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Pain
Iron,
left in the rain
And fog and dew,
With rust is covered.—Pain
Rusts into beauty too.
Mary Carolyn Davies
Our
pain is ours. Some of it we have earned, the rest not, and it is still
ours. When we fight our pain, we fight the experience of our humanness,
and we lose ourselves in the process. A life without pain is a life of
nonliving. Our pain lets us know and come to understand the full meaning
of being human. If we fight the normal experience of our pain, we lost the
possibility of experiencing the process of its rusting “into beauty
too.”
We
don’t need to seek pain, but when it is inevitability there, we have the
possibility of something new entering our lives.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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LAUGHTER
How long has it been since you have had a good belly-laugh? Good laughter
seems to be a treasure that is in short supply of late.
Most of us are distrustful and embarrassed by our
laughter. As children we were constantly told to suppress it. Often it
seems almost lost to us. We are afraid to laugh alone, and we are
embarrassed to laugh with others. What a state!
Laughter is one of the gifts of being human. We
can’t force it, but we can sure stop suppressing it in ourselves and in
our children.
Laughter is like the human body wagging its tail.
Anne
Wilson Schaef |
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One
Day At A Time
How arrogant and ignorant
of us to believe that we can do anything but live one day at a time! We
are so deluded by our illusion of control that we really believe that we
can control the future, make things happen the way we want and completely
control our lives. When we do this, we cease living.
Living fully is living a life of faith. We do our footwork, make
our plans, and then let go. Living fully is taking a leap of faith and,
before our feet are squarely on the ground, leaping again. When we think
we have things under control, we “begin to die a little.”
Ann Wilson Schaef
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When
we are addicted to working, being busy, rushing around, and taking care of
other people, the only way that we can give ourselves permission to rest
is by collapsing.
It has been said that workaholism is the addiction of choice for
those who feel unworthy. We are so driven to prove ourselves and to make a
place for ourselves that we can never quite do enough, no matter how much
we do. If we just do enough, maybe we can justify our existence. We have
trouble accepting that just our being may be enough.
We all need solitude, and those of us who do too much can only
justify taking it when we are near collapse.
Rushing and then collapsing is not only exhausting to me, it wears
everyone around me out too.
Ann Wilson Schaef |
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To care about something is to bring ourselves to it. When we give
ourselves up for something, whether it be our families, our work, our
church, or our causes, we bring any empty shell.
We
have confused so much of our religious training to mean that if we are
pure, we will have no person, no self. What most spiritual disciplines
advocate is the need to let the ego go, the need to let go of the
addictive self, the need to recognize our unique oneness with all things.
When we love a cause and bring ourselves to it, we bring the very best we
have.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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We are
so invested in the illusion of control that we rarely step back and see
how pervasive and destructive this illusion is. Much of what goes on at an
international level between nations is based upon the illusion of control.
When we believe we can control everything or have everything under
control, we are appalled by our miscalculations. Miscalculations on a
personal level can be just as devastating as miscalculations on an
international level. It is not the mis
in miscalculating that is the problem; it is the calculating. When we
operate out of a belief system that says that we should be able to
understand everything and that when we do we can control everything, we
are in big trouble.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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Imagine
starting each day fresh with no “shadows of yesterdays or clouds of
tomorrow.” In our more
negative, cynical moods, we hear such an idea and we scoff, impossible! It
is not possible to let go of the past and have no concern for the future.
Yet this is what every great spiritual teacher on this planet has taught
in one way or another. In fact, the greatest gift our spiritual teachers
have given us has often been to show us how to live in the present, how to
simply be totally present to the moment.
How
often we miss our life by focusing on the past or yearning for the future.
We miss the look in our children’s eyes today, because we are thinking
about how to get them to the dentist tomorrow. We miss the interesting
idea that has just now come across our desk, because we are worrying about
what we said in the meeting yesterday. Stop—relax—be here!
