MENTAL work does not exhaust; it gives nourishment, is food for our spirit.
MARIA MONTESORI
THE PROPHETS sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible. RABBI ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
ACTUALLY, something is always happening. People who don’t love the moment are always trying to achieve something but when one is on the way, every moment is ‘it’.’ CHARLOTTE SELVER
THE HEART is greater, more spacious, more subtle and brighter than the heaven and the circling spheres, so why do you obstruct it with thoughts and whispering doubts? Why should you make the pleasant world your narrow prison? How can you make this garden-like world into a prison? Like a caterpillar, you weave a web of thoughts, whispering doubts and blameworthy images around your own make-up. Then you become a prisoner and suffocate Me, I’ve made the prison a garden for myself. If my prison is a garden, just think what my garden must be. SHAMS-I-TABRIZI
THE WORLD suffers A LOT. NOT BECAUSE the violence of bad people. but the silence of good people. NAPOLEAN BONAPARTE
ALEXANDER LOWEN 1910-2008—“BIOENERGETICS” “NARCISSISM”.
“BIOENERGETIC EXERCISES often include bodily exercises in which intentional movements are made to identify and release physical tension in the body. Furthermore bodywork is used to recognize physical sensations and connect them to your feelings and past stressful or traumatic events so that you can work through them.” wikipedia
LOVE is the feeling that emanates from the heart and extends through the blood to every cell of the body.
A PERSON WHO DOESN’T BREATHE DEEPLY reduces the life pf his body. If he doesn’t move freely, he restricts the life of the body. If he doesn’t feel fully, he narrows the life of his body. And if his self-expression is constricted, he limits the life of his body.
WITHOUT awareness of bodily feeling and attitude, a person becomes split into a disembodied spirit and a disenchanted body.
BECAUSE WE ARE AFRAID OF LIFE, WE SEEK TO CONTROL OR MASTER IT.
CHANGE IS POSSIBLE BUT IT MUST START WITH SELF-ACCEPTANCE.
SPIRIT IS NOT A MYSTIC CONCEPT. The spirit of a person is manifest in her aliveness, brightness of his eyes, in the resonance of her voice and in the ease and gracefulness of his movements. These qualities are related to and stem from a high level of energy in the body . . . Sensing the harmony between the internal pulsation of our body and that in the universe, we feel identified with the universe, we feel identified with the universal, with God. We are like tuning forks vibrating at the same pitch.
AS ONE GROWS OLDER, the sense of separateness is slowly reduced. Old people do not live on an ego level. Their concerns are not about their individuality but the river of life, the family, the community, the nation, people, animals, nature, life. They can die easily if they are assured that life will continue positively, for they feel part of the river again, and soon they will be part of the ocean. When they are very old, they no longer belong to our time and space but to all time and all space.
SEXUALITY IS NOT A LEISURE OR PART-TIME ACTIVITY. IT is a way of being.
FAITH IS A QUALITY OF BEING: of being in touch with oneself, with life and with the universe. It is a sense of belonging to one’s community, to one’s country and to the earth. Above all it is a feeling of being grounded in one’s body, in one’s humanity and in one’s animal nature. It can be all these things because it is a manifestation of life, an expression of the living force that unites all beings. It is a biological phenomenon and not a psychic creation.
WE LIVE IN AN OCEAN OF AIR LIKE FISH IN A BODY OF WATER. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. if we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. in all Oriental and mystic philosophies the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss.
DESPAIR IS THE ONLY CURE FOR ILLUSION.
IT is a grave injustice to a child or adult to insist they stop crying.
THE primary nature of every human being is to be open to life and love. Being guarded, armored, distrustful and enclosed is second nature in our culture. It is the means we adopt to protect ourselves against being hurt but when such attitudes become characterological or structured in the personality, they constitute a more severe hurt and create a greater crippling than the one originally suffered.
THE MODERN INDIVIDUAL IS COMMITTED to being successful, not to being a person. He belongs rightly to the action generation whose motto is do more but feel less.
THE FEELING OF LOVE IS A RICH FEELING, BUT THE EXPRESSION OF LOVE IN A WORD OR DEED IS A JOY.
IF THE EGO IS INFLATED IT MUST BE GRADUALLY DEFLATED.
MATURE LOVE is not a surrender of the self but a surrender to the self. The ego surrenders its hegemony of the personality to the heart but in this surrender it is not annihilated. Rather it is strengthened because its roots in the body are nourished by the joy that the body feels.