Refusal to Despair

"Now that is why I stress there are two ways of going about liberation: one, of course, is the political way, changing the laws and fighting for equalities. There are so many ways of doing it. But the other I stress simply because it is the one I know: the psychological way, which is the removal of obstacles so that you can create your own freedom and you don’t have to ask for it. You don’t have to wait for it to be given to you. And the women I chose as my heroines were women who created their own freedom. They didn’t demand it, they didn’t ask for it. They created it. Something in themselves made them independent women, and this kind of independence I stress."

"What I am trying to say is that we are not exceptional in our beginnings, we are only exceptional in our stubbornness, in this thrust towards growth which is almost a natural state. There are obstacles, but our intelligence and our awareness enable us to recognize and confront them. We know them. All of us at some point or another become aware of them: the religious beliefs, the family beliefs, the oppression by the family, the very dogmatic form we have given to marriage. I believe in marriage but not the dogma that we’ve made out of it, the rigid dogma. You see we make everything rigid and it is all out of fear.; we make these rigidities, and then we can’t live in them and we suffocate in them. We make different patterns of lives and to get security we give up our freedom."

"What I am trying to say is that we are not exceptional in our beginnings, we are only exceptional in our stubbornness, in this thrust towards growth which is almost a natural state. There are obstacles, but our intelligence and our awareness enable us to recognize and confront them. We know them. All of us at some point or another become aware of them: the religious beliefs, the family beliefs, the oppression by the family, the very dogmatic form we have given to marriage. I believe in marriage but not the dogma that we’ve made out of it, the rigid dogma. You see we make everything rigid and it is all out of fear; we make these rigidities, and then we can’t live in them and we suffocate in them. We make different patterns of lives and to get security we give up our freedom."

"Terrible things happen in the world of events, but we cannot despair. To give up is to lose…that is why I put so much stress on building an inward life- so that you have resistance to withstand what happens outside. So that we don’t collapse. What happens if we don’t have this very strong inward life is that external events just simply cause you to break down, to collapse."

"Ask yourself if you are really noticing the change, or if it’s you who hasn’t changed, perhaps. You know, it’s possible. We have to ask ourselves that too in connection with our environment, with what is happening. Whether we have closed ourselves to it, whether it is really happening but we haven’t been in tune. Because sometimes we do not tune in."

"You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you are not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn’t a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is one that keeps demanding that we fit in and do not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now."

"Nothing is lost. What you give isn’t lost."

"

Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there’s no-one else to blame

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I’m needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found,
Yeah I think that I might break
I’ve lost myself again and I feel unsafe

"

"May the God of me protect my soul
As I stay a little while longer
In this dusty rabbit hole
To sing my song chained onto your bed"

"And of course when you’re interested in growth, you’re interested in the growth of those around you. They are absolutely interdependent. You grow only insofar as people around you are also growing and expanding and becoming freer. it is something that is interactive, something you give to each other."

"I came to realize that our need and hunger for closeness, after the terrible period of alienation occurred because we always blamed every possible cause except the right one.
We were alienated from ourselves. How could we love, how could we give, how could we trust, how could we share what we didn’t have to give,? If we did not spend time in creating ourselves in depth and power, with what were we going to relate to others?"

"Traumas create this mistrust of human beings, because a human being can hurt you, can desert you, can betray you. Yet I still say that it’s a million times better to risk being deserted or betrayed than to withdraw into a forest of alienation, shut the door and break contact with others. Because then we really die. That is death. That is emotional death. It is mistrust that makes us do that, mistrust and fear of pain."