“Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny.
We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses - one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will.”
“Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way.
You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else.
Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.”
“Some days are meant to be counted, others are meant to be weighed.”
“That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.”
“At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.”
“We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.”
“Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all.
As soon as you want somebody—really want him—it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.”
“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time.
When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place.
But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope”
“Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship - a play between divine grace and willful self-effort.”
“I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now.
I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.”
“Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch.
Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark.”
“The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.”
“The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it.
This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell.
Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven.”
“Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.”
“Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.”
“you have the opposite of poker face. You have like...... miniature golf face.”
“Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already.
But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.”
“Instructions for freedom":
1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.
2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.
3. The day is ending, it's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.
4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. You are being here is God's response, let go and watch the stars came out, in the inside and in the outside.
5. With all your heart ask for Grace and let go.
6. With all your heart forgive him, forgive yourself and let him go.
7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering then, let go.
8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cold night, let go.
9. When the Karma of a relationship is done, only Love remains. It's safe, let go.
10. When the past has past from you at last, let go.. then, climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy.”
“The resting place of the mind is the heart.
The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude.
The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart.
That's where you need to go.”
“one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.”
“and when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt-this is not selfishness, but obligation.
You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life no matter how slight.”
“The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself. ”
“If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian...I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.”
“So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly."
“Real, sane, mature love—the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school—is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect.”
“it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”
“Let your conscience be your guide.”
“but if you can plant yourself in stillness long enough, you will, in time, experience the truth that everything (both uncomfortable and lovely) does eventually pass.”
“Maybe this is just some stupid romantic South American idea, but I need you to understand-darling, for you, I am even willing to suffer.
Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it already, just for the pleasure of being with you now.
Let's enjoy this time. It's marvelous"
“At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you.
Letting go, of course, is a scary enterprise for those of us who believe that the world revolves only because it has a handle on the top of it which we personally turn, and that if we were to drop this handle for even a moment, well – that would be the end of the universe.
But try dropping it….Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation.
Watch what happens.
The birds do not crash dead out of the sky in mid-flight, after all. The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not run red with blood.
Life continues to go on….
Why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential? Why don’t you let it be?”
“There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history.
'How much do you love me?' And, 'Who's in charge?'
Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.”
“When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become logjammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.”
“You have been to hell, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he's been there.
What's it like in hell?"
Same like in heaven," he said.
He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."
He said. "To up, to down -- all same, at end."
I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below.
I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"
Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.
Same-same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy in journey."
I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is.. "
Love, too," he said.
Ketut laughed again, "Always so difficult for young people to understand this!”
“Plant an expectation; reap a disappointment."
“We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentment and mortality.”
“He was powerful and I died of love in his shadow.”
“There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.”
“Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death.
Time - when pursued like a bandit - will behave like one, always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you.
At some point you have to stop because it won't.
You have to admit that you can't catch it.
That you're not supposed to catch it.
At some point, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you.”
“You have no idea how strong my love is!”
“The resting place of the mind is the heart.”
“When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion.
I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings.
Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being--and a normal one, at that?”
“Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have...undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave?
Has he ever walked out and left? No? It's because he doesn't care!
He's in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery.
I am so tired of saying no, waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before, counting every calorie I consumed so I know just how much self loathing to take into the shower.
I'm going for it. I have no interest in being obese, I'm just through with the guilt.
So this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to finish this pizza, and then we are going to go watch the soccer game, and tomorrow we are going to go on a little date and buy ourselves some bigger jeans.”
“My love affair with (him) had a wonderful element of romance to it, which I will always cherish.
But it was not an infatuation, and here’s how I can tell: because I did not demand that he become my Great Emancipator or my Source of All Life, nor did I immediately vanish into that man’s chest cavity like a twisted, unrecognizable, parasitical homonculus.
During our long period of courtship, I remained intact within my own personality, and I allowed myself to meet (him) for who he was.”
“I am the planet's most affectionate life-form, something like the cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle.”
“And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today?”
“every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows.
The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage.”
“According to the mystics, this search for divine bliss is the entire purpose of a human life.
This is why we all chose to be born, and this is why all the suffering and pain of life on earth is worthwhile--just for the chance to experience this infinite love.
And once you have found this divinity within, can you hold it? Because if you can...bliss.”
“everything really is going to be ok. (and if not ok, then at least comic).”
"The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful.
Now, Let go.”
“I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears.
It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity.”
“By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons.”
“Most of us, even if only for two minutes in our lives, have experienced at some time or another an inexplicable and random sense of complete bliss, unrelated to anything that was happening in the outside world.”
“Problem is, you can’t accept that his relationship had a real short shelf life.
You’re like a dog at the dump, baby – you’re just lickin’ at the empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it.
And if you’re not careful, that can’s gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.”
“But I love him.”
“So love him.”
“But I miss him.”
“So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it.”
“For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men, it is that feelings of powerlessness do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.”