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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When
we remember that life is a process, it helps us put our goal-setting in
perspective. The purpose of setting goals is to give us a temporary
structure in which to operate. Unfortunately, when we begin to believe
that the structure is solid and real, we lose touch with the process of
getting there. This is why we often feel so depressed and let down when we
reach our goals. We have not let ourselves enjoy the experience of the
journey, and when we reach the end, we have missed the journey.
Being
in the present allows us to experience the journey and to respond to the
process of the journey. When we operate this way, we see that all goals
are just temporary ideas that change as we draw near to them.
Anne
Wilson Schaef |
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Perhaps
it is not the concept of success that is the problem, it is the way we
define success. If we define
success as lots of money, getting to the top of the organizational ladder,
two BMW’s in our garage, and a designer house, success may be dangerous
to our health.
If we define success as living each successive moment to its
fullest, we may have money, prestige, and possessions, and this success
may not be disastrous to our health.
The difference is in the attitude and in the beliefs behind that
attitude.
In fact, it is often easier to gather the accouterments of success
than it is to live a successful life. Living a successful life demands our
presence, our presence in each moment.
Anne Wilson Schaef
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Addictive thinking usually results in putting the cart before the
donkey. One of the fascinating skills of addiction is that it allows us to
take something relatively neutral or even good and twist it ever so
slightly, so that it becomes horrendous.
There’s
nothing wrong with duty. We just should not let duty override our clear
feelings and intuitions. Duty cannot come before our own internal clarity.
When it does, it is a tyrant. Duty needs to follow our clarity, just as
doing things for our loved ones needs to be an expression of love, rather
than ritualized behavior. Duty needs to be a byproduct of what we truly
are, and what we value, and what is important to us.
Anne Wilson Schaef
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How fortunate if we get to be that adult who has the opportunity to
be a companion to a child and support that child’s sense of wonder! We
are lucky because that child can offer us the opportunity to rekindle our
own awareness that wonder continues to dwell in us. That child can remind
us that we still have the capacity to look at cloud formations with new
eyes and to giggle in excitement with a new discovery. How long has it
been since we really had a belly laugh, especially at ourselves?
How long has it been since we saw a rainbow in a drop of rain?
How long since we studied the progress of a red and black ladybug
on our hand?
Anne
Wilson Schaef
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How
refreshing when we can be honest, even humorously honest, about ourselves!
Often we are so busy protecting ourselves that we don’t dare risk
letting others know that we aren’t perfect. Of course usually we are the
only ones fooled by our masquerades, but we make ourselves believe that
others are fooled, too.
When
we can be honest with ourselves, we usually know very clearly what we need
and what is destructive to us. The trick is, can we listen to ourselves?
Can we let ourselves see our foibles and laugh about them? After all, no
one knows us as well as we know ourselves. So, naturally, we are the
persons who are most capable of seeing ourselves clearly. Are we
courageous enough to let ourselves see ourselves and be honest about what
we see?
Anne
Wilson Schaef
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We are a
process, and the key to living that process is learning. Mistakes are not
proof that we are bad; they are doors for learning and moving on. It is
often said of addicts that they don’t learn from their past because they
have no memory. If we have no past, we have no present and we have no
future.
Everything
in our lives is an opportunity for learning. Often, our most painful
experiences open doors that must be opened before we can take our next
steps. That doesn’t mean that we don’t sometimes have to walk over
what seem like beds of hot coals to reach the door. Yet once we reach the
other side the learning is there.
Kurt
Vonnegut talks about “wrang-wrangs” in our lives, great teachers who
are placed in our path. The lessons they teach us are vastly important,
and they are taught through struggle, pain, trial, and tribulation. Still,
they are important teachers.
Anne
Wilson Schaef.
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It’s not that we need to seek pain and suffering to glean the rich
learnings of life. When they happen, however, we learn so much more if we
can see these situations as rich opportunities for learning. We spend so
much time worrying, and worrying is nothing more than an attempt at remote
control. Often what we worry about never comes to pass. Unfortunately, we
may be so preoccupied with worry that we miss the gifts our life is
presenting to us at the moment.
When will we realize that the unfolding process of our lives is so much
richer and varied than we ever could have planned? The unplanned and
uncontrollable gifts we receive add color to the tapestry of living.
