built over a lifetime. So many of us do not know our own story. A story about who we are, not what we have done. About what we have faced to build what we have built, what we have drawn upon and risked to do it, what we have felt, thought, feared, and discovered through the events of our lives. The real story that belongs to us alone.

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.

* * * * *

The willingness to consider possibility requires a tolerance of uncertainty.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we will refine the quality of our humanity throughout the course of our lives. More and more, people seek spiritual techniques to help them do this. But joy and suffering will do this for you, too. Every lifetime offers countless opportunities to become more whole.

Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns. Life asks of us the same thing we have been asked in every class: "Stay awake." "Pay attention." But paying attention is no simple matter. It requires us not to be distracted by expectations, past experiences, labels, and masks. It asks that we not jump to early conclusions and that we remain open to surprise. 

Wisdom comes most easily to those who have the courage to embrace life without judgment and are willing to not know, sometimes for a long time. It requires us to be more fully and simply alive than we have been taught to be. It may require us to suffer. But ultimately we will be more than we were when we began.

* * * * *

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. 

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

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.

The marks life leaves on everything it touches transform perfection into wholeness. Older, wiser cultures choose to claim this wholeness in the things that they create. In Japan, Zen gardeners purposefully leave a fat dandelion in the midst of the exquisite, ritually precise patterns of the meditation garden. In Iran, even the most skilled of rug weavers includes an intentional error, the “Persian Flaw,” in the magnificence of a Tabriz or Qashqai carpet…and Native Americans wove a broken bead, the “spirit bead,” into every beaded masterpiece. Nothing that has a soul is perfect. When life weaves a spirit bead into your very fabric, you may stumble upon a wholeness greater than you had dreamed possible before.

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.

* * * * *

I have learned that the things that divide us are far less important than those that connect us.

Perhaps we are no longer a kind people. More and more, we seem to have become numb to the suffering of others and ashamed of our own suffering. Yet suffering is one of the universal conditions of being alive. We all suffer. We have become terribly vulnerable, not because we suffer but because we have separated ourselves from each other.

When we approve of people, we sit in judgment of them as surely as when we criticize them. ...To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary. Like all judgment, approval encourages a constant striving. It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value. This is as true of the approval we give ourselves as it is of the approval we offer others. Approval can't be trusted. It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been. It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy. Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it.

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.

* * * * *

She walked on in this way for several more minutes and at last came to a place in the labyrinth close to the circumference of the circle where the path unexpectedly turns sharply to the right. As you turn, you discover that you have reached the end of the path and a few more steps will take you to the center of the circle. Turning to the right, Glory suddenly felt the pinecone in her hands move as if it had become her own living heart. 

Deeply shaken, she looked up for the first time and found an unmistakable Presence in the center of the labyrinth, waiting for her. For just the briefest moment she could see Him quite clearly. His heart was open, a place of refuge for all who suffer. It had been broken open by the suffering in the world in the same way hers had been. 

Suddenly she understood why others had come to her for refuge since her childhood. The suffering she was able to feel had made her trustworthy. She stumbled the last few steps into the center of the labyrinth, knelt down, and for the first time since she was a child, she wept. 

In a talk about compassion, a former teacher of mine once said that practice prepares the mind, but suffering prepares the heart. Perhaps the final step in the healing of all wounds is the discovery of the capacity for compassion, an intuitive knowing that no one is singled out in their suffering, that all living beings are vulnerable to loss, attachment, and limitation. It is only in the presence of compassion that we can show our wounds without diminishing our wholeness. 

The Dalai Lama has said that “compassion occurs only between equals.” For those who have compassion, woundedness is not a place of judgment but a place of genuine meeting.

* * * * *

A colleague told me that he thinks of his life as an orchestra. Reclaiming his integrity reminds him of that moment before the concert when the concertmaster asks the oboist to sound an A. 'At first there is chaos and noise as all parts of the orchestra try to align themselves with that note. But as each instrument moves closer and closer to it, the noise diminishes and when they all finally sound it together, there is a moment of rest, of homecoming.'

'That is how it feels to me,' he told me. 'I am always tuning my orchestra. Somewhere deep inside there is a sound that is mine alone, and I struggle daily to hear it and tune my life to it. Sometimes there are people and situations that help me to hear my note more clearly; other times, people and situations make it harder for me to hear. A lot depends on my commitment to listening and my intention to stay coherent with this note. It is only when my life is tuned to my note that I can play life's mysterious and holy music without tainting it with my own discordance, my own bitterness, resentment, agenda, and fears.'

Deep inside, our integrity sings to us whether we are listening or not. It is a note that only we can hear.

* * * * *

Over the years I have seen the power of taking an unconditional relationship to life. I am surprised to have found a sort of willingness to show up for whatever life may offer and meet with it rather than wishing to edit and change the inevitable...When people begin to take such an attitude, they seem to become intensely alive, intensely present. Their losses and suffering have not caused them to reject life, have not cast them into a place of resentment, victimization, or bitterness.

From such people, I have learned a new definition of the word 'joy.' I had thought joy to be rather synonymous with happiness, but it seems now to be far less vulnerable than happiness. Joy seems to be part of an unconditional wish to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet with whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us. Rather than the warrior who fights toward a specific outcome and therefore is haunted by the specter of failure and disappointment, it is the lover drunk with the opportunity to love despite the possibility of loss, the player for whom playing has become more important than winning or losing.

The willingness to win or lose moves us out of an adversarial relationship to life and into a powerful kind of openness. From such a position, we can make a greater commitment to life. Not only pleasant life, or comfortable life, or our idea of life, but all life. Joy seems more closely related to aliveness than happiness.

The strength that I notice developing in many of my patients and in myself after all these years could almost be called a form of curiosity. What one of my colleagues calls fearlessness. At one level, of course, I fear outcome as much as anyone. But more and more I am able to move in and out of that and to experience a place beyond preference for outcome, a life beyond life and death. It is a place of freedom, even anticipation. Decisions made from this perspective are life-affirming and not fear-driven. It is a grace.

* * * * *

I no longer feel that life is ordinary. Everyday life is filled with mystery. The things we know are only a small part of the things we cannot know but can only glimpse. Yet even the smallest of glimpses can sustain us.

Mystery seems to have the power to comfort, to offer hope, and to lend meaning in times of loss and pain. In surprising ways it is the mysterious that strengthens us at such times. I used to try to offer people certainty in times that were not at all certain and could not be made certain. I now just offer my companionship and share my sense of mystery, of the possible, of wonder. After twenty years of working with people with cancer, I find it possible to neither doubt nor accept the unprovable but simply to remain open and wait.

I accept that I may never know where truth lies in such matters. The most important questions don't seem to have ready answers. But the questions themselves have a healing power when they are shared. An answer is an invitation to stop thinking about something, to stop wondering. Life has no such stopping places, life is a process whose every event is connected to the moment that just went by. An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road.

When we recognize the spark of God in others, we blow on it with our attention and strengthen it. No matter how deeply it has been buried or for how long .... When we bless someone, we touch the unborn goodness in them and wish it well.

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

For more from Rachel Naomi Remen, 

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http://www.rachelremen.com/