“The first thing to remember is this: As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it. As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal that pain. Why? Quite simply because you want to keep yourself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome it is to make it conscious.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 168)
“Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to—alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person—you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain. That is why, after the initial euphoria has passed, there is so much unhappiness, so much pain in intimate relationships. They do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you. Every addiction does that. Every addiction reaches a point where it does not work for you anymore, and then you feel the pain more intensely than ever.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 152)
Rupi Kaur Quote on Love and How Love Isn’t Cruel Or A Game
“love is not cruel
we are cruel
love is not a game
we have made a game
out of love”
Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey (Page 127)
Beyond the Quote (145/365)
To all those who suffer from heartbreak, don’t blame love. Love is forever flowing and ever present throughout all that is. Love isn’t one person. Love is what connects us to infinite warmth, gratitude, and grace. Love isn’t temporary. To blame love for being cruel is to blame your entire body when just one cell is at fault. Love is far bigger than any one person. Love is the understructure that provides the foundation for all that is kind, just, and joyous. Love is not cruel.
Read More »Rupi Kaur Quote on Love and How Love Isn’t Cruel Or A Game
Milk and Honey [Book]
Book Overview: #1 New York Times bestseller Milk and Honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. Milk and Honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
S. C. Lourie Quote on Being Worthy and Accepting of Where You Are—No More Hiding
“Be confused, it’s where you begin to learn new things. Be broken, it’s where you begin to heal. Be frustrated, it’s where you start to make more authentic decisions. Be sad, because if we are brave enough we can hear our heart’s wisdom through it. Be whatever you are right now. No more hiding. You are worthy, always.”
S. C. Lourie
Beyond the Quote (80/365)
Life doesn’t always have to be sunshine and rainbows. And it certainly runs deeper than smiles and ease. But you already know this. You’ve felt it: the confusion, the sadness, the frustration, the brokenness, the misery, the pain—it’s all a part of the experience of life. What you need to know is that it’s okay to feel these emotions. It doesn’t make you any less human to feel the breadth and depth of the emotional spectrum—if anything, it makes you more human.
Read More »S. C. Lourie Quote on Being Worthy and Accepting of Where You Are—No More HidingSusan David Quote on False Positivity and Why We Shouldn’t Push Aside Difficult Emotions
“When we push aside difficult emotions in order to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop deep skills to help us deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
Susan David, Ph.D, Mindful
Beyond the Quote (27/365)
This is the problem with positive thinking from a superficial standpoint. If something sad happens and you try to cover it up with happy thoughts, like a kind of mask, you get an un-dealt-with-sadness that lies suppressed inside. When something really upsets you and you try to distract your mind from confronting that “upset-ness,” those feelings will get pushed down and will continue to broil from deep within.
Read More »Susan David Quote on False Positivity and Why We Shouldn’t Push Aside Difficult EmotionsIain Thomas Quote on Trying To Use Self-Love In Response To Pain—Not More Pain
“Why do we hurt ourselves more, when other people hurt us? Why do we beat ourselves up, for feeling beat up? Maybe the lesser pain you cause yourself distracts you from the bigger pain inside. And it’s easy to get stuck in a kind of loop of pain. You’re hurt, so you hurt yourself some more. But the correct response to pain, is self-love. When we’re hurt, we need to take better care of ourselves. Not worse. It can be hard to be conscious in the moment and remember to be kind to ourselves when someone hurts us. But you need to try.”
Iain Thomas, Every Word You Cannot Say (Page 116)
Beyond the Quote (23/365)
What does beating ourselves up look like? It can manifest in destructive self-talk: “Why am I such an idiot?!” “I don’t deserve to be happy.” “Why do I even bother trying? It’s not like anything is going to change.” It can manifest in negative talk and conversation which might include tearing down the people around you, purposefully excluding yourself from social situations because you don’t feel worthy, or even inserting yourself into the role of being a victim, a loser, a trouble-maker, or a target. It might also manifest in physical harm. This is where you might see people punching walls (or other assorted objects), purposefully not taking care of themselves, or even abusing drugs, alcohol, or other substances. Why do any of this at all? Maybe because the pain it causes distracts us from a bigger pain inside.
Read More »Iain Thomas Quote on Trying To Use Self-Love In Response To Pain—Not More Pain“It’s only the idea that everyone else KNOWS who they are that’s causing you pain. But no one knows who they really are. You are an overflowing river that shifts its banks when the rains come. That’s why you cannot hold on to who you are.” ~ Iain Thomas, Every Word You Cannot Say (Page 120)
“Understanding the meaning of impermanence makes us less desperate people. It gives us dignity. We no longer grasp at pleasure, trying to squeeze out every last drop. We no longer consider pain something we should fear, deny, and avoid. We know that it will change.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 150)
“When we’re in any kind of pain, we can use it to open our hearts to the reality that people are always suffering. Pain is something everyone experiences. We can use it to ground us in the fundamental truth of our being. Pain gives us firsthand experience by which to be kind and generous to others. It gives us direct access through our empathy to helping others. We can use pain to activate compassion. We’d like others not to experience pain, and we can extend ourselves to them. We can contemplate the words, ‘May all beings be free of pain.’ Our direct experience of pain only makes our wish more potent. It may even decrease our pain, because it increases our joy. This becomes a wonderful meditation, to sit there and contemplate the relief of pain and suffering of everyone, of the whole world—not only because it changes our attitude toward our own pain, but also because it’s opening our mind of enlightenment. This kind of prayer is always healing.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 144)
“We can say ‘blue,’ but until we see the color blue, we don’t really know what the meaning is. We can say that something is hot, but until we touch it, we don’t know what ‘hot’ means. We can talk about bringing our mind to compassion by saying ‘May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the root of suffering,’ but until we feel the pain of others, ‘pain’ is only a word. We have to crack its shell to let its meaning infuse us, seep into our lives.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 133)
“From a Buddhist point of view, human beings aren’t intrinsically aggressive; we are inherently peaceful. This is sometimes hard to believe. When we’re angry or upset, our untrained mind becomes belligerent and we routinely strike out at others. We imagine that reacting aggressively to the object of our emotion will resolve our pain. Throughout history we have used this approach over and over again. Striking out when we’re in pain is clearly one way we perpetuate misery. With a trained mind, a stable mind, a mind with a larger motivation than its own comfort, we find another way to work with difficulties of daily life. When we’re in a difficult situation, we maintain our seat. Instead of perpetuating misery by acting out aggression, we learn to use the rough spots to spark the courage to proceed on our journey. Eventually we may actually be able to turn the mind of anger into the energy of love and compassion.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 26)
“Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 40)