Ann Wilson Schaef |
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“There is a time for work. And a time for love. That leaves no other
time.”
Coco Chanel
Well, at least Coco Chanel recognized that one has to do something besides
work! How many of us have ruled out love and living from our lives and
seen them as expendable? Even if we are married, we act as if love is a
luxury that we can ill afford. Our disease of doing too much has isolated
us more and more from ourselves and others.
Just
as nature needs balance, people need balance. We need time to be whole
persons, and this means balance. We are constantly being drained.
Therefore, we need to be fed, and we need time to digest the nourishment.
Work and love are better than just work alone…and there is more.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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Miracles are constantly occurring around us. Serendipities
abound in daily life. The issue is not that these miracles are absent. The
issue is that often we are absent. We are standing on a hill of
diamonds, and we are looking for the gold mine beyond the next ridge. As
we reclaim ourselves, we begin to notice the extraordinariness of the
ordinary. We quit thinking about being present and we start doing
it.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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Sometimes we feel overwhelmed with forces outside ourselves.
We find ourselves embroiled in family or organizational wars and
infighting that we do not believe we started and that we certainly do not
want to participate in. Yet once in them we feel as if we have to fight,
or at least try to stop them.
Both behaviors feed such battles. The one thing we have the
power to decide about is our participation. We have the power to decide
not to participate. It is amazing how battles dissipate when no one
participates. When we feel overwhelmed by the battle, we cannot see or we
forget that we have the power of nonparticipation.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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We often think
that we are “just about to get it together,” when life gives us another
opportunity for learning. Many of us have tried to treat out lives like our
houses. We have believed that we could get our houses fixed up just the way
we wanted them and then they would stay that way forever. We have felt
personally attacked when slip covers wear out, when a room needs to be
repainted, or when an appliance breaks down. We have set up our lives based
upon a static notion of the universe. We have believed that once fixed
things should stay fixed, whether they be our houses, our jobs, or
ourselves. In trying to make ourselves and our universe static, we have set
ourselves up for intense moments of frustration and failure. Our attempts
to control the normal processes of life have taken their toll on ourselves
and those around us.
Anne Wilson
Schaef |
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Our concern must be to
live while we’re alive…to release our inner selves from the spiritual
death that comes with living behind a façade designed to conform to
external definitions of who and what we are. Elizabeth Kubler Ross
Trying to be what others
want us to be is a form of slow torture and certain spiritual death. It is
not possible to get all our definitions from outside and maintain our
spiritual integrity. We cannot look to others to give us our meaning, and
still have any idea of who we are. When we look to others for our
identity, we spend most of our time and energy trying to be who they want
us to be. And we are so fearful of being found out. We truly believe that
it is possible to make others see what we want them to see, and we exhaust
ourselves in the process.
Anne Wilson
Schaef |
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Being obsessed with our
work is often thought to be a requirement for success. Yet, when was it
that the tail started wagging the dog? Where was the point at which we
stopped doing our work, and it began doing us.
It is a lot harder to get
off the roller coaster in the middle than it was to get on it. This is why
we need the companionship of others who are struggling with the same
issues: They support our process of getting unhooked from our obsessive
doing.
It is only with the
support of others and the renewed connection with a power greater than
ourselves that we can hope to recover and become whole.
Anne Wilson
Schaef |
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An affluent
society often functions as a giant tranquilizer. In the pursuit of the
rewards of affluence, we have to tune out our awareness so completely that
we become destructive to our bodies and our psyches. We have to develop
our addictions to shut off our awareness of what is really
important to us. We operate out of denial and are threatened by anyone
wanting to challenge our denial.
When we see
the sole purpose of our work as the pursuit of affluence, we have lost
track of ourselves and what is meaningful work for us. Our spiritual
selves have become an abstraction, if they exist at all.
Anne Wilson
Schaef |
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Self-knowledge is always a good thing. No one else possesses
the capacity to know us as well as we can know ourselves.
It is in the awareness of ourselves that our strength lies.
And awareness of every aspect of ourselves allows us to become who we are.