“Well, just remember--all your misery will be waiting for you at the door upon your exit, should you care to pick it up again when you leave.
“Teach your heart that this is destiny"
“Because I know something that you don't know.
I know that this is the worst experience of your life, but I also know that someday you'll move past it and you'll be fine.
And helping somebody likej you through the worst experience of her life is incredibly gratifying.”
“I remember asking myself one night, while I was curled up in the same old corner of my same old couch in tears yet again over the same old repetition of sorrowful thoughts, 'Is there ANYTHING about this scene you can change, Liz?'
And all I could think to do was stand up, while still sobbing, and try to balance on one foot in the middle of the living room.
Just to prove that - while I couldn't stop the tears or change my dismal interior dialogue - I was not yet totally out of control: at least I could cry hysterically while balanced on one foot.”
People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or most appropriate -- and all reach You, just as rivers enter the ocean.
“With each reunion (we) had to learn each other all over again.
There was always that nervous moment at the airport when I would stand there waiting for him to arrive, wondering, Will I still know him? Will he still know me?”
“I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay.”
“Then again, you cannot stop the flood of desire as it moves through the world, inappropriate though it may sometimes be.
It is the prerogative of all humans to make ludicrous choices, to fall in love with the most unlikely of partners, and to set themselves up for the most predicatable of calamities.”
“Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.”
“You love new boyfriend?"
"I think so. Yes."
"Then you must spoil him. And he must spoil you.”
“Devotion is diligence without assurance”
“Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me.
The words made me laugh in delight.”
“Where did you get the idea you aren't allowed to petition the universe with prayer?
You are part of this universe, Liz.
You're a constituent--you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known. So, put your opinion out there.
Make your case.
Believe me--it will at least be taken into consideration.”
“This is what we are like.
Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me,
"There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history.
How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable.
But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.”
“My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them.
I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself.
The benefits of her choices are massive-a long, stable marriage to a man she still calls her best friend; a family that has extended now into grandchildren who adore her; a certainty in her own strength.
Maybe some things were sacrificed, and my dad made his sacrifices, too-but who amongst us lives without sacrifice?”
“Fear--who cares?”
“What worked yesterday doesn't always work today.”
“Everyone makes their own path, and I must make mine.
The Bhagavad Gita - and ancient Indian Yogic text - says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life perfectly.
So now I have started living my own life.
Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly. It is mine.”
“In the modern industrialized Western world, where I come from, the person whom you choose to marry is perhaps the single most vivid representation of your own personality.
Your spouse becomes the most gleaming possible mirror through which your emotional individualism is reflected back to the world.
There is no choice more intensely personal after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.”
“The appreciation of pleasure can be the anchor of humanity.”
“I was doing something I'd never done before.
And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today?”
“What time has ever been a simple time for those who are living it?”
“True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer.”
“You have now reached infatuation’s final destination—the complete and merciless
devaluation of self.”
“We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality.
We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature.
We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character.”
“there’s a part of me which has always wanted to hear a man say, “Let me take care of you forever,” and I have never heard it spoken before.
Over the last few years, I’d given up looking for that person, learned how to say this heartening sentence to myself,especially in times of fear.
But to hear it from someone else now, from someone who is speaking sincerely . . .”
“Equally disquieting are the times when we do make a choice, only to later feel as though we have murdered some other aspect of our being by settling on one single concrete decision.”
“But the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why you sometimes must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in order to find your comfort.”
“Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don’t you see what happened?
This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching, I mean you got zapped, kiddo.
But that love you felt, that’s just the beginning.
You just got a taste of love.
That’s just limited little rinky-dink mortal love.
Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that.
Heck, Groceries—you have the capacity to someday love the whole world. It’s your destiny. Don’t laugh.”
“My heart was broken so badly last time that it still hurts. Isn't that crazy?
To still have a broken heart almost two years after a love story ends? ”
“I wonder if I am capable of being somebody’s sun, somebody’s everything.
Am I centered enough now to be the center of somebody else’s life?
“Destiny, I feel is also a relationship-a play between grace and willful self-effort.
Half of it you have no control over, half of it is absolutely in your hands and your actions will show measurable consequences.
Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny; he’s a little of both.
We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses-one foot is on the horse called “fate” the other on the horse called “free will”.
And the question you have to ask everyday is, Which horse is which?
Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it’s not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?”
“We invented marriage. Couples invented marriage.
We also invented divorce,mind you.
And we invented infidelity,too, as well as romantic misery.
In fact we invented the whole sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy.
“What a large number of factors constitute a single human being!
How very many layers we operate on, and how very many influences we receive from our minds, our bodies, our histories, our families, our cities, our souls and our lunches!”
“Sometimes out hearts are broken so new light can get in.”
“He is only happy when he can maintain himself - mentally and spiritually - at the intersection between a vertical line and horizontal one, in a state of perfect balance.
For this, he needs to know where he is located every moment, both in his relationship to the divine and to his family here on earth.
If he loses that balance, he loses his power.”
