Sunday, June 16, 2013

Rachel Naomi Remen


We are all more than we know.  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.
Even after many years of seeing, thinking, and living one way, we are able to reach
past all that to claim our integrity and live in a way we may never have expected to live.

People can learn to study their life force in the same way that a master gardener studies a rosebush.  No gardener ever made a rose.  When its needs are met a rosebush will make roses.  Gardeners collaborate and provide conditions which favor this outcome.  And as anyone who has ever pruned a rosebush knows, life flows through every rosebush in a slightly different way.

Those who bless and serve life find a place of belonging and strength,
a refuge from living in ways that are meaningless and empty and lonely.

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.




















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