Often our rejection of various aspects of ourselves keeps us
stuck. Some of us quite readily see those aspects of our personalities
that we perceive as negative and just as readily beat ourselves up for
those characteristics. Others go to the other extreme and sugar-coat our
self-perceptions, putting all blame and responsibility for who we have
become on anyone and anything outside of ourselves. Neither approach is
helpful or growth-producing.
Owning ourselves is probably the richest gold mine any of us
will ever possess.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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How
often are our minds “tranquil and wholly relaxed?” Do we recognize that
time for solitude is just as important to our work as keeping informed,
preparing reports or planning? As author Brenda Ueland says, “Presently
your soul gets frightfully sterile and dry because you are so quick,
snappy and efficient about doing one thing after another that you have no
time for your own ideas to come in and develop and gently shine.”
We
have to give ourselves time. We have to give our ideas time. If we don’t
neither we nor they can gently shine, and we cannot hear the voice of our
inner process speaking to us.
Anne
Wilson Schaef |
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Courage and openness go hand in hand. Our courage helps us to
take the risk to “try the new.” When we are fearful, we only see one way,
our way. Courage opens the way for new possibilities.
As we face our fears, we find that we are endowed with a level
of courage that we never knew existed. Fortunately, we do not have to be a
hero to demonstrate courage. We have many possibilities every day to act
courageously. It takes courage to germinate and put forth new ideas. It
takes courage to stand up for what we know in our hearts is right.
Sometimes it even takes courage to take a nap.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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What we love doing often has no connection with our career
choice. We live in a culture that teaches us to orient ourselves to what
will sell. We have learned to ignore what we love and turn ourselves into
a commodity. Commodities can be bought and sold, and we fear that we can
be bought and sold. We don’t feel that we have the luxury to see what it
is we really want to be doing.
We forget one very central and essential factor: if we are
doing what we love, we will probably do it exceedingly well.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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How fortunate if we get to be that adult who has the opportunity to
be a companion to a child and support that child’s sense of wonder! We
are lucky because that child can offer us the opportunity to rekindle our
own awareness that wonder continues to dwell in us. That child can remind
us that we still have the capacity to look at cloud formations with new
eyes and to giggle in excitement with a new discovery. How long has it
been since we really had a belly laugh, especially at ourselves?
How long has it been since we saw a rainbow in a drop of rain?
How long since we studied the progress of a red and black ladybug
on our hand?
Anne
Wilson Schaef
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If
something is true for us, we must trust that truth. We live in a society
that is built on dishonesty and ambiguity. In some business and political
circles, the “good communicator” is the one who can intimidate, confuse,
confound, and win. The art of clear, honest communication sometimes
seems to have disappeared with the age of innocence.
But
somewhere down deep inside each of us is a longing to be honest, to say
what is true for us and speak it freely, letting others have it. We live
in a society that is shriveling up from the lack of honesty. We are
shriveling up from the lack of honesty. Our honesty is essential for our
recovery.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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“The
moon develops the imagination, as chemicals develop photographic images.”
Norma Jean Harris
I like the image of the
moonlight acting as an activator to help the emergence of what is already
there within me!
If I bathe myself in moonlight, what miraculous and surprising
images might emerge?
I suppose the real issue is not the magic of the moonlight,
but whether I am willing to slow down enough to let any form of nature
have an opportunity to bathe me.
Ancient peoples knew that connecting with nature released
curative and creative energies. I, too, need nature in my life.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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I never understood why
housework is not added to the list of inevitables like taxes and death. No
matter what we are trying to get done or how much we need a rest, etc.,
housework is always calling to us like the siren’s song:“Come do me…come
do me.” I have thought of inventing a birth control spray that prevents
the housework from reproducing itself while we sleep. When we get up in
the morning there always seems to be more housework than when we went to
bed.
The nice thing about
housework, of course, is that it doesn’t go away. We can go ahead and do
some of our creative work or soak in the tub, and it will be there waiting
when we come back to it.
Since housework is
always there waiting for me, I might as well go ahead and do what I want.
Anne Wilson Schaef |
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